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SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Transnational Images in a Global Frame: Film Festivals and Taiwan Cinema through the Lens of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang A Dissertation Presented by Peijen Beth Tsai to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Studies Stony Brook University August 2017 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Peijen Beth Tsai We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. E.K. Tan – Dissertation Advisor Associate Professor, Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature Krin Gabbard – Chairperson of Defense Professor Emeritus, Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature Liz Montegary – Committee Member Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Jacqueline Reich – Committee Member Professor and Chair, Communication & Media Studies, Fordham University Guo-Juin Hong – Outside Member Associate Professor, Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Transnational Images in a Global Frame: Film Festivals and Taiwan Cinema through the Lens of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang by Peijen Beth Tsai Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Studies Stony Brook University 2017 This dissertation examines the geopolitical and cultural dynamics between European and Taiwan cinema. I explore how art house cinema were circulated and received at major European festivals—Berlin, Cannes, and Venice—to question the role that film festivals play in influencing new cinematic styles for local, regional, and global consumption. Before Taiwan New Cinema became world renowned, films from Taiwan, despite sporadic forays into international festivals, had hitherto been prescribed as coming from a non-national nation (Chinese Taipei), or a nation without nationality (Taiwan, Province of China). If Taiwan cinema’s success in the film festival circuits is due to its proliferation of aesthetics, vernacular style also leaves traces of global culture, with which they form an increasingly transnational dialogue. How does this reflect and construct the concept of “national cinema”? Which cinematic traditions are being circulated and recognized as legitimate aspects of the national cinema? I argue while the circulation of films at festivals led to legitimizing New Cinema as the representative of Taiwan on the global stage, the festival strategy was also prompted by what the locals need, desire, and want, and it was part of a dialogue between film criticism and the continuing involvement in official film policy. I conclude that international film festivals remain an instrumental role in trigging the debates about national cinema. iii Table of Contents 1 Introduction: Made in Taiwan? The National in the Transnational .................................... 1 2 Defining the Transnational in the Age of Globalization ................................................... 18 3 Visible Art, Invisible Nations? On the Politics in Film Festivals and the Case of Taiwan New Cinema ...................................................................................................................... 53 4 Tsai Ming-liang at the Louvre: Cinephilia, the French Connection, and Cinema in the Gallery ............................................................................................................................. 102 5 Transnational Voyages: Intertextuality and Postcolonial Temporality in Hou Hsiao- hsien’s Films ................................................................................................................... 141 6 The Geopolitics in Film Festivals ................................................................................... 180 7 Epilogue: Film Festivals as Producers ............................................................................ 221 8 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 229 iv List of Illustrations Chapter 2 Fig. 1 Catalogue, the Berlin International Film Festival, 1993 .................................................... 55 Fig. 2 Catalogue, Festival des 3 Continents, 1993 ........................................................................ 57 Chapter 3 Fig. 1 Screenshot from What Time Is It There? (2001) .............................................................. 103 Fig. 2 Screenshot from What Time Is It There? (2001) .............................................................. 127 Fig. 3 Screenshot from Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) ................................................................ 128 Fig. 4 Exhibition still from It's a Dream (2007) ......................................................................... 131 Fig. 5 Tsai Ming-liang at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum ............................................................ 133 Chapter 4 Fig. 1 Screenshot from Café Lumiere (2003) ............................................................................. 154 Fig. 2 Screenshot from Café Lumiere (2003) ............................................................................. 154 Fig. 3 Screenshot from Café Lumiere (2003) ............................................................................. 155 Fig. 4 Album cover, the Forgotten Time, 2007 .......................................................................... 169 Fig. 5 Le ballon, Félix Vallotton, 1899 ....................................................................................... 173 Fig. 6 Screenshot from Flight of the Red Balloon (2007) ........................................................... 174 v Acknowledgments I am greatly indebted to my advisor E.K Tan, whose confidence in me and the unwavering enthusiasm I received (even when I doubt myself) strongly motivated me to finish this dissertation. I am also grateful for my committee members and their wonderful suggestions: Krin Gabbard, Liz Montegary, Jackie Reich, and Guo-Juin Hong. Without them I couldn’t have made this possible. I would also like to thank my intellectual peers who read, discussed, and contributed ideas to my writings during my draft period: Carlos Yu-Kai Lin, Jose Miguel Palacios, and Frédérick Pelletier. And to my fabulous writing group who helped me stayed on track: Rita I-Te Sung, Claire Dan-Ju Yu, Evren Akaltun, and Joana Moura. My deepest debts, however, are to my parents, my husband, and our two cats (Kiki and Mignonne). They encouraged my passion for intellectual endeavors long before this project and maintained unrelenting support throughout the duration of this particular effort. Thank you. vi Introduction | Made in Taiwan? The National in the Transnational Taiwanese film critic Wen Tian-Xiang once remarked in a round table discussion that “When we talk about Taiwanese film history in the 1980s, we normally think of Taiwan New Cinema as the representative of the time, when in fact New Cinema prevailed in less than 15% of the films produced during this period.”1 Out of this movement, several world-class directors have emerged including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang, and produced series of films that explore social tensions and problems in cinematically compelling ways, blending social realism with modernist innovation. Taiwan New Cinema’s canonical status persists, even when the movement lost its coherence after the 1990s. The present Taiwan cinema (2008 and onward) is “new” in a sense that it carries out a subversion against New Cinema’s art- house direction, and attempts to produce a new cycle of mostly genre and big budget films appropriate to explore contemporary Taiwan society. Recent popular releases after Cape No. 7 (2008)2 includes Monga (2010), Night Market Hero (2011), Zone Pro Site (2013), and Kano (2014) and have attracted box office sales from a younger generation on par with Hollywood blockbusters. These film directors came from a variety of experiences and background, and some were prodigy of New Cinema directors. While a number of them tried to follow the paths of the auteur (Midi Z, for example, is the 1 Wen Tian-Xiang, Film in Our Time, ed. Angelika Wang (Taipei: Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs, 2015), 258. 2 Cape No. 7 is a film that not only broke the record sales and became the second top- selling film in Taiwan history (only behind Titanic, 1997), it is also considered a film that rejuvenated the diminishing film industry and boosted the confidence of domestic filmmaking. prodigy of Hou Hsiao-hsien and his slow cinema style is akin to Tsai Ming-liang’s), others found subsidiaries through crowd-source founding or by starting their own independent movie production company. This revival spawned a new group of filmmakers such as Tso-chi Chang, Wei Te-sheng, Doze Niu, Chung Mong-hong and helped reinstitute today’s film production model in Taiwan. And yet as a cycle of national cinema, the newer Taiwan cinema—while producing a progression of films comprising a distinct variety of genres—has not entirely expanded the fame and visibility of the country in the international arena. There are many factors to the canonicalization