East Asian Auteurism, Cinephilia and the Media Platform Era - (Edinburgh Studies in East Asian Film) by Dorothy Wai Sim Lau (Hardcover)

About the Book

Discusses the changing nature of the East Asian auteur image within platform-driven, cinephilic culture.

Book Synopsis

This book makes a critical intervention in the scholarship of East Asian cinema by examining how the platform-driven cinephilic engagement evokes a new imaginary of auteurs. While East Asian filmmakers continue to provide world screens with vibrant and innovative works in recent years, their names and visions have been intensely scrutinised and renegotiated by global cinephiles on digital media platforms such as Facebook, Letterboxd, MUBI, X, and Bilibili. The novel cinephilic experiences potentially problematises the authorial intent and structure legitimised by the traditional cinema, thus, challenging what film authorship means. This monograph employs a dual structuring of auteurism and digital cinephilia to contend how East Asian auteurs' brands are recoded, re-mobilised, and reassessed by platform users. As the first book-length account in the area, this volume calls for conceptual rethought of the auteur function in East Asia at the crossroads of film studies, audience/cinephilia studies, and new media studies.

Review Quotes

Focusing on East Asian filmmakers and a wide range of cinephilic responses to their work across multiple digital platforms, Dorothy Wai Sim Lau's Rethinking Film Authorship offers fresh insight into understanding the persistence of auteurism as a cultural and intellectual force in the study of film and screen media.-- "Felicia Chan, Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies, the University of Manchester"