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Glimpses of Freedom: Independent Cinema in Southeast Asia

An edited, peer-reviewed volume featuring 16 multi-disciplinary contributions. International academic contributors come from the disciplinary fields of Southeast Asian studies, film studies, art history, anthropology, and cultural studies. In dialogue with the academic essays are reflections and criticisms by internationally esteemed independent filmmakers, critics and curators in Southeast Asia. Ingawanij conceptualised the book’s framework, acted as sole editor after her co-editor died halfway through the project, and wrote two single-authored chapters. Both her overall editorial role and her two single-authored chapters are put forward for assessment in REF 2014. Ingawanij conceived the book as a substantial edited volume responding to the international visibility of contemporary independent cinematic practices in Southeast Asia. The key aim was to design a volume that would showcase the range of epistemological possibilities in researching an emerging disciplinary field. Further, the volume would achieve structural coherence as a book, with contributions that contextualise, define, classify and clarify the conception of independence in relation to filmmaking, exhibition, circulation, spectatorship, and institutional or state practices. Ingawanij’s extended introduction proposes a long-term research agenda for the field by theorising three overdetermining factors constituting independent cinema in the region. These are transnational production networks, informal and global digital dissemination of works, and the persistence of the national. Using the Thai Short Film and Video Festival in Bangkok as a case study, Ingawanij’s second single-authored chapter analyses the contradictions of independence within the context of an authoritarian national polity and an intensely capitalistic global city. The book has been widely reviewed in film and area studies journals, including Screening the Past, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Pacific Affairs, Sojourn, and South East Asia Research.