East Asian Auteurism, Cinephilia and the Media Platform Era: Film Authorship Rethought

This book makes a critical intervention in the scholarship of East Asian cinema by examining how the platform-driven cinephilic engagement evokes a new imaginary of auteurs. While East Asian filmmakers continue to provide world screens with vibrant and innovative works in recent years, their names and visions have been intensely scrutinised and renegotiated by global cinephiles on digital media platforms such as Facebook, Letterboxd, MUBI, X, and Bilibili. The novel cinephilic experiences potentially problematises the authorial intent and structure legitimised by the traditional cinema, thus, challenging what film authorship means. This monograph employs a dual structuring of auteurism and digital cinephilia to contend how East Asian auteurs’ brands are recoded, re-mobilised, and reassessed by platform users. As the first book-length account in the area, this volume calls for conceptual rethought of the auteur function in East Asia at the crossroads of film studies, audience/cinephilia studies, and new media studies.