East Asian Noir: Crime and the City

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Key concepts of transnational and Asian cinema.
• Contemporary Hong Kong, Mainland Chinese and South Korean cinema since 1997 and broad awareness of previous movements/developments in those cinemas.
• Debates surrounding the relationship between auteur and genre.
• The diversity and recurrence of themes and styles in the work of specific directors.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Successfully analyse specific filmic texts, situating this analysis in aesthetic and cultural context.
• Understand and use a range of specialised terms and concepts.
• Engage critically with a range of theoretical material.
• Apply different theoretical models and concepts to a variety of filmic texts.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Organise your time successfully, respecting and meeting deadlines.
• Write effectively, accurately and critically in an appropriate academic style.
• Coherently and persuasively argue your ideas, verbally and in written form.
• Independently identify and locate appropriate critical resources.

The module will explore issues in East Asian crime cinema, by examining the work of Johnnie To and other films akers from Mainland China and South Korea. Johnnie To Kei-Fung has directed films for Hong Kong television and cinema since the 1970s, but has become internationally more acknowledged only since the late 1980s. Since 2000, he has become one of Hong Kong's most prominent and prolific filmmakers, and his films are increasingly showcased at international festivals. Possessing a distinctive visual flair, To’s films (mostly produced by his independent company Milkyway Image) represent a contemporary Hong Kong cinema that defies distinctions between popular genre and art cinema, mobilising both domestic cultural traditions and international influences and references (especially with classical Hollywood, but also with European film). As such, To’s oeuvre is ideally suited to discuss questions of authorship, genre, and the intersection between the local and the global in contemporary world cinema. The module will focus on close readings of a selected group of To’s films including, for example, PTU (2003), Mad Detective (2007), Sparrow (2007), and Drug War (2012). This selection will enable you to perceive and analyse the continuities within To’s work, but also get a sense of the cultural distinctiveness of contemporary Hong Kong cinema. The module will also provide comparisons with films from Mainland China and South Korea.

Teaching methods include: • Plenary sessions to deal with general themes and concepts, ideas. • Seminars involving student led presentations, whole class and small group discussions. These will centre more on close textual readings. • Weekly screenings of selected films. • One to one consultation with tutor.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.