Southeast Asia on Screen: From Independence to Financial Crisis (1945-1998)

After the end of World War II when many Southeast Asian nations gained national independence, and up until the Asian Financial Crisis, film industries here had distinctive and colourful histories shaped by unique national and domestic conditions. Southeast Asia on Screen: From Independence to Financial Crisis (1945-1998) addresses the similar themes, histories, trends, technologies and sociopolitical events that have moulded the art and industry of film in this region, identifying the unique characteristics that continue to shape cinema, spectatorship and Southeast Asian filmmaking in the present and the future. Bringing together scholars across the region, chapters explore the conditions that have given rise to today’s burgeoning Southeast Asian cinemas as well as the gaps that manifest as temporal belatedness and historical disjunctures in the more established regional industries.

Gaik Cheng Khoo is Deputy Dean of Research and Sustainability at the Sunway University, Malaysia. She initiated the first Association of Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference in 2004 and has authored and edited numerous books, book chapters and journal articles on cinema and filmmaking in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.
Thomas Barker is Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. He researches and writes on Indonesian cinema, transnational cinema, and China-Malaysia screen connections. He is the author of Indonesian Cinema after the New Order: Going Mainstream (Hong Kong University Press, 2019).
Mary Jane Ainslie is Associate Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo. She specializes in culture and media throughout Southeast Asia, with specific emphasis upon Thailand and Malaysia. She is the co-editor of Thai Cinema: The Complete Guide (I.B. Tauris, 2018).