[KS] Call for Papers - East Asian Human Rights Cinema

[DAVID SCOTT DIFFRIENT]

Call for
Papers: East Asian Human Rights Cinema:
Producing Social Change in Japan and Korea

 

Special Issue
of Journal
of Japanese and Korean Cinema

 

Deadline for
proposals: February 15, 2016

 

Deadline for
completed essays: May 15, 2016

 

In June 1994,
Tomiichi Murayama, the former head of the Social Democratic Party, made several
important statements upon stepping into office as Japan's newly designated
Prime Minister; including an apology, issued to the people of Korea, for his
country's acts of aggression prior to and during the colonial era (1910-1945).
But it was the Prime Minister's more general commitment to "play an active role
for the creation of [a] society in which human rights are protected" that best
highlighted a cosmopolitan shift occurring in Japan and other East Asian
nations during the 1990s. Since that time, several human rights films have been
produced in Japan and South Korea, two countries whose governments have
continued to introduce legislation designed to protect individuals and groups
that, in previous years, were subject to discrimination, hostility, injustices,
and/or violence. This trend, as non-government organizations such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch have reported, does not discount the many
rights violations that continue to plague the most persecuted or overlooked members
of society.

 

Recent examples
of human rights cinema include Kōji Wakamatsu's Caterpillar (2010), a controversial condemnation of militarism and
sexual exploitation set during the Second Sino-Japanese War; Kei Umezawa's Coming Out Story (2011), an
award-winning documentary about transgender communities facing prejudice on a
daily basis; Chung Ji-young's
National Security (2012), a dramatic
retelling of the mental and physical abuse experienced by political prisoners
during the authoritarian Chun Doo-hwan regime (1980-1988), and Yi Seung-jun's Wind on the Moon (2015), a poetic evocation
of a deafblind girl's relationship to her loving mother. These and other motion
pictures are demonstrable evidence that new modes of narrative and non-fiction
discourse are emerging alongside a host of notable political developments in
Japanese and Korean societies. With that in mind, original essays are being
sought for a special issue of Journal of
Japanese and Korean Cinema devoted to the subject of East Asian human
rights films. 

 

Possible topics include, but are not
limited to:

 

.        
films
about political refugees, prisoner abuse, torture, etc.

.        
films
about immigration rights, labor issues, worker exploitation, etc.

.        
films
about homelessness, economic poverty, etc.

.        
films
about child labor, child abuse, school bullying, etc.

.        
films
about gender inequality, women's rights, patriarchy, etc.

.        
films
about the treatment of ethnic Koreans in Japan

.        
films
about the treatment of Ainu, Burakumin, and other indigenous minorities in
Japan

.        
films
about national division and the relationship between North and South Koreans

.        
films
about sexual minorities and LGBTQ communities

.        
films
about people living with cognitive and physical disabilities

.        
films
about the fight for democracy and opposition to authoritarian rule

.        
films
about freedom of speech and freedom of press

.        
the industrial
and institutional parameters of human rights cinema

.        
human
rights films festivals in Japan or South Korea (e.g. Tokyo's UNHCR Refugee Film
Festival, Seoul's Queer Culture Festival, etc.)

 

Critical/cultural
as well as historical approaches are welcomed, particularly those that
emphasize the connections between cinematic texts and their contexts (of
production, exhibition, transnational circulation, etc.). Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema is a fully peer-reviewed
journal that reflects the increasingly transnational status of East Asian
filmmaking.

 

Please send proposals
(250-500 words) to Journal_JKC at hotmail.com
by February 15, 2016. Once proposals have been selected, authors will have
until May 15, 2016 to submit their final essays (6,000-8,000 words). 

 

Dr. David
Scott Diffrient

Co-Editor, Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema

William E.
Morgan Endowed Chair of Liberal Arts

Associate
Professor of Film and Media Studies

Department of
Communication Studies

Colorado
State University

Journal_JKC at hotmail.com

  		 	   		  
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