Taiwan Cinema

Chinese glossary: Selected names and terms -- Selected Chinese filmography -- Bibliography -- Index

A groundbreaking study of Taiwan cinema, Hong provides helpful insight into how it is taught and studied by taking into account not only the auteurs of New Taiwan Cinema, but also the history of popular genre films before the 1980s. The book is essential for students and scholars of Taiwan, film and visual studies, and East Asian cultural history.

The book examines recent developments in Taiwan cinema, with particular focus on a leading contemporary Taiwan filmmaker, Wei Te-sheng, who is responsible for such Asian blockbusters as Cape No.7, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale and Kano. The book discusses key issues, including: why (until about 2008) Taiwan cinema underwent a decline, and how cinema is portraying current social changes in Taiwan, including changing youth culture and how it represents indigenous people in the historical narrative of Taiwan. The book also explores the reasons why current Taiwan cinema is receiving a much less enthusiastic response globally compared to its reception in previous decades.

The year 2003 marked the fiftieth anniversary of James Watson's and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA, which began a revolution in the biological sciences and radically altered the way humans view life and themselves. In this poetic account Erwin Fleissner, an eminent cancer researcher and teacher, offers a personal and professional reflection on the most significant developments in molecular genetics and cell biology over the past fifty years. Vital Harmonies is a sweeping look at these crucial scientific advances and an insider's perspective on what scientists have actually learned from them. Contrasting the humanistic side of scientific research with more deterministic or "mechanical" explanations of life processes, Fleissner discusses everything from natural selection to the tradition of rational inquiry stemming from the Enlightenment. He goes on to describe the structures of macromolecules and their "organizing" principles as well as cancer genes, stem cells, and the Human Genome Project. He also explores neuronal cells and the emergence of consciousness and how biological evolution is the foundation of our personal reality as well as our global responsibility. Fleissner asserts that scientific investigations cannot negate our essential "humanness" nor should the public fear them. Taking an optimistic perspective, he argues that a deeper knowledge of ourselves as biological entities will provide us, ultimately, with greater health, serenity, and self-knowledge. Vital Harmonies gives readers, whatever their background, an engaging analysis of some of the most important questions facing humanity today.

This book investigates the aesthetics and politics of Post/Taiwan-New-Cinema by examining fifteen movies by six directors and frequent award winners in international film festivals. The book considers the works of such prominent directors as Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang and Chang Tsuo-chi and their influence on Asian films, as well as emergent phenomenal directors such as Wei Te-sheng, Zero Chou, and Chung Mong-hong. It also explores the possibility of transnational and trans-local social sphere in the interstices of layered colonial legacies, nation-state domination, and global capitalism. Considering Taiwan cinema in the wake of globalization, it analyses how these films represent the socio-political transition among multiple colonial legacies, global capitalism, and the changing cross-strait relation between Taiwan and the Mainland China. The book discusses how these films represent nomadic urban middle class, displaced transnational migrant workers, roaming children and young gangsters, and explores how the continuity/disjuncture of globalization has not only carved into historical and personal memories and individual bodies, but also influenced the transnational production modes and marketing strategies of cinema.

In the Taiwanese film industry, the dichotomy between 'art-house' and commercially viable films is heavily emphasized. However, since the democratization of the political landscape in Taiwan, Taiwanese cinema has become internationally fluid. As the case studies in this book demonstrate, filmmakers such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang, and Ang Lee each engage with international audience expectations. New Taiwanese Cinema in Focus therefore presents the Taiwanese New Wave and Second Wave movements with an emphasis on intertextuality, citation and trans-cultural dialogue. Wilson argues that the cinema of Taiwan since the 1980s should be read emblematically; that is, as a representation of the greater paradox that exists in national and transnational cinema studies. She argues that these unlikely relationships create the need for a new way of thinking about 'transnationalism' altogether, making this an essential read for advanced students and scholars in both Film Studies and Asian Studies.

Following the recent success of Taiwanese film directors, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Ang Lee and Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwanese film is raising its profile in contemporary cinema. This collection presents an exciting and ambitious foray into the cultural politics of contemporary Taiwan film that goes beyond the auterist mode, the nation-state argument and vestiges of the New Cinema. Cinema Taiwan considers the complex problems of popularity, conflicts between transnational capital and local practice, non-fiction and independent filmmaking as emerging modes of address, and new possibilities of forging vibrant film cultures embedded in national (identity) politics, gender/sexuality and community activism. Insightful and challenging, the essays in this collection will attract attention to a globally significant field of cultural production and will appeal to readers from the areas of film studies, cultural studies and Chinese culture and society.

Compiled by two skilled librarians and a Taiwanese film and culture specialist, this volume is the first multilingual and most comprehensive bibliography of Taiwanese film scholarship, designed to satisfy the broad interests of the modern researcher. The second book in a remarkable three-volume research project, An Annotated Bibliography for Taiwan Film Studies catalogues the published and unpublished monographs, theses, manuscripts, and conference proceedings of Taiwanese film scholars from the 1950s to 2013. Paired with An Annotated Bibliography for Chinese Film Studies (2004), which accounts for texts dating back to the 1920s, this series brings together like no other reference the disparate voices of Chinese film scholarship, charting its unique intellectual arc. Organized intuitively, the volume begins with reference materials (bibliographies, cinematographies, directories, indexes, dictionaries, and handbooks) and then moves through film history (the colonial period, Taiwan dialect film, new Taiwan cinema, the 2/28 incident); film genres (animated, anticommunist, documentary, ethnographic, martial arts, teen); film reviews; film theory and technique; interdisciplinary studies (Taiwan and mainland China, Taiwan and Japan, film and aboriginal peoples, film and literature, film and nationality); biographical materials; film stories, screenplays, and scripts; film technology; and miscellaneous aspects of Taiwanese film scholarship (artifacts, acts of censorship, copyright law, distribution channels, film festivals, and industry practice). Works written in multiple languages include transliteration/romanized and original script entries, which follow universal AACR-2 and American cataloguing standards, and professional notations by the editors to aid in the use of sources.

This is the first English-language anthology on the Taiwan New Cinema and its legacy. It is an exciting collection which covers all the major filmmakers from Hou Hsiao Hsien and Edward Yang to Ang Lee and more. Gathering a range of essays that analyze individual films produced since the advent of the Taiwan New Cinema in the early 1980s, it aims to complement Feii Lu’s Taiwan Cinema: Politics, Economics, Aesthetics, translated by Chris Berry (Duke University Press and Hong Kong University Press, forthcoming). Taiwan and its internationally renowned cinema ar " on the edge" in more ways than one. For all of its history the island has been on the edge of larger geopolitical entities, subjected to invasions, migrations, incursions, and pressures. On the other hand, as one of the "Little Tiger" economies of Asia, it has been on the cutting edge of the Asian economic boom and of technological innovation; in recent years it has pioneered democratization of authoritarian regimes in East Asia.