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

Korean post new wave film director series: Kim Ki-Duk

Shortly after the release of his new film Bad Guy (Korea 2001), KIM Ki-Duk announced that he was not giving any more interviews. He took a vow of silence, because many of his critics had been criticizing him. I decided to ask him for an interview anyway. He accepted my invitation right away. I reviewed his website (www.kimkiduk.com), which includes my harsh criticism about his films, and I read his past interviews. There were 21 interviews and 37 reviews about his new film Bad Guy. I printed 184 articles written by his fans and harsh opponents and read them randomly

Hurray for Pusan and the Korean new wave!

For nine days in November 2001 (9th-17th), the 6th Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) rocked the seaside city of Pusan. A record 659 industry guests from 30 countries, 3100 official Korean guests, and more than a hundred thousand moviegoers filled the seats of 332 completely sold-out, or near sell-out screenings in 15 different theatres. Thousands and thousands of curious festival fans filled the small streets and alleyways in the Downtown-Nampodong festival area, enjoying the stars, lights, cameras, and all of the promotional PIFF booths and kiosks. A total of 126,613 paid tickets were sold to 201 films from 60 countries, making the 6th PIFF the largest international film festival in Asia

Film Censorship as a Good Business in Colonial Korea: Profiteering From Hollywood\u27s First Golden Age, 1926-36

Between 1926 and 1936, cinema in colonial Korea was a vibrant business, involving the production of domestic films and the distribution and exhibition of American, British, Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Russian films. During this decade, the first golden age of American cinema in Korea, Hollywood films overwhelmingly dominated the Korean market. Korea was an important territory that Hollywood used in its overall global expansion campaign. Amid this globalization operation, the Government-General of Chosen’s film censorship apparatus was a financially self-sustaining operation. It paid for its operation by profiteering from the application of more than 6,700 American and 630 other countries’ feature and non-feature films, a vast majority of which were approved with minor, if any, censorship changes. The Government-General’s systematization of film censorship policies was intended to obstruct Communist, revolutionary, and later, socialist themes rather than “Western” themes—at least until the late 1930s, when the Japanese Department of Home Affairs began banning the import of American films and the Government-General intensified the suppression of Korean culture

Reading Korean stardom: number 3 and the reel, real and star transformation of Song Kang-ho

This article focuses on Number Three and attempts to provide a window of understanding of Song Kang-Ho and the development of his artistry, which became crystallized in the early part of his filmmography. Number Three is an important film because Song Kang-Ho’s recognition and popularity began to spread after his performance in it. However, to date, few scholars have methodically explored and analyzed the transformation of his persona. Over the last seven years Song has appeared in some the most popular films as well as on the covers of numerous issues of Cine21 and Filml.O, two of Korea’s largest film magazines. At least three recent films end with a close-up of Song looking into the camera and, thus, at us in the audience and inward to society: The Foul King (Dir. Kim Jee-Woon, 2000); Y.M.C.A. Baseball Team (Dir. Kim Hyun-Seok, 2002); and Memories of Murder (Dir. Bong Joon-Ho, 2003). Song Kang-Ho is literally one of the more prominent faces of modern Korean cinema. At the same time, his face possibly has come to represent the larger contemporary Korean society. Trains, busses, billboards and shop windows all over urban and rural Korea are littered with a variety of Mr. Song’s product endorsements, ranging from the national lottery (Lotto) to traditional Korean alcohol (Baekseju). The obvious point is that Song is ubiquitous in Korea and so is his face. Song’s face represents the maturity and vitality of contemporary Korean cinema. At the same time, he has emerged to represent new tropes or images of manhood in contemporary Korean cinema

Parleying Culture Against Trade: Hollywood’s Affairs With Korea’s Screen Quotas

The rising Korean cinema has inspired a flurry of new understandings of the nation’s media and cultural policies. However, there remains a gap in the historical factors leading to this phenomenon, regarding particularly Hollywood’s long-term negotiations with import and screen quotas. This study charts Hollywood’s export activities in Korea and analyzes differences between the US economic approach to film as ‘goods’ and Korean view of films as ‘cultural expressions’. The Korean government’s perseverance to safeguard film as cultural heritage and its ability to stand-up against relentless trade pressures from the US have led to the contemporary Korean cinema’s tangible success. Ironically, a brood of American films, which flooded Korea after 1988, helped raise this tiger from its slumber and the subsequent spread of Hallyu the so-called Korean wave, across East Asia and the globe

Transformative soundscapes: innovating De Forest Phonofilms talkies in Australia

The coming of sound to cinemas around the world traditionally has been included in the writings about great men and all-powerful companies and how their visions and integrated industry connections helped them maintain a dominating monopoly of the motion picture industry. Important and canonical reports of these business histories have been documented and offered by Tino Balio (1976; 1985; 1993), David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson (1985), Douglas Gomery (1986), Thomas Schatz (1988), John Belton (1994), Robert Sklar (1994), Donald Crafton (1997) and Ruth Vasey (1997) in the US and by Sally Stockbridge (1979), Susan Dermody (1981), John Tulloch (1982) and Graham Shirley and Brian Adams (1989) in Australia and by Rachael Low (1971) and Ian Jarvie (1992) in the UK. Also included in this history is a focus on the pioneering efforts of great experimenters and innovators such as Theodore Case, Lee de Forest, Earl Sponable in the US and Raymond Allsop, Arthur Smith and Clive Cross in Australia, who were all working outside and/or alongside the motion picture industry

Planet hallyuwood\u27s political vulnerabilities: censuring the expression of satire in the President\u27s last bang (2005)

South Korea\u27s cinema has recently enjoyed a Golden Age that has opened up new spaces for creative and cultural expression in Korea and probably in the larger Asia-Pacific region. Domestic market share of local films, lucrative pre-sales, a robust screen quota and fresh genre-bending narratives and styles have attracted admiration in Korea and abroad. However, since its peak of success in late 2005 and early 2006, extreme competition between domestic films, piracy and illegal downloading, halving of the screen quota and the erosion of ancillary markets have impacted on the industry\u27s ability to sustain vitality and profitability. Among the challenges facing the next decade of growth in the Asia-Pacific is \u27censorship\u27 which was supposed to have been eliminated in Korea in 1996 by a change in government policy. A case study of Im Sang- soo\u27s The President\u27s Last Bang (2005) illustrates how a representative 386 Generation filmmaker has encountered and resisted startling attempts to suppress freedom of expression. A theoretical framework for exposing and opposing intimidation in defamation and censorship struggles is applied to this case, and the methods used by each side to attain their goals are analyzed. It is hoped this analysis will stimulate a deeper understanding of how Korea;s nascent national cinema engages with sensitive social issues as part of its transformation from a national to a supranational cinema, or what we might call \u27Planet Hallyuwood\u27 - the fusing of Hallyu (Korean Wave) and Hollywood