Japanese Cinema Between Frames [Hardcover]

This book explores the rich complexity of Japans film history by tracing how cinema has been continually reshaped through its dynamic engagement within a shifting media ecology. Focusing on techniques that draw attention to the interval between frames on the filmstrip, something that is generally obscured in narrative film, Lee uncovers a chief mechanism by which, from its earliest period, the medium has capitalized on its materiality to instantiate its contemporaneity. In doing so, cinema has bound itself tightly with adjacent visual forms such as anime and manga to redefine itself across its history of interaction with new media, including television, video, and digital formats. Japanese Cinema Between Frames is a bold examination of Japanese film aesthetics that reframes the nations cinema history, illuminating processes that have both contributed to the unique texture of Japanese films and yoked the nations cinema to the global sphere of film history.

1. Introduction

2. Modern Vitality: Pure Film and the Cinematic

3. Still Dynamic: Image and Seriality at the Dawn of Television

4. Animating the Image: Patch Work and Video Interactivity

5. Film in the Composite Image: Cinema at the Digital Turn

6. Conclusion

Laura Lee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University, USA.

Provides a theoretically-rich treatment of Japans historical new media contexts

Focuses on films that are widely known and easily accessible

Emphasizes the importance of global film culture to the constitution of local film practices, while simultaneously underscoring the relevance that these practices hold for theoretical discussions pertinent to film studies

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