Taiwanese New Cinema: Emotions, Identity and Taiwan

This paper concentrates on the cultural complexities of Taiwanese New Cinema (TNC) as a particular kind of national cinema produced within an especially diverse national context. Since the 1980s a number of new films and new directors emerged. These films showed obvious difference compared with old Taiwanese political or commercial films. TNC has been a vital element in enabling the world to perceive Taiwan’s cultural identity. I argue that the strategy of considering auteur director as the signifier of national style involves accounting for historical and cultural context in which directors find themselves situated. The paper is not just framework for discussing the various talents of auteur directors, but a necessary device for exploring the ways that the cultural identity of Taiwan is constructed, interpreted and explored by the authorial and artistic visions of a number of auteur directors involved in producing TNC. The films of TNC as a particular kind of emotional textures, in turn, also contribute to how the emotions of being Taiwanese are projected and are manifest within an especially diverse national context.