Taiwanese-Language Cinema

Taiwanese-Language Cinema: Rediscovered and Reconsidered presents diverse approaches to the vibrant commercial film industry known as Taiwanese-language cinema (taiyupian). After a long period of neglect, films are being restored and made available with subtitles. Taiwanese-language cinema was a cycle of over 1,000 dramatic feature films produced between the mid-50s and early 70s in the local Minnanhua Chinese language most commonly spoken on the island, also known as "Taiwanese" (taiyu). The rediscovery of Taiwanese-language cinema is stimulating new scholarship, both in Chinese in Taiwan and in other languages, which challenges our conventional understandings of Taiwanese film history and opens up new approaches to the films themselves. This volume includes a mix of new English-language scholarship material with key essays by Taiwanese scholars newly translated from Chinese for the volume.

Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London. His curating work includes the 2011 Cultural Revolution in Cinema season in Vienna (with Katja Wiederspahn) and the Taiwan’s Lost Commercial Cinema: Recovered and Restored project (with the co-editors of this book). Film Festival jury service has included Hawai’i, Pusan, Singapore, and the Golden Horse (Taipei). He has authored and edited many books, most recently Film and the Chinese Medical Humanities (2020). Wafa Ghermani holds a PhD from the Université Paris 3 – La Sorbonne Nouvelle in film studies. Her PhD focused on Taiwan cinema and National Identity from the Japanese colonial period to the present. She is currently assistant professor at Taiwan Central University. She previously worked at the Cinémathèque française and is a curator for many festivals and Taiwan film-related events. Corrado Neri is an associate professor at the Jean Moulin University, Lyon 3. He has conducted extensive research on Chinese cinema in Beijing and Taipei and published many chapters in books and articles in journals. He is the author and co-editor of several books, including Tsai Ming-liang (2004), Ages Inquiets. Cinémas chinois: une representation de la jeunesse (2009) and Retro Taiwan: Le temps retrouvé dans le cinéma sinophone contemporain (2016). Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is Research Associate, Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London and also at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. She is the founding Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Taiwan Studies and has published widely in both English and Chinese on Chinese-language cinema and media and democratisation in Taiwan. Her more recent publications include Taiwan Cinema: International Reception and Social Change (edited with Kuei-fen Chiu and Gary Rawnsley, 2017).