Failures and successes: local and national Australian sound innovations, 1924-1929

This article aims to expand our knowledge of the success or failure of sound technologies in the Australian exhibition market in the years between 1924 and 1929. Crucial to this issue are the complex relations between previously unrecognised groups and individuals involved in promotion of sound technology and in the wiring of Australian cinemas. The process by which all 1,420 of Australia\u27s cinemas were finally wired for sound by 1937[1], was not one in which an American monopoly had demonstrated unchecked power over a passive Australian market. There were a large number of national and international contributors to this process and a significant degree of contestation in the innovation of these powerful new technologies

Film policy and the coming of sound to cinema in Colonial Korea

During the transition between silent and sound cinema in Korea (1929-1939), Japanese colonial film policies established stringent market barriers for local Hollywood distribution exchanges and simultaneously increased opportunities for domestic Korean and Japanese film productions. The Government-General of Korea enacted regulatory initiatives, including film censorship, as part of Japan\u27s larger imperial agenda aimed at strengthening and expanding its Empire. In turn, the domestic film industry in Korea was invigorated and modernized by a number of Korean film people (younghwa-in) who gained valuable experience and training while travelling back and forth between Korea and Japan. Korean film pioneers innovated local solutions to cost-prohibitive American sound equipment promoted and serviced by Western Electric, the largest company in the world dealing with sound technology. This paper attempts to offer a richer understanding of the coming of sound to the Korean exhibition market by presenting new research on the adaptation of technology, administration of policy and censorship regulations, and the contention between live narrators and recorded sound. The global transition to sound was more local than previously thought. Given that Japan occupied Korea between 1910 and 1945, this period of Korean cinema is intertwined with the history of Japanese cinema. Key Japanese industry events and initiatives as well as government regulations had a significant impact on film culture in Korea. The transition to sound in Korea includes (but is not limited to) a detailed discussion of the sound-on-disc failure of Malmot-hal Sajung (Secret Story, 1931) and the impact of Chunhyangjeon (The Story of Chunhyang, 1935) :- the first successful commercial Korean talkie. All of Korea\u27s cinemas and temporary exhibition venues had been converted to sound by the end of 1939. The transition had been a long process, taking place over more than a decade. However, local attempts to initiate and produce sound film projects in Korea reaffirmed the strength of a rising r:J.ational Korean cinema and signalled the beginnings of a promising sound industry - a . counterhegemonic space within colonial rule in which Koreans could construct and negotiate spaces for the expression of Korean culture and modernity

The role of hegemonic masculinity and Hollywood in the New Korea

We argue that during the 1940s Hollywood films had an important role to play in the creation of a postwar South Korean society based on the new global U.S. hegemony. The connections between political and economic change in South Korea and sociocultural factors have hitherto scarcely been explored and, in this context, we argue that one of the key socio-cultural mechanisms that supported and even drove social change in the immediate post-war period was the Korean film industry and its representation of masculinity. The groundbreaking work of Antonio Gramsci on hegemony is drawn on in particular, his understanding of the relationship between commonsense and good sense as well as Raewyn Connells concept of hegemonic masculinity. The character of Rick in the 1941 Hollywood classic Casablanca is used to illustrate the kind of hegemonic masculinity favoured by the U.S. Occupation authorities in moulding cultural and political attitudes in the new Korea

Film Pioneer Lee Man-hee and the Creation of a Contemporary Korean Cinema Legend

At the peak of Korean cinema\u27s contemporary golden age in the mid-2000s, 1960s auteur director Lee Man-hee and his films were rediscovered and have since become appreciated in ways that Lee himself never experienced. In 2010, his classic Late Autumn was remade as a transnational coproduction for a pan-Asian audience. Four decades after his death, Lee remains one of the most influential directors in Korea\u27s history. To understand his legacy and its sociohistorical conditions, the authors analyze how Lee\u27s provocative genre experimentation reinvigorated the Korean film industry in the 1960s under Park Chung-hee\u27s authoritarian regime, a spirit that remains alive today. Lee\u27s perseverance during this tumultuous period illustrates the complex relationship between the film industry and the state as well as some of the strategies filmmakers used to meet the challenges created by Park\u27s regime. Lee\u27s two best-known films, Marines Who Never Returned (1963) and Holiday (1968), are analyzed to show how creative impulses were sustained by developing a blend of social realism and modernist techniques to explore the human condition. This approach set his films apart from the propaganda and commercial productions of the time, bringing a fresh perspective to Korean cinema that continues to resonate with filmmakers and audiences today

Shopping, sex, and lies: Mimong/Sweet Dreams (1936) and the disruptive process of colonial girlhood

In the early Korean film we follow the melodramatic life of an unfaithful housewife. Sweet Dreams situates itself at the heart of the Korean colonial experience with urban Seoul as the backdrop to a narrative of deceit, adultery and consumerism. This article will explore how Sweet Dreams functions both as a warning about the perils of modern womanhood and, simultaneous to this, a vision of consumerist pleasure and delight. This article examines how the actions of lead character Ae-soon constitute a process by which the adult women is rendered girl via her positioning at the locus of female visual pleasure. I use the term girl as a process rather than a static category since, as will be explored, the attributes of girlhood with relation to Sweet Dreams are both expansive and fluid. In this way girlhood can be appropriated for transgressive purposes, not only in terms of a visualization of a desiring femininity, but also as a marker of colonial dissent. I argue that Sweet Dreams uses the interplay between the categories of woman and girl to disrupt the colonial drive towards a productive body in favour of the delights of consumption

Chinese transnational cinema and the collaborative tilt toward South Korea

To shed light on the important and growing trend in international filmmaking, this chapter investigates the increasing levels of co-operation in co-productions and post-production work between China and Korea since the mid-2000s, following a surge in personnel exchange and technological transfer. It explains how a range of international relationships and industry connections is contributing to a new ecology of expertise, which in turn is boosting the expansion of China’s domestic market and synergistically transforming the shape and style of Chinese cinema

Sounds of Celluloid Dreams: Coming of the Talkies to Cinema in Colonial Korea

Conventional reports often hint at how Koreans gained film industry experience and training in Korea and Japan during the 1920s and early 1930s under Cultural Policy reforms. Yet, few studies consider the full range of influences that motivated their contributions to a local vibrant popular entertainment industry and to the global transition to sound. This article attempts to recast the story of cinema in colonial Korea by offerintg new insights into the productive and destructive characteristics of colonial modernity

What the boomerang misses: pursuing international film co-production treaties and strategies

This paper illustrates some of the dynamic ways that members of the Korean, Australian, New Zealand and Chinese creative and cultural industries have engaged with international instruments such as co-production treaties. Strategies, benefits returned and lost costs, that is, sacrifices that are made in the process of producing a film or digital media program in more than one country, and/or with an international team are investigated to reveal how creators are engaging with the demands of different governments\u27 policies. It is hoped that this paper and the larger research project to which it is attached will assist scholars, creative and cultural industry practitioners and policymakers to understand the dynamics of international linkages and transnational cultural production flows – with a view toward enhancing the field of Korean Studies and Korea\u27s future role in the power dynamics of cultural industries across the globe

The Chinese-Korean co-production pact: collaborative encounters and the accelerating expansion of Chinese cinema

Official film co-production treaties are designed by policymakers to stimulate a range of collaboration and media flows as determinants of country rankings. China, where , technology transfer, and joint funding initiatives in the industry. Since July 2004, the Chinese government has used this top-down approach to cultural diplomacy as a symbolic tool for advancing Chinese cinema and opening the domestic market to a host of willing international partners. Korean filmmakers in particular have exploited the (often informal) opportunities presented, engaging in vigorous cooperation between film industry firms and practitioners is making significant inroads, is one such case, having fallen outside of the Western-dominated global \u27Soft Power 30\u27 index.with Chinese colleagues across all sectors of the production ecosystem. The continuing flow of Chinese-Korean transnational film encounters, underpinned by influential personal networks, resulted in the signing of a formal China-Korea co-production agreement in July 2014. To redress this limited viewpointexamine the efficacy of this policy intervention, this article analyzes a rangethe diversity of film collaborationscollaboration that preceded the 2014 South Korea-China co-productionthis agreement and theirits impact on transnational filmmaking in China. It investigates the strategies used in the remaking of Korean auteur Lee Man Hee\u27s 1966 melodrama Late Autumn (2010), technical innovation in Dexter Digital\u27sthe VFX-heavy Mr. Go (2013), and the making of Korean mega-distributor CJ E&M\u27s romance drama A Wedding Invitation (2013). These recent examples of transnational co-operation prior) to the signing of this landmark policy instrument illustrate how Korean firms and practitioners are continuing to expand theexpanding the commercial entertainment boundaries of Chinese cinema, and. In so doing, it also reveals how Chinese film companies are enabling the Korean film industry to increasingly internationalize its approach to overseas markets beyond the kind of conspicuous bilateral policy initiatives. This study is intended to add a nuanced layer of complexity to the \u27soft power aspirations\u27 of both China and Korea and their links to the film industry in tailored for a globalized cultural economy

Aspire and be inspired as a Korea foundation fellow: pay it forward in the long-term

This essay\u27s title refers to the 2000 feature film Pay it Forward directed by Mimi Leder and starring the talented Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment. The film is not all that great in terms of making a contribution to the art of cinema, which is what I research and teach. However, its message carries a deep meaning. The phrase pay it forward captures the spirit of the potential impact Korea Foundation fellows have/can have in and on society. Everything we do and everyone we come in contact with in our lives is touched in some way. Everything we say about Korea, especially when it comes to our particular research topics, can be influential. People DO listen to what we have to say. In the film Dead Poets Society, the Robin Williams character, an English professor, says: No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. Given the power of this so-called ripple effect (and the general power of speech), we always need to remember to aspire and be inspired to make a difference in the world. Perhaps this might remind readers of that scene in Jerry Maguire (1996), when the Tom Cruise character (while writing a heartfelt manifesto) declares: We must embrace what is still virginal about our own enthusiasm, we must crack open the tightly clenched fist and give back a little for the common good, we must simply be the best versions of ourselves...that goodness will be unbeatable and the money will appear