The Bloomsbury Handbook of North Korean Cinema: :Travis Workman

The Bloomsbury Handbook of North Korean Cinema: : Bloomsbury Handbooks Travis Workman Bloomsbury Academic



The Bloomsbury Handbook of North Korean Cinema


Travis Workman (Anthology Editor) , Dong Hoon Kim (Anthology Editor) , Immanuel Kim (Anthology Editor)
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Description


This first handbook on North Korean cinema contests the assumption that North Korean film is “unwatchable,” in terms of both quality and accessibility, refusing to reduce North Korean cinema to political propaganda and focusing on its aesthetic forms and cultural meanings.

Since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) has played diverse roles: a Cold War communist threat to the US, the other half of a divided nation to South Korea, an ally to the Soviet Union and China, one model for anti-colonialism to national liberation movements, an exotic political and cultural anomaly in the era of globalization.

This handbook provides a solid and diverse foundation for the expanding scholarship on North Korean cinema. It is also a road map for connecting this field to broader issues in film and media studies: film history, affect and ideology, genre, and transnational cinema cultures. By connecting the worlds of North Korean cinema to broader questions in global cinema studies, this book explores the complexity of a national cinema too often reduced to a single image.
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on Text and Translation

Introduction
Travis Workman (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA), Dong Hoon Kim (University of Oregon, USA) and Immanuel Kim (George Washington University, USA)

Section I: Film History, History in Film
1. Stars without Glamor: Moon Ye-bong and the Making of Socialist Stars in North Korea
Dong Hoon Kim (University of Oregon, USA)

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Above in sample ebook.

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2. Pleasure, Flexibility, Didacticism, and the Lingering Impact of Socialist Realist Narrative Trajectories on DPRK Film
Andrew David Jackson (Monash University, Australia)
3. The Reproduction of History and the Restructuring of the Cold War in the North Korean Historical Spy Film, Red Maple Leaves
Hana Lee (Seoul National University, South Korea)
4. Land, Workers, and Revolutionary Culture in North Korean Cinema
Eunha Jeong Wood (Writer and independent scholar, USA)

Section II: Ideology and Affect
5. Religion on the North Korean Screen: Different Approaches to Christianity and Buddhism in The Ch'oe Hak-sin Family and We Met at Mt. Myohyang
Roman Husarski (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
6. A Study of the Spectatorship of North Korean Cinema: A Schoolgirl's Diary (2006)
Sunah Kim (Dongseo University, Busan, South Korea)
7. North Korean Cinema Intermedial: Revolutionary Opera Film
Hyunseon Lee (University of London, UK)
8. Female Leaders, and the “Unawakened” Male: Gender, Power, and Persuasion in Kim Jong Il's Juche Cinema
Anna Broinowski (Sydney University, Australia)
9. Vigilant Melody: On DPRK Film Music
Adam Cathcart (University of Leeds, UK) and Alexandra Leonzini (University of Cambridge, UK)

Section III: Genre Conventions
10. Son'gun Cinema: Portraying the Ideal Soldier in North Korea's Military Genre Film
Makayla Cherry (The Ohio State University, USA) and Pil Ho Kim (The Ohio State University, USA)
11. Spy Films of North Korea: Classic Tropes and Conventions
Tatiana Gabroussenko (Korea University, South Korea)
12. Four Weddings and Propaganda: Satire in North Korean Comedy Films
Immanuel Kim (George Washington University, USA)
13. North Korean Documentary Film
Seung Kim (Konkuk University, South Korea)

Section IV: Transnational Exchanges
14. Cinematic Exchanges Between North Korea and China (1945-1959): Screenings of Chinese Films in North Korea
Yu Liu (Hanyang University, South Korea)
15. North Korean Cinema in China: The Logic of Cultural Exchange
Chris Berry (King's College London, UK)
16. World Cinema and Realism in 1950s and 1960s North Korean Film Criticism
Travis Workman (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA)
17. Uncommon Crossroads of North Korean Film: Cinematic Dreaming with the Big Brother
Gabor Sebo (Korea University, South Korea)

Section V: Interviews
18. Filmmaker and film scholar Soyoung Kim
19. Producer and director Nicholas Bonner

List of Contributors
IndexShow less

Product details
Published Jan 23 2025
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing


About the contributors
TW

Travis Workman is Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA. He is the author of Political Moods: Film Melodrama and the Cold War in the Two Korea (2023) and Imperial Genus: The Formation and Limits of the Human in Modern Korea and Japan (2016). He is currently working on debt, neo-feudal economies, and contemporary media.

Dong Hoon Kim is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon, USA. His research and teaching interests include visual culture, early cinema, animation, film and media spectatorship, and East Asian film, media, and popular culture. Kim is the author of Eclipsed Cinema: The Film Culture of Colonial Korea (2017).

Immanuel Kim is the Korea Foundation and Kim Renaud Professor of Korean literature and culture studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the George Washington University, USA. He is a specialist in North Korean literature, cinema, and culture. His first book Rewriting Revolution (2018) explores the complex and dynamic literary culture, and his second book Laughing North Koreans (2020) is on the ways in which humor has been an integral component of everyday life. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Reviews


This is a must-read for any student of North Korean culture, or socialist cinema globally. It persuasively demonstrates that North Korean films are not simply reducible to state propaganda. Even if they carry a propagandist message, they rely on affective impact and on sophisticated techniques intended to maximize it. Far from being isolated, North Korean cinema is a part of a long history of transborder exchanges and cross-fertilisation. 

It remains to be hoped that books like this will nuance our understanding of what North Korean culture is and how it works.

Vladimir Tikhonov, Professor of Korean and East Asian Studies, Oslo University, Norway