Cold War Cosmopolitanism

South Korea in the 1950s was home to a burgeoning film culture, one of the many Golden Age cinemas that flourished in Asia during the postwar years. Cold War Cosmopolitanism offers a transnational cultural history of South Korean film style in this period, focusing on the works of Han Hyung-mo, director of the eras most glamorous and popular womens pictures, including the blockbuster Madame Freedom (1956). Christina Klein provides a unique approach to the study of film style, illuminating how Hans films took shape within a free world network of aesthetic and material ties created by the legacies of Japanese colonialism, the construction of US military bases, the waging of the cultural Cold War by the CIA, the forging of regional political alliances, and the import of popular cultures from around the world. Klein combines nuanced readings of Hans sophisticated style with careful attention to key issues of modernitysuch as feminism, cosmopolitanism, and consumerismin the first monograph devoted to this major Korean director. A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.