ASIAN CINEMA

Asian Cinema:

Asian cinema refers to the film industries and films produced in the continent of Asia, and is also sometimes known as Eastern cinema. More commonly however, it is used to refer to the cinema of Eastern, Southeastern and Southern Asia. West Asian cinema is sometimes classified as part of Middle eastern cinema rather than Asian cinema, though Iran and Afghanistan are often included. Central Asia is also usually grouped with the middle east. North Asia is dominated by Siberian Russia, and is thus considered European cinema.

East Asian cinema is typified by the cinema of Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, Including the Japanese anime industry and action films of Hong Kong. Southeast Asian cinema is typified by the cinema of the Philippines, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. The cinema of Central Asia and the southern Caucasus is typified by Iranian cinema and Tajikistan. West Asian cinema is typified by Turkish cinema and the cinema of Israel. Finally, South Asian cinema is typified by the Cinema of India, which includes Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Bengali industries.

History

Precursors of film:

A 5,200 year-old earthen bowl found in Shahr-i Sokhta, Iran, has five images of a goat painted along the sides. This is believed to be an example of early animation.

Mo-Ti, a Chinese philosopher circa 500 BC, pondered the phenomenology of inverted light from the outside worls beaming through a small hole in the opposite wall in a darkened room. Shadow plays first appeared during the Han Dynasty and later gain popularity across Asia.

In 1021, Alhazen, an Iraqi scientist, experimented with the same optical principle describe by Mo-Ti, and wrote of the results in his Book of Optics, which provided the first clear descriptionand correct analysis of the camera obscura. His lamp experiment, where several different light sources are arranged across a large area, was the first to successful project an entire image from outdoors onto a screen indoors with the camera obscura.