The Rise and Demise of a Developmental State Studio

Abstract

This chapter introduces five motion picture studios that stood out in Asia at the beginning of the 1960s, such as Shin Films in South Korea, GMP and CMPC in Taiwan, and Shaw Brothers and MP&GI in Hong Kong and Singapore. It examines how film studios in the region aspired to implement the rationalized and industrialized system of mass-producing motion pictures known as the Hollywood studio system. It also explains that the Hollywood studio system evolved in the United States to handle film production, distribution, and exhibition during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The chapter recounts how the studio system became a highly efficient system that produced feature films, newsreels, animations, and shorts to supply its mass-produced motion pictures to subsidized theaters. It describes Fordism as the famous American system of mass production with particular American circumstances.