Redefining the Body: People with Physical Disabilities in Transform! (2020) and Reunion with You (2021) (67665)
Session Chair: Michael Michael
Saturday, 1 April 2023 10:20
Session: Session 1
Room: Room 708
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
Disabled bodies are often constructed as negative images in films. This article argues that focusing on bodily performance and the body’s relations with other bodies in contemporary East Asian films offers alternative representations. This article identifies and explores how fluid relations among different bodies in films open up alternatives to ableist depictions of physical disabilities by textual analysis and field research.
Starting with how people with physical disabilities have been represented in East Asia, a filmography has been made to provide data about film history and social contexts by collecting primary and secondary sources in film archives and online libraries, such as Korean Film Archive and National Film Archive of Japan. The field research has been conducted in Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2021, Osaka Performing Arts Open College 2021 in International Communication Center for People with Disability and dance courses in NPO DANCE BOX (Kobe), including interviews with two dancers with disabilities and the director Ishita Tomoya with informed consent.
From the perspective of cinema studies, I analyze how bodies resist an ableist perspective on disability in Transform! (dir. Ishita Tomoya, 2020) and Reunion with You (Yu Ni Chongfeng, dir. Liu Xiaojing, 2021). Transform! highlights the fluid relations of the bodies through film aesthetics, dance performances, and the filmmaking process, whereas Reunion with You rejects female disabled bodies as spectacles and emphasizes how women with physical disabilities use media platforms to express themselves.
Authors:
Xinyi Wang, Nagoya University, Japan
About the Presenter(s)
Ms Xinyi WANG is a University Doctoral Student at Nagoya University in Japan
See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule
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