Taiwan Cinema

International Reception and Social Change

Kuei-fen Chiu, Ming-yeh Rawnsley, Gary Rawnsley, Kuei-fen Chiu, Ming-yeh Rawnsley, Gary Rawnsley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138668164
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351691321
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

1 From Taiwan New Cinema to post-New Cinema

An introduction

Kuei-fen Chiu, Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley and Gary D. Rawnsley

A new beginning with new questions

Taiwan New Cinema (Taiwan xin dianying, or TNC) is a cinematic movement that emerged in the 1980s just as democracy was introduced to the island. Its impact cannot be overstated: TNC not only expanded cultural frontiers, but also made possible multiple and alternative onscreen representations of Taiwanese identities and historiographies. Since Hou Hsiao-hsien – one of the most respected TNC filmmakers – received the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1989 for his masterpiece, A City of Sadness (Beiqing chengshi), Taiwan New Cinema has carved a niche status in the global markets of arthouse cinema and ‘stands tall in the history of world cinema’ (Lim 2013: 161). Today, the work of cinematic auteurs associated with the first and second waves of Taiwan New Cinema¹ continues to attract accolade at prestigious film festivals. Recent examples include the Best Director Award for Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin (Nie yin niang) at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize for Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs (Jiao you) at the 70th Venice International Film Festival in 2013 (see Mello, Vitali, and Pollacchi in this volume). On the other hand, Taiwan’s film industry experienced serious setbacks when the domestic commercial film market became completely dominated by Hollywood in the 1990s (Curtin 2007: 86). The long-term decline continued into the twenty-first century until the appearance of Wei Te-sheng’s debut feature film, Cape No.7 (Haijiao qihao, 2008), which became the most profitable locally made movie in Taiwan’s history (see Ma, Hu, Chan & Willis, Wang, and Berry in this volume).

It is worth noting that prior to Cape No.7, there were several local productions that caught the popular imagination, including the horror film Double Vision (Shuang tong, dir. Chen Guo-fu, 2002), road movie Island Etude (Lian xi qu, dir. Chen Huai-en, 2006), and youth romance Secret (Buneng shuo de mimi, dir. Jay Chou, 2007). However, the popularity of these films did not stimulate a revival, and the struggle for screenings in movie theatres continued (Rawnsley 2016a: 384–385). In contrast, the box office performance of Cape No.7 gathered momentum in 2008 and encouraged positive signs of improvement. An estimated 30–50 feature films (including documentaries) are now produced in Taiwan each year, while the number of registered film production companies also increased from 556 in 2005 to 914 in October 2010 (Gao 2011: 5).

Arguably, ‘Cape No.7 has done for Taiwan cinema within its domestic market what Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [Wo hu cang long, dir. Ang Lee, 2000] did for transnational Chinese cinemas on a global scale: both smashed box office records and injected a new confidence in their products in their respective markets and audiences’ (Lim 2013: 157, quoted in Chan & Willis in this volume). While this domestic success has yet to raise the profile of Taiwanese commercial cinema outside Asia, it has inspired many Taiwan-based filmmakers to move away from ‘the auteur-centered, film-festival-participating domestic-audience-alienating TNC period of the 1980s and 1990s’ to a ‘more popular mode of filmmaking that aims to appeal to a wider audience’ (Lim 2013: 158, quoted in Chan & Willis in this volume).

For researchers of Taiwan cinema and cinephilia, this new period of movie-making and consumption raises several questions: Did Cape No.7 usher in a new dawn of filmmaking on the island? What are the characteristics of the so-called ‘post-New Cinema’, and who are its representatives? What is the relationship between the younger generations of Taiwanese filmmakers and the renowned TNC masters? Can we claim that post-New Cinema embodies the legacies of Taiwan New Cinema, or does it demonstrate their complete rupture? Moreover, how do these new Taiwan-based filmmakers maintain their presence on the international film festival circuit, and are their films reaching global audiences? The contributors to this volume bring to these and other questions their unique perspectives on Taiwan cinema and the international film environment, and consider how cinema has impacted on society. They also provide insight into Taiwan’s position in the ever-evolving global cinema landscape.

Why Wei Te-sheng?

Song-yong Sing (2010: 148–149) suggests that the foremost characteristics of ‘post-New Cinema’ are a penchant for a ‘post-sadness’² approach to traumatic historical subjects, and an emphasis on a more ambivalent interpretation of events through well-designed audiovisual strategies. Sing considers Wei’s Cape No.7 one of the most important examples of the post-New Cinema. In addition, Min-xu Zhan (2010) calls attention to Wei’s emphasis on the multi-ethnic and transnational configuration of grassroots Taiwan. If Sing’s essay helps to situate Wei in the history of contemporary Taiwan Cinema, Zhan’s analysis of the multi-ethnic composition and his awareness of a ‘Taiwan-Japan-China complex’ provide a historicised contextualisation for interpreting Wei’s films. Thus this collection of essays uses Wei Te-sheng as a gateway to analyse and understand both the idea and development of Taiwan’s national cinema within a social and political context that has experienced profound change.

At the time of editing this volume (September 2016), Wei is known for his two directorial films, Cape No.7 (2008) and Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Sai de ke ba lai, 2011), as well as a film he produced, Kano (dir. Umin Boya, 2014). All three experienced box office successes in Taiwan. Wei attracted back to cinema houses large numbers of local film-goers, while turning attention to otherwise forgotten episodes in Taiwan’s history.

Song Hwee Lim (2013: 161) defined Taiwan New Cinema as ‘another kind of cinema, delivering qualitative pleasure derived from a deep and penetrating investment aesthetically, emotionally, intellectually, and politically’. We may find evidence that audiences in Taiwan who watched Cape No.7, Seediq Bale, and Kano also experienced these emotional responses to the films, though probably in very different ways. Such ‘qualitative pleasure’ is discussed in Part I of this collection through the lens of cinephilia and by addressing discourses of international film festivals. The contributors in Part II unpack the multiple layers of emotional and intellectual investment of Taiwanese audiences in Wei’s works through film analysis, studies of genres and styles of history films, and historiographical approaches to Taiwan cinema. While each contributor offers an exciting new perspective from their own backgrounds and interests, collectively their work announces a common theme: an international/global versus national/local paradigm can trigger quite varied expectations of and responses to movies.

As Guo-juin Hong (2011), Sheng-mei Ma (2015), and many contributors of this volume (e.g. Berry, Chiu, Liao, Mello, and Vitali) remark, although Wei’s films are embraced by local audiences, they fail to inspire the same enthusiasm and interest when screened outside Taiwan and Asia. Cecília Mello (Chapter 2) discovers that the dominant criteria adopted by post-war French cinephilia in film festivals serves Tsai Ming-liang well but fails Wei Te-sheng. Valentina Vitali (Chapter 3) concurs that the logic of international arthouse discourses that helped to elevate Hou Hsiao-hsien from a national to a global auteur status cannot easily apply to Wei. Moreover, Elena Pollacchi (Chapter 4) and Ran Ma (Chapter 5) remind us that there are a variety of stakeholders and constantly changing cultural and political factors to be taken into account in the organisation of international film festivals.

Song Hwee Lim (2013: 157) describes the present state of post-New Cinema as a ‘bifurcation between Taiwan cinema’s international profile and its domestic self-image’. Clearly Taiwan is not alone. In their study on Singapore cinema, Berry and Farquhar (2006: 213–222; also see Berry in this volume) noted that ‘crossover films that attempt to make it out from international festivals into the global exhibition marketplace’ have become increasingly rare and thus the local markets are left with either ‘low-budget films aimed at international festivals and with no domestic market’ or ‘popular films whose heavy reliance on local culture and issues to attract domestic audiences impedes export’. In other words, if post-Taiwan New Cinema – or Singapore and other Asian cinema – is to break away from a seemingly zero-sum arthouse-versus-commercial binary it will, on the one hand, require the international festival professionals to reflect more critically on existing aesthetic ideologies and practices in global film festivals and markets. On the other hand, local practitioners also need to understand how international networks and mechanisms function so they may move towards a more innovative, nuanced and mutually beneficial working relationship with festival organisers.

Some of our contributors have pondered on whether or not it is possible to reconcile the need to create an international presence (especially through film festivals) with the appetite of local movie-goers for popular locally produced and locally relevant output. For example, Mello (Chapter 2) suggests that the new generations of international film enthusiasts are likely to obtain an increasingly more plural understanding of Taiwan cinema within a new cinephilic landscape that has both shaped and been reshaped by digital and online technologies. Chan and Willis (Chapter 7) champion strategic cultural intervention in film programming to bridge the gap left by conventional international distribution and exhibition channels. Similarly, Brian Hu (Chapter 6) proposes a new approach to curating film events that may bring together multiple imaginings of Taiwan to an overseas audience which will animate existing discussions in a more thought-provoking manner.

Wei Te-sheng rejects the arthouse film mode of aesthetics that has advanced Taiwan New Cinema and its auteurs to the global stage. Instead he chooses to work within a commercial framework and adopts Hollywood formats and melodramatic performances. One may argue that Wei prefers to entertain local viewers rather than privileging international cinephilia, and this above everything sets him apart from TNC auteurs and their followers. However, close examination of Wei’s movies and filmmaking practices reveals undeniable similarities with his TNC predecessors.

Like many TNC filmmakers (for example, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wan Jen, and Wang Tong), Wei Te-sheng demonstrates a deep interest in suppressed Taiwanese collective historical memories. Cape No.7, Seediq Bale and Kano are all based on real historical events. As the chapters in this volume testify, these films generate critical debates about the past, present and future of Taiwan and its film industry. They are variably understood as a ‘reinvention of national narrative’ (Wang, Chapter 8), cinematic dramatisations of the island’s ‘orphan’ complex (Berry, Chapter 9), stories about competing modernities powered by ‘transregional, transcultural, post-colonial and intergenerational dynamics’ (Liao, Chapter 10), interventional historiographies with conflicting indigenous perspectives (Chiu, Chapter 12), ‘the invention of a people to come’ (Lee, Chapter 13), or ‘an allegory of Taiwan’s contemporary political situation’ (Sterk, Chapter 14). In short, Wei’s films provoke a rich reflection on modern Taiwan – just as the first wave of Taiwan New Cinema did in the 1980s – and generate a wide spectrum of political readings. In the words of Robert A. Rosenstone (Chapter 11), for Taiwanese people these fictionalised cinematic renderings of their history invite a new way of ‘understanding [their] relationship to the past, another way of pursuing that conversation about where [they] came from, where [they] are going and who [they] are’.

The Japanese colonial legacy, absent from discussion in the martial law period, appears prominently in both Taiwan New Cinema and in Wei’s films. Kuei-fen Chiu (2007) has observed that most pre-TNC films tend to cast Japanese characters in a very negative light, while many TNC outputs offer less negative and non-judgemental portrayals. As Chiu (2007: 29) argued, under authoritarian rule ‘the Taiwanese enacted a negation of their association with the Japanese culture so as to have their Chinese identity validated’. However, democratisation in the 1980s empowered filmmakers to try to ‘reclaim the island’s Japanese colonial heritages’ in order to distinguish their unique Taiwanese identity from the increasingly powerful Han Chinese identity (Chiu 2007: 30).

Wei’s post-millennium films push beyond the TNC and construct an ambivalent rapport between the Taiwanese characters and their Japanese colonisers. At the heart of Cape No.7 is a romance story between a Taiwanese girl student and her Japanese teacher during the colonial period. Kano focuses on the bond between a Taiwanese baseball team and their Japanese coach in the 1930s. Even Seediq Bale, which depicts an indigenous uprising against the Japanese in 1930, disrupts the otherwise antagonistic confrontation between the Taiwanese and Japanese when the commander, Kamada Yahiko, acknowledges similarities between the rebellious Seediq warriors and the influence of the Japanese samurai code, bushido. Commenting on E.M. Forster’s rhetoric of the colonial relationship in A Passage to India, R. Radhakrishnan observes a ‘fleeting moment of coming together’: ‘In the time of colonialism’, he said, ‘recognition can go this far and no further’ (Radhakrishnan 2009: 466).

It is not surprising that Wei’s portraits of Taiwan’s colonial relationship with Japan are controversial. If we find Chiu’s analysis convincing, we may agree that ‘the resurrection of suppressed colonial memories’ and the recasting of Japanese figures in a positive light demonstrate Wei’s ‘active participation in the revision of Taiwanese historiography’ (Chiu 2007: 30). However, the interventions by Ping-hui Liao and Chris Berry in this volume provide very different perspectives. Berry interprets this rapport in terms of a ‘Japan complex’ which reveals Taiwan’s ‘colonial dependence mentality’ and longing for recognition by their Japanese colonisers. Liao, on the other hand, emphasises the depiction of the two main Japanese characters in Kano to show how the ‘sympathetic affinity with local cultural dynamics’ on the part of the colonisers reveals ‘conflicting, competing, and collaborative forces in the making of a specific moment’ in Taiwan’s ‘colonial and even postcolonial histories’.

Another noteworthy feature of Wei’s films is the weight of indigenous culture and history. Both Seediq Bale and Kano cast indigenous people as the main characters. From the outset Wei was determined to involve Taiwan’s indigenous communities in the making of Seediq Bale, and made sure they were taught how to speak their lines in the almost extinct Seediq languages (mainly Tgdaya and Toda). At all stages of production, Wei consulted with experts in the Seediq culture. Moreover, the whole story is told mainly from the perspective of the Seediq warriors, and the focus of the story is their leader, Mona Rudo. Wei was the producer of Kano, which is directed by Umin Boya, the indigenous actor cast in Seediq Bale as Mona Rudo’s rival from another tribe. Four out of the nine baseball players in Kano are from various indigenous communities. Therefore, these two films make an extremely positive contribution to the representation of Taiwan’s indigenous people, in terms of story and production, as well as their part in Taiwan’s history. Finally, the multicultural band in Cape No.7 featured guitarist Lao-ma. Although not a central character, his inclusion is an important demonstration of the declining divisions in Taiwan society. The attention to indigenous culture and history in Wei’s films is rarely found in Taiwan New Cinema.

Taiwan New Cinema, post-New Cinema, and Wei Te-sheng

In her work on cultural democratisation and Taiwan cinema, Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley (2016a: 378–383) has explained that the cultural legacies of Taiwan New Cinema have manifested across several dimensions, including: the flexible use of languages; accommodating multiple viewpoints and interpretations of different Taiwanese histories; nuanced approaches to modernity and youth; and a commitment to foster a more vibrant domestic film culture and film education. Rawnsley (2016a: 385) argued that Wei Te-sheng’s Cape No.7 ‘acted as the catalyst for the culmination of all the structural changes [in democratic Taiwan] … and finally led to a tentative revival of Taiwan cinema today’.

However, the contributors to this volume draw attention to how the image of Taiwan cinema during the post-New Cinema period has experienced profound change, mainly in the way they build a rapport with their audiences. Many younger filmmakers relate more to their peers and identify with local audiences rather than global auteurs or with cinephilia of international film festivals...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Editorial note
• Acknowledgements
• 1. From Taiwan New Cinema to post-New Cinema: An introduction
• PART I: International reception and Taiwan cinema
• PART II: Taiwan cinema and social change
• PART III: Interview and supplement
• Appendix I: A short biography of Wei Te-sheng
• Appendix II: Synopses of Cape No.7, Seediq Bale and Kano
• Chinese glossary: Selected names and terms
• Selected Chinese filmography
• Bibliography
• Index