Contemporary Documentary in Taiwan: Memory, Identity, Flux

Abstract

In the following paper I will seek to illustrate how four documentaries made in recent years by young Taiwanese filmmakers, Le Moulin (2015), Wansei Painter - Tetsuomi Tateishi (2016), Letter #69 (2016) and 3 Islands (2015), display a fresh and original approach in the landscape of contemporary non-fiction cinema both on the island and in Southeast Asia as a whole. These works not only embody the hybrid and transitional quality that has been an essential part of Taiwanese cinema since its beginning, reflecting the colonial past of the island since the seventeenth century, but also explore the aesthetic boundaries of documentary by crossing into the field of contemporary art. Mapping the formal thresholds of non-fiction cinema, and pointing to relatively uncharted cinematic territories where archival material, poetry, written texts and reenactment intertwine and blend, these documentaries also reveal the complexity and black holes of the visual representation of history.