Japonisime and the Birth of Cinema

Featured Speaker: Professor Daisuke Miyao

In this lecture, Professor Miyao explores the influence of Japanese art on the development of early cinema, particularly the films made by the Lumiere brothers in France between 1895 and 1905. Examining more than 1,400 Lumiere films, Miyao argues that those films demonstrated a cross-cultural negotiation between French Orientalism and Japanese aesthetics. 

Presenter Biography

Presenter: Daisuke Miyao is Professor and Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature at UC San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at New York University. He is the author of Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema (Duke University Press) and Cinema is a Cat: A Cat Lover’s Introduction to Film Studies. He is editor of The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema and co-editor of Transnational Cinematography Studies. 

Coordinator: Mark Stadler