Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability

Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability rethinks theory and style through films that bring the limits of traditional postcolonial frameworks into stark relief. Discover Singapores preoccupations with space, Yasmin Ahmads Malaysian soundscapes, and Indonesias investment in genre. These undertheorized films from geopolitically situated cultures narrate colonial identity within a distinctively Southeast Asian story. Gerald Sims immersive journey nurtures connections between narrative film, commercial video, art cinema, and experimental work with an abiding commitment to self-reflexive theorizing. The book culminates in a reflection on the ethics and politics of conducting knowledge work on world cinema. Sim navigates Singapores love of maps with the work of Tom Conley and Gilles Deleuze, surveys the city-states cartographic uncanny, before using the spatial inquisitions in filmmaker Tan Pin Pins cinema of hiraeth to appreciate Singapores territorial predispositions. The book then revisits a beloved Malaysian director's voice of modernity alongside Jean-Luc Nancys phenomenologies of listening and globalization. Original readings of Ahmads oeuvre dwell on the interplay between her ethnic cacophonies and imperfect subtitling. Finally, Sim focuses on the postcoloniality of Indonesias Cold War alliance with the United States to contemplate the overhang of authoritarian stability within its contemporary cinemas generic recourse. See more