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Archipelagic Cinemas compares trajectories of cinematic and political development across Southeast Asia from the mid-twentieth century to the present, taking the Indonesian island of Java as a key point of departure. Its "archipelagic" approach reflects a region of tanah air (land-water) where strategies of communication are shaped by the inevitability of difference and constant change. Archipelagic Cinemas foregrounds the outgrowth of local motion pictures from established regional modes of expression, such as touring vernacular theaters, known for their improvised assemblies of narratives and aesthetics from diverse places and times. Similarly, Southeast Asian movies have distinguished themselves by rejecting the imposition of a single, sovereign, or necessarily masculine point of reference. Filmmakers respond to political and social shifts with populist shows of unruliness, mockery, and often horror while challenging binary interpretations of good and evil, self and other, and on- and off-screen space. A common cinematic "matrifocal gaze" takes the blurring of women's and men's roles in the region as a tool of engagement with nationalist contests over gender and power. Together, regional cinemas set the stage for a multifarious modern visuality rooted in the unique, intertwined histories of Southeast Asian nations.

Dag S. Yngvesson is a filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Cinema and Cultural Studies in the School of Humanities at the University of Nottingham Malaysia.

"Archipelagic Cinemas is a beautifully written book, impeccably researched and strongly grounded in Southeast Asian thought. It offers a detailed comparative history of Southeast Asian film style and political development while arguing compellingly for the significance of Southeast Asia to theorizing cinematic modernity."—Rosalind Galt, author of Alluring Monsters: The Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization

"Departing from the dominant standpoint of the nation, with a deep knowledge of local and regional histories and cultures, Archipelagic Cinemas is an ambitious and sprawling decolonial intervention that explores how vernacular concepts, figures, and genres can be used as theoretical, intermedial, transdiegetic frameworks of analysis."—Elmo Gonzaga, Associate Professor of Film and Cultural Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong