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Brushed in Light: Calligraphy in East Asian Cinema
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.
Figure 0.1. Calligraphic writing is ubiquitous in the daily life and built spaces of East Asia and has been for millennia. In contemporary cities, most of this carved calligraphy was replaced by photographic enlargements, neon, and lettering mimicking the calligraphic. Wallace Chan’s Fonting the City (Zi li chengjian, 2015) is a lovely documentary about the gradual displacement of hand-brushed signs by digital fonts in Macao.
Page 4 →Figure 0.2. The famous grave of Ozu Yasujiro has only the single calligraphic character 無, or “nothing.” It is surrounded by calligraphy one encounters in daily life, as in films, from the prayers on wooden strips to the labels on the offerings of sake.
Figure 0.3. Itomi Keinan’s famous calligraphy for People Whose Work Is Necessary Murder (Hissatsu shigotonin, 1972) and the scroll painting a friend gave me, evidencing the iterability built into calligraphy. A wedding present, Itomi left out the characters for “necessary murder”; however, the vigorous movement of Itomi’s body during the act of inscription is viscerally palpable and points to the show’s violence.
Figure 0.4. Titles by Akamatsu Hikozo include (starting from upper left): Fireworks (Hanabi, 1997), Face (Kao, 2000), Dolls (2002), Water Boys (Wata boizu, 2001), Hikari (2017), The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine (Kiku to girochin, 2018), This Road (Kono michi, 2018), One More Time, One More Chance (Tsuki to kabetsu, 1996), The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Yuki yukite shingun, 1986), Zen (2009), Sekigahara (2017), International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo saiban, 1983), The Eel (Unagi, 1997), Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit (Seiei o mamoribito, 2016), and Kids Return (1996), and An Artist of the Floating World (Ukiyo no gaka, 2019).
Figure 0.5. A disposable chopstick, one of Akamatsu Hikozo’s beloved writing instruments, sits on the original calligraphy for Brother (2000). Its tips are bulbous from layer upon layer of dried ink.
Figure 0.5. A disposable chopstick, one of Akamatsu Hikozo’s beloved writing instruments, sits on the original calligraphy for Brother (2000). Its tips are bulbous from layer upon layer of dried ink.
Figure 0.6. These examples capitalize on the pictographic qualities of the Chinese character. The intertitle writer for Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Minato no Nihon musume, 1933) uses lettering to turn the character for mountain (山) into a pictograph of three peaks. On the left, calligrapher Tong Yang-tze uses calligraphic techniques to bring out the pictographic character for “face” 臉 for Tsai Ming-liang’s 2009 film.
Figure 0.7. Many Korean films use the hangul for “end” (끝) rather than the Chinese character. This is from Genealogy (Jokbo, 1979) by Im Kwon-taek, one of the directors in Asia that deeply cared about the calligraphy in his films.
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