East Asian Film Remakes

The book explores the historical significance of film remakes in East Asia, their impact on revitalizing local industries and breathing life into established film genres, and their role in forging cross-cultural alliances. It re-evaluates canonical texts and offers fresh assessments of legendary auteurs, showcasing the role of remakes in shaping East Asian cinema.

Format: Hardback
Length: 416 pages
Publication date: 31 July 2023
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

The analysis of East Asian film remakes offers a comprehensive exploration of this phenomenon, considering it from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives. It situates the remake within the broader context of serialized cultural forms and examines its historical significance in revitalizing local industries and breathing new life into established film genres. The study also draws attention to previously overlooked motion pictures produced in East Asia, acknowledging the significant contributions of several prolific yet neglected filmmakers.

Re-evaluating canonical texts and offering fresh assessments of legendary auteurs such as Ozu Yasujiro, Yu Hyun-mok, Miike Takashi, Johnnie To, and Stephen Chow, the analysis showcases the role of remakes in forging cross-cultural alliances both within and beyond the East Asian region. It points toward prospects of increased transnational coproductions in the coming years.

This wide-ranging, historically grounded exploration of motion picture remakes produced in East Asia brings together original contributions from experts in Chinese, Hong Kong, Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese cinemas. It puts forth new ways of thinking about the remaking process as both a critically underappreciated form of artistic expression and an economically motivated industrial practice.

Exploring everything from ethnic Korean filmmaker Lee Sang-il's Unforgiven (2013), a Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood's Western of the same title, to Stephen Chow's The Mermaid (2016), a Chinese slapstick reimagining of Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989) and Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 fairy tale, East Asian Film Remakes contributes to a better understanding of cinematic remaking across the region and offers vital alternatives to the Eurocentric and Hollywood-focused approaches that have thus far dominated the field.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781399508162