Annual Southeast Asian Cinema Conference

2nd Annual Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference
SOUTHEAST ASIAN CINEMAS AT THE BORDERS

Bangkok Thailand, August 15-16 2005

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Conference Co-hosts: Thai Film Foundation and The Southeast Asian Studies Program (Liberal Arts, Thammasat University)

At the Borders:
“New Southeast Asian Cinemas” about together international scholars and filmmakers in Singapore in May 2004. Thematically the conference dealt with the changing history of Southeast Asian cinema, the particularities of the national imagination, post-colonial confrontations with the economic and political forces of globalization, and Southeast Asian independent filmmaking. The first conference organizer, Dr. Khoo Gaik Cheng, is currently editing an anthology on “New” Southeast Asian Cinemas.

Southeast Asian film continues to be an important site in which the struggle over the imagination about selfhood, communities, and nation takes place. Not only is film about the imagination, but film is also a powerful culture industry working within the market and various national regulations and policies. The second conference takes up these interwoven themes through its twin goals of enhancing teaching and research in Southeast Asian films. In an effort to continue these conversations and to bring challenges to the field of studying and teaching Southeast Asian cinema, a second conference is planned for August 15-16, 2005. The second conference will interrogate where the boundaries lie in defining what is particularly transnational or diasporic about Southeast Asian Cinemas? Our aims include bringing transnational and diaspora films to the forefront in order to explore how the experience of Southeast Asian migration contributes to a new sensibility in film narratives and viewing practices. At the border of nations, communities may share more cultural and linguistic commonalties with the bordering country as films and film audiences travel between and within various Southeast Asian regions. Old 1950s-1960s Malay films travel to the southern border of Thailand in the form of VCDs and are sold in the marketplace.

Considering the transnational does not mean the disintegration of national cinema, but rather it pushes an inquiry into the productive tension that come out of the relationship between transnational/diasporic films and nation. Representation of new sovereignty movements’ use internally distributed documentaries as a key political and mobilization tool against human rights violations, government abuse of power, and community rights over the use of natural resources in Southeast Asia. The conference will hold a session on the politics of using the documentary in Southeast Asia.

The Southeast Asian transnational and diasporic communities represented in film as well as constituted in the viewing audience challenge the conventional citizen-subject produced by the nation. The conference will center the intersections between gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, and class in terms of the transnational and diasporic. The conference explores the ways in which the intersection of difference challenges the notion of the “good citizen-subject.” How do the markers of identity shift depending on the geographical context of venue exhibition? What happens when Southeast Asian films are marketed abroad and within Southeast Asia itself?

With special sessions about curriculum building, the conference will bring together scholars who usually focus on their national cinemas to discuss how one teaches a course in Southeast Asian Cinemas? How can the regional grouping of disparate cultures and histories of Southeast Asian nations be a productive interrogation of film history, current politics, economic globalization, transnational migration and identity in film? What topic should be included in a Southeast Asian film course? What films and text should be taught and how? What are the possibilities of building a Southeast Asian cinema library collection at the university? This conference is an important forum established by and for scholars who study Southeast Asia and filmmakers from the region by setting innovative agendas on how we study Southeast Asian film practices and histories.

Background of the Conference:
The conferences broad goals are to enrich and strengthen studies of Asian countries through film. The conference will be of interest not only to scholars studying Southeast Asia, but also broader film and media studies scholars who are concerned with the transnational. The most innovative aspect of the conference is in demonstrating how Southeast Asian film continues to be an important site in which the struggle over the imagination about selfhood, communities and nation takes place. Not only is film about the imagination, but film is also a powerful culture industry that crosses national borders. Cinema is an important aspect of Southeast Asian discursive and material culture.

As countries like Japan, Europe, United States, and Australia experience their relations with Southeast Asia through immigration and trade, the import of the films from Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines coupled with an increase in co-production or distribution investments in Southeast Asian films, it is increasingly important to engage with Southeast Asian film, especially in its transnational aspects. While many Southeast Asian conferences reiterate the importance of being a “country-expert,” this conference brings together the connections of Southeast Asia through the movement of people (filmmakers, audiences, distributors) within Southeast Asia as they engage with film.

Aside from its central focus on the transnational aspects in film, this conference is positioned differently through the interwoven premise of bridging the language barriers and enhancing the teaching of Southeast Asian films through curriculum workshop.

On Translation:
This conference would like to address the inequities of language barriers by providing translations in Asian languages. By providing translation, we highlight the importance of intellectual exchange between Asian scholars and scholars who work in English. The conference presenter may decide which language to present in as long as there are English translations of their papers. Some papers in English may be translated into particular Asian languages.

Dissemination:
After the conference, participants can agree to have their paper disseminated on the conference web site. In addition, hard copies and CDs with select papers may be provided to those who inquire about the conference. The curriculum sessions are a strong component to how the theoretical debates and social issues discussed in the conference will be disseminated. Southeast Asian scholars and Southeast Asian film scholars will share filmographies and bibliographic sources, as well as methodologies for teaching. The closing sessions and the closing organizational meetings will discuss the possibilities for publication and further projects.

Criteria for Selection:
We make our selections of the abstract submissions according to the conference theme of the transnational and diasporic in film histories, production, content, distribution/venues. The committee will ask the participant to provide an English translation and/or other Asian language translation, if possible. Selected participants can agree to make their papers accessible through the conference internet web site after the conference is held.

Financial Support:
The conference organizers do encourage participation from scholars from scholars and film critics/educators based in Asia and outside Asia. However, due to lack of funds, we ask that participants seek their own travel funds and accommodation.

Funding or Support Provided by:
Ministry of Contemporary Culture, Southeast Asian Studies (Faculty of Liberal Arts, Thammasat University), Thai Film Foundation, National Film Archives of Thailand