Thirty-two New Takes on Taiwan Cinema

Curating Taiwan Cinema: 32 New Takes covers thirty-two films from Taiwan, addressing a flowering of new talent, moving from art film to genre pictures, and nonfiction. Beyond the conventional framework of privileging “New and Post-New Cinema,” or prominence of auteurs or single films, this volume is a comprehensive, judicious take on Taiwan cinema that fills gaps in the literature, offers a renewed historiography, and introduces new creative force and voices of Taiwan’s moving image culture to produce a leading and accessible work on Taiwan film and culture.

Film-by-film is conceived as the main carrier of moving picture imagery for a majority of viewers, across the world. The curation offers an array of formal, historical, genre, sexual, social, and political frames, which provide a rich brew of contexts. This surfeit of meanings is carried by individual films, one by one, which breaks down abstractions into narrative bites and outsized emotions.

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh is Lam Wong Yiu Wah Chair Professor and Dean of Faculty of Arts at Lingnan University.

Darrell William Davis is Honorary Professor in the Visual Studies Department at Lingnan University.

Wenchi Lin is Professor of English and Dean of Arts at National Central University, Taiwan.

Praise / Awards

• “Thirty-two New Takes on Taiwan Cinema is a truly mammoth assembly of thought-provoking chapters written by some of the world’s leading experts on the subject. This book covers a broad range of auteurs, genres, styles, and themes to reflect the diversity of Taiwan’s cinematic output. It also seeks to expand the canon of critically lauded works by legendary filmmakers so that heretofore overlooked or misunderstood films, including those by up-and-coming artists working outside the industry, receive the attention that they deserve.”
  —David Scott Diffrient, Colorado State University