Women in East Asian Cinema

Examines the work of women in East Asian Cinema in front of and behind the screen

• Highlights understudied areas on women’s contributions to film – East Asian film in particular
• Highlights importance of re-historicising women’s creative labour in film, not just as actors on screen
• Recentres women’s film history into film history more broadly
• Creates opportunities for dialogue amongst established and emerging scholars working in different areas of East Asian film studies

Women in East Asian Cinema brings together new and emerging work to highlight and explore the understudied contributions of women to the films and creative industries of East Asia. It is a book which foregrounds the importance of re-historicising women’s creative labour in film, not just as actors on screen, but as voices who have steered the production, circulation and consumption of these films across global contexts.

Over three sections, the book provides perspectives on gender representation in East and South-East Asian cinema; new explorations of women’s labour contributions as directors, screenwriters, and editors; and considerations of the contemporary circulation processes through which such work reaches global audiences.

By recentring women’s film histories within the broader history of cinema and interrogating the geo-political boundaries of what might constitute ‘East Asia’ in the process, this volume makes a robust intervention into studies of East Asian cinema and women in film.