Asian Film Journeys
Title: Asian Film Journeys – Selections from Cinemaya 1988-2004
Editor(s): Rashmi Doraiswamy and Latika Padgaonkar
Publisher: NETPAC & Wisdom Tree, 2010, 650 pp
For lovers of Asian cinema and for those who are simply curious to know its trends and moods, experiments and innovations since it strode the world stage with assurance in the mid 80s, Asian Film Journeys is a feast. It presents a selection of article that appeared in the pages of Cinemaya, The Asian Film Quarterly, between 1988 and 2004, articles that closely tracked the bold new film narrative of both the well-known and the lesser-known cinemas as it unfolded.
Cinemaya was founded in 1988 in New Delhi by Aruna Vasudev who remained its Editor and Publisher throughout. Latika Padgaonkar and Rashmi Doraiswamy, on board from the concept, stage were, by turn, the Executive Editor for the sixteen years that Cinemaya remained the one and only serious yet lively platform for writing on the cinemas of countries from Japan to Turkey. Given that the writers asked to write for it were mostly Asian, apart from a few keen and long-standing western followers of Asian cinema, the magazine offered, for the first time, a truly authentic point of view, a look at films from within their own cultures. Such writings often explained films in ways that altered and enriched our understanding.
Cinemaya opened a window on to the continent’s myriad cinemas through the new trends and classics it presented, through interviews, sections on little-known masters, reports of Asian films in international festivals and reports of Asian film festivals, documentaries, women filmmakers, eminent actors and cinematographers, the Western gaze on Asian cinema, genres, issues of sexuality, of censorship, political contexts … Cinemaya kept its finger on the pulse of Asia for sixteen years.
Soft Copy: Euros 110.00