Imagined Communities, Imagined Worlds Independent Film from Southeast Asia in the Global Mediascape

• Published in: Southeast Asian Independent Cinema p. 21
• Main Author: Tilman Baumgärtel
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Hong Kong University Press, HKU 01.01.2012
• Subjects: Anthropology; Applied sciences; Asian studies; Audiences; Behavioral sciences; Blogs; Communication systems; Communications; Communications media; Communications technology; Communism; Communities; Consumers; Countries; Democracy; Digital communication systems; Digital media; Digital publications; Ethnography; Ethnology; Government; Human geography; Human populations; Human societies; Imagined communities; Internet; Persons; Political geography; Political ideologies; Political philosophy; Political regimes; Political science; Political systems; Population studies; Social groups; Social sciences; Sociology; South Asian culture; South Asian studies; Southeast Asian culture; Southeast Asian literature; Southeast Asian studies; Technology
• ISBN: 9888083600; 9789888083602

In trying to understand what national cinema is, a great number of film critics have turned to Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities.” Famously, Anderson, in his book of the same title, claims that nations as such are always imagined communities which give their members/citizens a sense of identity and belonging. A nation, writes Anderson, is “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”¹ Anderson singles out the importance of the early modern