The Animist Imagination in East Asian Cinema
By Pao-chen Tang. Amsterdam University Press, 2025 (Open Access).
The Animist Imagination in East Asian Cinema proposes a new mode of filmmaking in contemporary East Asian cinema: the titular “animist imagination.” At a time when a changing understanding of personhood has increasingly granted nonhuman entities legal protections and status, the mode has emerged to imagine ecological co-flourishing between human characters and nonhuman entities.
At the core of the book are films by several directors at the forefront of East Asian cinema, including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kore-eda ...