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Daisuke Miyao

Daisuke Miyao
  • Faculty: Professor, Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature

The Enchanted World of Jacques Demy 

 Man and women walking in train station

 

This book examines Jacques Demy’s films from two perspectives that have not been paid much attention in existing scholarship on Demy. These two perspectives are: 1) intermedial and 2) transnational.

First, Demy’s intermedial film production will be analyzed based on the history of sound in films. Second, the transnational/global significance of Demy’s work will be an extension of Miyao's scholarship in a crosscultural analysis of film styles and film reception. This book will historically re-evaluate the important undercurrent in Demy’s films, such as the Post-WWII Americanism, the Algerian War and Union Strikes, from the standpoint of transnational gender studies and queer studies.

Q&A

Fellowship Cohort: Spring 2023

Why did you choose this project?
Considering cinema to be a transnational cultural form from the beginning of its history and simultaneously to be a national entity, formed by specific discourses on nationalism and modernization, I have been conducting research on film history. Demy's work is an exemplary case.

How was this fellowship meaningful or impactful to you?
It made my research trip to France possible to discuss the book with my co-author, Professor Martin Barnier of the University of Lyon.

What future plans do you have related to this work, if any?
Ideally, I want to organize a retrospective with a symposium on the films of Demy.

Daisuke Miyao is professor and Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature at UC San Diego. Miyao is the author of "Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema" (Duke University Press, 2020), "Cinema Is a Cat: A Cat Lover’s Introduction to Film Studies" (University of Hawai’i Press, 2019), "The Aesthetics of Shadow: Lighting and Japanese Cinema" (Duke University Press, 2013), and "Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom" (Duke University Press, 2007). He is also the editor of "Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema" (2014) and the co-editor of "Transnational Cinematography Studies" (2017) with Lindsay Coleman and Roberto Schaefer.