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This course examines the social life and political functions of cinema in Southeast Asia in relation to various contexts in which cinema emerged and circulate. The course is attentive to the impact of historical processes on cinema as well as to how film and media process historical events - colonialism, militarism, religious conflict, border dispute, ideological wars, economic turmoil. The course is guided by three different problematics: the arrival of cinema as an imported technology that coincided with and was arguably contingent upon the European colonial presence in the region; the Cold War, the Americanization of popular media and anti-Communist sentiments; and the emergence of national film industries vis-à-vis independent cinema in the present time. The latter sees cinema as a recuperative means, on the one hand, from political trauma as a result of violent suppressive regimes, and on the other hand, from the ongoing human rights crises and the decline of democracy in the region.