[KineJapan] Brushed in Light: Calligraphy in East Asian Cinema

[Gerow Aaron]

Markus Nornes’s new book Brushed in Light: Calligraphy in East Asian Cinema, published by the University of Michigan Press, seems to now be available! You can download it for free from Fulcrum:

https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/4t64gq206

Here is the blurb:

Drawing on a millennia of calligraphy theory and history, Brushed in Light examines how the brushed word appears in films and in film cultures of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and PRC cinemas. This includes silent era intertitles, subtitles, title frames, letters, graffiti, end titles, and props. Markus Nornes also looks at the role of calligraphy in film culture at large, from gifts to correspondence to advertising. The book begins with a historical dimension, tracking how calligraphy is initially used in early cinema and how it is continually rearticulated by transforming conventions and the integration of new technologies. These chapters ask how calligraphy creates new meaning in cinema and demonstrate how calligraphy, cinematography, and acting work together in a single film. The last part of the book moves to other regions of theory. Nornes explores the cinematization of the handwritten word and explores how calligraphers understand their own work.

The online version is full of links to images, so you should check that out. But the hardbound book has the best images, so please have your library order it if you can. 




Aaron Gerow
Professor
Film and Media Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Chair, East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
320 York Street, Room 108
PO Box 208201
New Haven, CT 06520-8201
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6729
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
website: www.aarongerow.com