150063 SE Representing Taiwan on Screen: History, Memory, Identity (M7 LK) (2021W)

This seminar centres on film culture in Taiwan in connection with questions of history, memory, and identity. Focusing primarily on the so-called Taiwan New Cinema that has developed since the 1980s and twenty-first century Post-New Cinema, the course will investigate cinematic representations of Taiwan’s colonial and postcolonial histories and articulations of conflicting identities, traumatic memories, and contested nationhood. The course will thus encourage participants to reflect critically on the formation of cultural and linguistic identity and feelings of national belonging, questions of economic and cultural imperialism, (post)colonialism, social and ethnic conflict, authoritarian violence, collective trauma and healing.

The analysis of selected films by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang, Ang Lee, Wei Te-sheng, and others, along with discussions of relevant documentaries and academic publications, will assist the understanding of how cinema can contribute to the construction of notions of cultural, national, and transnational identity, ethnicity, and social memory. Themes and topics addressed during the course include theories of national, transnational, diasporic, and Sinophone cinema, the politics of authorism and film festivals, cinema and soft power, slow cinema, the globalization of martial arts cinema, modernity and postmodernity in film, cinema and the city, theories of cinematic realism, gender, and queer cinema. Each topic is illustrated by one or more case studies (films) that form the basis of the seminar discussions.

By successfully completing this course, participants will acquire a foundation in the history of cinema in Taiwan in connection to wider cultural developments on the island since the twentieth century and understand the social and political dimensions of Taiwanese film culture in relation to the wider Sinophone and Asian regions as well as in the context of the global film industry. They will enhance their ability to interpret complex visual texts, learn how to apply visual analysis, close reading, and a range of theoretical approaches to assess the significance of image-making and the role of cinematic representation in the socio-cultural production of notions of history, memory, identity, and nationhood. Participants will be encouraged to approach cinema from a range of perspectives in film studies, cultural studies, and Asian studies. Thus, the seminar will increase understanding of visual and textual analysis as well as critical theory.