East Asian Auteurism, Cinephilia and the Media Platform Era

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

• Analyzes East Asian auteurs in the new cultural circuits characterised by global platforming and ever-growing cinephilic agency
• Explores cases of prominent auteurs from various East Asian regions including the well-researched Wong Kar-wai, Yasujiro Ozu, and Jia Zhangke, the rising Bong Joon-ho, as well as the less-studied yet worth-noting Sylvia Chang and Anthony Chen
• Draws on the primary sources of cross-media materials including films directed by targeted auteurs, journalistic work supported by the websites of MUBI and Letterboxd, and social media posts
• Provokes novel considerations of regional imaginaries in East Asian cinema in the digitally mediated connections

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.