Film noir has been understood as a genre exclusive to Hollywood. But classical US noir's downbeat sensibility also finds expression in later films from Japan, South Korea and greater China (including Hong Kong) and Taiwan that have both participated in and been excluded from circuits of global-noir traffic, past and present. Noir is a form of generic expression, an international filmic sensibility and a discourse loosely joining innumerable texts and a range of production and reception phenomena. However defined and categorized, the genre offers a compelling frame through which to view individual works, looming political and cultural contexts, film industry and reception activity, and wider circuits and frictions of global screen-media flow. This anthology looks at a range of East Asian films from the 1950s to the present - including The Crimson Kimono, Brother, Ghost in the Shell, Nowhere to Hide, Duelist and Rebels of the Neon God - that have been explicitly framed as film noir or East Asian noir, or that acquire legibility as noir texts through reception discourse and other critical activity. Contributors look at historical and contemporary cases to understand the terms on which national, regional and transnational cinemas conceive artistic expression. Their conceptualization and articulation of an internationally situated 'East Asian film noir' helps raise questions around the politics of representation, authorial activity, generic and modal positioning and local and cross-cultural reception.

Film noir has been understood as a genre exclusive to Hollywood. But classical US noir's downbeat sensibility also finds expression in later films from Japan, South Korea and China (including Hong Kong) and Taiwan, that have both participated in and been excluded from circuits of global-noir traffic, past and present. East Asian Film Noir is the first book to explore these films and the filmmakers who made them. Looking at a range of examples from the 1950s to the present - including The Crimson Kimono, Brother, Ghost in the Shell, Nowhere to Hide, Duelist- and Rebels of the Neon God - this work conceptualizes and articulates an internationally situated 'East Asian film noir'. In doing so, it raises fascinating questions around the politics of representation, authorial activity, genre and local and cross-cultural reception.

A wide-ranging analysis of one of the world's most important contemporary film industries, New Korean Cinema adopts a cross-cultural and multi-dimensional perspective and provides a comprehensive overview of the production, circulation and reception of modern South Korean cinema. Together with discussions of Korean society and culture, it considers the political economy of the film industry, strategies of domestic and international distribution and marketing, the consumption of films in diverse reception environments, and the relation of film texts to their cultural, historical and social contexts. Gathering critics from Asia, Europe and North America, New Korean Cinema contributes to the discussion of the complex role played by national and regional cinemas in a global age. It will be of interest to students and critics of Popular Culture and Film Studies as well as East Asian Studies and Korean Studies. Features *The most comprehensive study of one of the world's most exciting new cinemas *Provides new insights into the relations forged between cinema and civil society since the early 1990s. *Considers innovative and timely areas of concern such as globalization, transnationalism and new media *Contains in-depth analyses of key films like Chunhyang, Memento Mori, Peppermint Candy and Take Care of My Cat *Includes a glossary of key terms and bibliography of works on Korean cinema *Illustrated with 24 black-and-white stills.