“Codes, Kitsch, Camp: Genre in/and Southeast Asian Cinemas”
July 7 – 10, 2014, Film Archive, Salaya, Thailand.
Issues of genre have had long-term and continuing importance for the film studies field, but the concept has received little serious critical attention in the specific context of Southeast Asian film. The 8th Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas conference will therefore be interested in interrogating in the broadest terms the relevance and usefulness of the concept for the analysis of Southeast Asian cinema. We seek proposals both for papers that address concepts of genre, in a Southeast Asian context, from a theoretical perspective and for studies of specific Southeast Asian genre trends with industrial and/or textual emphases. Some possible topics for papers along these lines include the following (though the list is by no means intended as exhaustive):
- Relevance of “genre” for the Southeast Asian context (e.g., are theorizations of genre based upon Hollywood examples still viable, or do they need to be reworked or jettisoned altogether?)
- Redefining the concept of genre for a Southeast Asian context
- Transnational generic exchange or flow
- Reworking of global (Hollywood, Bollywood, the kungfu comedy, etc.) genres in Southeast Asia
- Genre evolution
- Genre mixing
- Economics of genre in Southeast Asia (e.g., how genre bears upon production, distribution, exhibition)
- Case studies of specific genres, genre trends, genre films in Southeast Asia
- Genres specific to Southeast Asia
- Genre and nation
- Genre and issues of identity (gender, class, ethnicity)
- National or regional genre aesthetics
- Genre and censorship
Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference 