Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema 9789048554096

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Projecting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms
1. Migrating Hearts
2. Floating Light and Shadows
3. From Sidewalk Realism to Spectral Romance
4. Eggs, Stones, and Stretch Marks
5. “Spicy-Painful” Theater of History
6. In Praise of Trans-Asian Sisterhood
7. “We Are Alive”
8. Outcries and Whispers
Epilogue
Chinese Glossary
Bibliography
Filmography
List of figures
Index

Citation preview

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Asian Visual Cultures This series focuses on visual cultures that are produced, distributed and consumed in Asia and by Asian communities worldwide. Visual cultures have been implicated in creative policies of the state and in global cultural networks (such as the art world, film festivals and the Internet), particularly since the emergence of digital technologies. Asia is home to some of the major film, television and video industries in the world, while Asian contemporary artists are selling their works for record prices at the international art markets. Visual communication and innovation is also thriving in transnational networks and communities at the grass-roots level. Asian Visual Cultures seeks to explore how the texts and contexts of Asian visual cultures shape, express and negotiate new forms of creativity, subjectivity and cultural politics. It specifically aims to probe into the political, commercial and digital contexts in which visual cultures emerge and circulate, and to trace the potential of these cultures for political or social critique. It welcomes scholarly monographs and edited volumes in English by both established and early-career researchers. Series Editors Jeroen de Kloet, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Edwin Jurriëns, The University of Melbourne, Australia Editorial Board Gaik Cheng Khoo, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Simon Fraser University, Canada Larissa Hjorth, rmit University, Melbourne, Australia Amanda Rath, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany Anthony Fung, Chinese University of Hong Kong Lotte Hoek, Edinburgh University, United Kingdom Yoshitaka Mori, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Japan

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Zhen Zhang

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Wen Hui and Third Grandmother during the shooting of Listening to Third Grandmother's Stories (2012) (photo by Yan Xiaoting, courtesy of Wen Hui). Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 935 2 e-isbn 978 90 4855 409 6 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463729352 nur 670 © Zhen Zhang / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2023 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

In loving memory of my mother Xu Qiying 许其英 (1934–2021) and my father Zhang Jingming 张景明 (1937–2023)



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9 Introduction: Projecting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

11

1 Migrating Hearts

51

2 Floating Light and Shadows

79

Towards an Intimate-Public Commons

Sinophone Geographies of Sylvia Chang’s “Woman’s Film”

Huang Yu-shan’s Chronicles of Modern Taiwan

3 From Sidewalk Realism to Spectral Romance

107

4 Eggs, Stones, and Stretch Marks

137

5 “Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

167

6 In Praise of Trans-Asian Sisterhood

191

7. “We Are Alive”

221

8 Outcries and Whispers

251

Yang Lina’s Post-Socialist Beijing and Beyond

Haptic Visuality and Tactile Resistance in Huang Ji’s Personal Cinema

Wen Hui’s Documentary Dance with Third Grandmother

Labor, Love, and Homecoming in Jasmine Ching-hui Lee’s Money and Honey

Minor Transnationalism and Yau Ching’s Experimental Filmmaking

Digital Political Mimesis and Radical Feminist Documentary

Epilogue 287 Chinese Glossary 295 Bibliography 303 Filmography 325 List of figures 331 Index 335

Acknowledgements Growing out of curricular renovation and curatorial practices, this book has taken more than a decade to evolve and take on the present shape. Above all, I am grateful to the filmmakers discussed in the book, whose work has moved and inspired me. Many of them provided valuable material and answered my copious queries. I feel honored to have their trust and be part of a trans-border Sinophone feminist commons. I am particularly indebted to Huang Yu-shan, co-founder of Women Make Waves International Film Festival, for coordinating my visits as a guest curator to the festival and the Sinophone Film Forum at Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan in 2015 and 2016, respectively. I would like to express my gratitude to the following scholars based in different parts of the world for their invitations to present work in progress and/ or for their feedback (in alphabetic order): Chris Berry, Arnika Fuhrmann, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Willard Hasty, Guo-Juin Hong, Alisa Lebow, Tiecheng Li, Wenchi Lin, Gina Marchetti, Ivone Margulies, Jason McGrath, Lai-Kwan Pang, Luke Robinson, Tanya Shilina-Conte, Marina Svensson, Jeremi Szaniawski, E.K. Tan, Minna Valjakka, Lingzhen Wang, Meiqin Wang, Xiaojue Wang, Yinjie Wang, Zhuoyi Wang, Ying Xiao, Kiki Tianqi Yu, Sabrina Yu, and Patricia Zimmerman. In spring 2012, Emilie Yue-yeh Yu graciously hosted me as a University Fellow at Hong Kong Baptist University, where I began to research and work on parts of the book. I am thankful to Ellen Zweig, Magnus Fiskesjö, Loke Zhang-Fiskesjö, Shi-yan Chao, Zoe Meng Jiang, Ting-wu Cho, Raymond Tsang, Shuang Shen, Sheldon Lu, Jennifer Bean, Ying Qian, Markus Nornes, Angela Zito, Rebecca Carl, Bob Stam, Anna McCarthy, Marina Hassapopoulou, Feng-mei Heberer, Dana Polan, and Jeroen de Kloet for their support in various ways at different stages of the project. A Tisch Dean’s “Art for the Future Imagination” curriculum development grant facilitated the creation of a new course, “Asian and Asian Diasporic Women Filmmakers,” which I taught in fall 2021 while completing a draft of the book. It allowed me to discuss many ideas with the students and consolidate the book’s structure and framework. Thanks also to Meiyi Liu and Wenxin Xiao who assisted in the preparation of the manuscript, to Sophia Massie for the meticulous work on the index, and to New York University Humanities Center for a book publication grant.



Introduction: Projecting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms Towards an Intimate-Public Commons

Abstract The introduction outlines the historical and conceptual contours of the book centered on a group of uniquely important but under-studied women filmmakers working across the Taiwan Strait particularly and the Sinophone world at large. I synthesize a trans-Asian perspective and a locally grounded cine-feminist framework invested in the cultivation of an intimate-public commons. The main objective is to highlight women’s contribution to, and intervention in, the male-dominant New Wave Chinese-language cinemas and the attendant nationalist and academic discourses, while anchoring Sinophone cine-feminist currents in studies on the critical place of women’s cinema in world cinema and social transformations. Keywords: Sinophone cine-feminism, world cinema, intimate-public commons, trans-Asian method, melodrama, documentary

Women Make Waves Over the past decade, I have held dear two images in my digital photo archive. They have served as memory bank keys and guiding lights as I researched and collaborated with a number of important, yet underappreciated women filmmakers across the Taiwan Strait and beyond. The first image is from the Beijing Independent Film Festival 北京独立影展 of August 2012, and the other from the Women Make Waves International Film Festival (wmwiff) 台灣國際女性影展 in Taipei, October 2015.1 Both 1 I attended the former as a jury member and forum speaker, and the latter as a guest curator of a series on Mainland independent women filmmakers. Despite its international scope, wmwiff had shown very few films from the prc due to the relative disconnect between women filmmakers

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_intro

12 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

are group photos of filmmakers, curators, and scholars dedicated to connecting feminism and film communities across the Strait and the world. [Figs. Intro.1–2] They are snapshots taken during festive occasions, but in hindsight also show the linchpins of an incipient cine-feminist network that emerged during the heyday of various new cinema movements across the Taiwan Strait. I use them to open and anchor this book about how women have been cultivating a trans-regional intimate-public commons, through micro-level institutional building as well as filmmaking, curating, teaching, academic research, public outreach and social engagement since the 1980s. In that eventful decade, when Taiwan lifted the martial law imposed in 1947 by the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (kmt), the People’s Republic of China (prc) entered the “Open Door” reform era, and Hong Kong was poised to be handed over to China, the three areas and f ilm cultures interacted intensively after decades of Cold War divisions. The new wave of Chinese-language cinemas brought unprecedented international visibility to many Chinese auteurs such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien 侯孝賢, Wong Kar-wai 王家衛, Zhang Yimou 张艺谋 and, into the 1990s, Ang Lee 李安, Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮, Zhang Yuan 张元, Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯 and Wang Bing 王兵, while also eclipsing women filmmakers’ critical contributions to domestic film culture and world cinema alike.2 This book is an effort to bring the contours of a cine-feminist commons into relief in the landscape of Sinophone world cinema, by highlighting nine consequential movers and shakers located mostly in, and moving between, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland (in order of appearance in the following eight chapters): Sylvia Chang 張艾嘉 (b. 1953), Huang Yu-shan 黃玉珊 (b. 1954), Yang Lina 杨荔钠 (b. 1972), Huang Ji 黄骥 (b. 1984), Wen Hui 文慧 (b. 1960), Jasmine Ching-hui Lee 李靖惠 (b. 1978), Yau Ching 游靜 (b. 1966), Ai Xiaoming 艾晓明 (b. 1953), and Zeng Jinyan 曾金燕 (b. 1983).3 Sinophone world cinema has two interlocked dimensions—as a world in itself it refers to what is alternately called Chinese-language or Sinophone cinemas around the globe, as well as to an integral part of world cinema, across the strait and the lack of interest on the part of mainstream women filmmakers in the prc. The series, titled “Light in the Shadows: A Selection of Chinese Women Directors’ Works,” featured works by Yang Lina, Yang Yishu, Tang Xiaobai, Song Fang, and Wen Hui. 2 For example, Jia Zhangke is featured in a chapter in the 2016 anthology by Jeong and Szaniawski, The Global Auteur, which has not a single chapter devoted to women directors from anywhere, as if the concept is masculine by definition. 3 In this book I use both complex and simplified Chinese characters to reflect the diverse Sinophone articulations, including writing forms in different regions. prc uses the simplified form uniformly in education and publication.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

13

Fig. Intro. 1 Reunion at Beijing Independent Film Festival, August 2012 (from left to right: Wen Hui, Zeng Jinyan, author, Shi Tou, Wang Qi; seated, Ming Ming) [Author’s photo; photographed by Wang Yinjie]

Fig. Intro.2 Women Makes Waves International Film Festival (wmwiff), October 2015 (Huang Yushan, co-founder, front row left 2; Fan Ching, chairwoman of Taiwan Women’s Film Association at the time, from row left 3; Yang Lina, filmmaker from prc, front row right 1; author front row right 2) [Courtesy of Taiwan Women’s Film Association]

14 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

bypassing the national cinema model that has dominated non-Western cinema studies. The idea and parameters of Sinophone cine-feminism take into consideration generational difference and sexual orientation, as well as the participation of a few male creative partners (in the case of Huang Ji, Ai Xiaoming, and Zeng Jinyan, in particular), and account for a variety of forms of filmmaking—documentary and fictional, feature-length and shorts, experimental video and dance film, independent and commercial productions, arthouse and activist engagement. They are versatile artists involved in world-making across borders on and off the screen, in their roles as filmmakers, scholars, educators, activists, and film festival organizers, curators, and jurors. Their multi-faceted careers intersect at film festivals, symposia, and academic and activist forums, each making unique contributions to the building of an intimate-public trans-media commons through their moving images, in a rich array of registers across the melodramatic and documentary modes, the power of which is further amplified by their writings, performances, public work, and political actions. 4

Projecting Cine-Feminisms Research, curatorial work, and jury duties have taken me to Taipei, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Xining where I witnessed the joyful coming together of veteran and emerging women filmmakers, curators, and scholars. These visits are integral to my research methods, which include participant observation and academic activism. But there were also moments of hostile disruptions by the censors, particularly in Beijing. The first group photo with several women awash in bright sunlight, spontaneously taken in Songzhuang, Beijing in the sticky late summer of 2012, always reminds me of the darkness that preceded it and the light of hope and creativity that have persisted. The time was the 9th Beijing Independent Film Festival (biff). A large community of filmmakers from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, along with scholars, critics, and curators from many parts of the world, had arrived in this small town in the west suburb to celebrate a burgeoning alternative film movement. But the opening screening of Egg and Stone 鸡蛋和石头 (Huang Ji, 2012) was abruptly discontinued when electricity was turned off by local authorities under the directives of higher powers (more on this in Chapter 4). This incident once 4 The term “trans-media commons” is in part inspired by Robert Stam’s inclusive “transartistic commons” in his book, World Literature. I will elaborate on my use of the term below.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

15

more attests to the lack of conditions for a full-fledged public sphere in China, as Chris Berry and Lisa Rofel pointed out in their study on Chinese independent documentary. The biff, even when it was in full bloom, at best illustrates the idea of bieguan 别馆, a “side building,” an “alternative archive” or a semi-public wing, “alongside” the central structures.5 On the second day, the organizing committee announced the early closing of the festival, but decided to carry on the screening programs inside the courtyard house of Li Xianting Film Fund 栗宪庭电影基金会 (the organizer) and other private spaces, including local artists’ studios and homes. The festival turned into a floating party, though under the watchful eyes of the plain-clothes police. Between screenings, some of us had lunch in a small restaurant inside a local resident’s courtyard house and then decided to take a picture as a souvenir. The sharing of viewing reflections along with stories in everyday life over homemade meals, local beers, and hearty laughter dispelled the oppressive darkness in the auditorium during the ill-fated opening, and people cherished the precious opportunity to reunite for a brief time. With tighter control under a new political regime, the curtain was rapidly coming down for the independent film festivals in Beijing and elsewhere. The 10th biff in 2013, which I also attended, took place exclusively within private compounds. In 2014 the festival was completely shut down after an aborted opening, resulting in “A Film Festival without Films” (the title of Wang Wo’s documentary about its tortuous fate). The 2012 edition was thus a penultimate swansong that featured perhaps the richest program with the strongest representation of women since its inauguration in 2006, including several important f ilms from Taiwan. These include Lesbian Factory T 婆工廠 (dir. Susan Chen 陳素香, 2010) and Jasmine Lee’s Money and Honey 麵包愛情 (2012), to be discussed in Chapter 6. In retrospect, that year was a high point of cross-Strait independent cinema exchange in what now seemed a brief post-Cold War period. Songzhuang inadvertently served as a make-shift commons—semi-private, quasi-public—for filmmakers, media artists, curators, and critics committed to the production, dissemination, and interpretation of moving images beyond what is sanctioned by the state and patronized by the mainstream market.

5 Berry and Rofel, “Alternative Archive,” p. 137. Bieguan is also the Chinese name for Ou Ning and his Guangzhou-based cineclub team U-thèque’s Alternative Archive website in the early 2000s (no longer active). Its homophone or pun means “leave me alone.” A physical form of this “alternative archive” was literally confiscated when the police raided the Li Xianting Film Fund in August 2014.

16 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Yet my conceptual framework does not subscribe to independent and women’s cinema as purely avant-garde “counter-cinema” that has informed much of the Western cine-feminist critique of mainstream cinema, often articulated through a certain kind of high-brow art cinema, since the 1970s.6 Rather, I join recent new conversations on the place of women’s cinema within world cinema in relation to, or as part of, a broadly defined mainstream cinema through a transnational feminist lens, while intervening in the existing canon of Chinese-language cinema scholarship. For example, the wmwiff I attended included low-budget indie film Longing for the Rain 春梦 (2011) directed by Yang Lina (see Chapter 3) in the “Light in the Shadows” series that does not have the “dragon seal” 龙标 (the prc censor’s approval), as well as a middle-brow “woman’s film” Taste of Life 百味人生 (2015) directed by Huang Yu-shan. Definitions and practices of contemporary women’s cinema in the prc, Taiwan, and Hong Kong grow out of disparate historical, political, and market conditions, and feminist traditions. Several filmmakers in this book have shuttled between small-budget indie projects and middle-brow art-pop or wenyipian films, notably Sylvia Chang and Huang Yu-shan. Yang Lina, who started as a one-woman crew for independent documentary making, has recently turned to larger-scale narrative feature productions with the “dragon seal” paving the way for theatrical release (see Epilogue). The filmmakers’ shifting personal preferences in mode (fiction or non-fiction), style, and spectatorial address (indie or popular), along with fluctuating financial and socio-political conditions and constraints, are all contributing factors in shaping a multiply “accented” women’s cinema across the Sinosphere.7 The book also grew out of two decades of teaching Chinese-language and Asian film history, transnational melodrama, Chinese independent cinema, documentary, and recently, Asian and Asian-diasporic women filmmakers. My subject matter and approaches thus bring a gynocentric women’s world cinema model to intervene in a more or less androcentric regional trans/national cinema model. In many Asian countries, including allegedly socialist societies dominated by a combination of old and new patriarchal systems and discourses despite century-long efforts at modernization, decolonization, social justice, and gender equality, women filmmakers remain relatively fewer in number and are more likely overshadowed by “masters” of national cinema favored by the domestic market, or New Wave 6 Johnston, “Women’s Cinema,” pp. 22–33. For a study that updates this approach, see Sharon Lin Tay, Women on the Edge. 7 Naficy, Accented Cinema

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

17

male auteurs anointed by the international festival circuit. This results in women’s scarce exposure at home and in international arenas. This state of affairs began to change with Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win for her Iraq War film The Hurt Locker in 2010,8 and a decade later, Chloé Zhao (Zhao Ting 赵 婷) won the best director award, which Gina Marchetti calls the “Nomadland Moment.”9 Note, however, that Zhao’s Nomadland (2020), though made by a Beijing-born and -raised Chinese-American filmmaker, is practically an all-American film in theme, casting, production and marketing. For my project, I focus on filmmakers who have been largely operating in Asia and making primarily Chinese-language films (in Mandarin, Cantonese, Fukienese, Hakka, etc.), which are occasionally marked by other inflections and tongues such as Japanese and English, especially in films by Taiwan and Hong Kong filmmakers. In 2021, while developing a new course on Asian and Asian-diasporic women filmmakers as a response to the Anti-Asian trend, especially violence against Asian women, during the pandemic, I was struck by the paucity of book-length studies on Asian women f ilmmakers in contrast to the highly developed field of Western cine-feminism. A few books on women’s cinema across the world include token arthouse figures such as Trinh T. Minh-ha, Mira Nair, and Xiaolu Guo 郭小撸 (who, on the other hand, is much neglected in China), favored by Western post-Cold War transnational feminism working with paradigms of globalization and migration. These include Gwendolyn Foster’s Women Filmmakers of the Asian and African Diaspora (1997); Alison Butler’s Women’s Cinema: The Contested Screen (2002); Sophie Mayer’s Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (2015), Patricia White’s Women’s Cinema/World Cinema: Projecting Feminisms in Film (2015); and On Women’s Films: Across Worlds and Generations (2019), edited by Ivone Margulies and Jeremy Szaniawski. Very few Sinophone filmmakers appear in these books, perhaps in part due to their ambitious scale in both geographical and conceptual coverage and difficult access to works not as widely circulated. More often than not, Chantal Akerman, Agnès Varda, and Jane Campion are the constant figureheads occupying prominent places. While the few Asian (or other non-Western) names and films help extend and complicate the Western cine-feminist critical tradition, important geopolitical and socio-linguist conditions of specific film cultures that 8 Patricia White opens her Women’s Cinema/World Cinema with a discussion of Bigelow’s win and the complex implication for women’s authorship and women’s cinema beyond Hollywood, pp. 1–4. 9 Marchetti, “Chloé Zhao and China.”

18 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

give rise to these non-Western figures and films often receive truncated delineation, under-contextualized placement, and analysis. Among these, White’s book, while also ambitious in its global scale, has a more compelling framework and substantial coverage of contemporary Asian women f ilmmakers (born after 1960), including Indonesia’s Nia Dinata, South Korea’s Jeong Jae-eun, Taiwan’s queer filmmaker Zero Zhou, and Iranian-diasporic filmmakers. White examines “the cultural work the concepts and institutions of women’s cinema and world cinema perform and project.”10 Departing from the previous conception of women’s cinema as opposition to Hollywood, and adopting “a transnational feminist social lens,”11 White studies a cluster of women directors’ films for their cultural and aesthetic significance within a tangled web of global and local institutions and discourses. Building on and extending classical (read: white Western) cine-feminist theories that envisioned “a wider public sphere of cinema as social technology” (Teresa De Lauretis), White underscores critical interventions from women of color and transnational feminist theory, championed by Ella Shohat, Caren Kaplan and Interpal Grewal, among others.12 Remining the concepts of authorship and representation in relation to a politics of location in an unevenly globalized world, White organizes her book, not by country or filmmaker, but weaves a tapestry of discourses informing her reading of select feature films she encountered at film festivals (she mentions Toronto as her main site of fieldwork) and in her capacity as a board member of the New York-based Women Make Movies (a distribution and network platform). Her book’s method and structure are effective in highlighting important thematics and aesthetic trends in world cinema and women’s cinema today, but admittedly at the expense of omissions or condensations of large bodies of works and complex networks in particular cultural locations. In comparison, my book concentrates on a diverse Sinophone sphere on the world map of women’s cinema, where a constellation of trans-regional cine-feminisms has over time sedimented, yielding varying articulations that resonate with but are not subsumed under Western discourses or a blanket non-Western third or fourth world cinema as the West’s Other. At the same time, in lieu of a catalogue-style survey, the focus on one woman filmmaker in each chapter (except for Chapter 8) is frankly a corrective move in a field filled with books on male auteurs (including multiple monographs on a single director like Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wong Kar-wai and Jia Zhangke), 10 White, Women’s Cinema/World Cinema, p. 2. 11 Ibid., p. 5. 12 Ibid., pp. 12–6.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

19

and an investment in establishing an alternative archive and feminist film historiography, not least for curricular revisions. Importantly, I do not group them into separate national categories. While holding different passports (Ai Xiaoming’s has been confiscated by the authorities), they all consider themselves “Chinese” in one way or another, while wearing other hats as Taiwanese, Hong Kong citizen (with British Passport), or an exilic subject (Zeng Jinyan, currently residing in Sweden). While they share strong concerns with globally relevant women’s issues and related social, cultural, political problems, self-conscious reflections on their particular locations and life and professional experiences permeate their varied expressions and address. This comparative approach on a trans-regional scale allows us to test and concretize claims of an all too often speculative transhistorical, transnational perspective. In contrast to the volumes mentioned above, the “narrower” scope but longer view of the “contemporary” as straddling the late twentieth century and the new millennium (from ca. 1982, when Chinese New Wave cinemas more or less simultaneously emerged onto the global stage, to ca. 2022), enables a geo-culturally grounded periodization that is neither all over the place nor too restricted by one nation or locale. If women’s world cinema, as White cites Lúcia Nagib with gendered inflection, is a “method, a way of cutting across film history according to waves of relevant films and movements,” Sinophone women’s cinema is by no means its subset as a bounded entity but rather creates its own “flexible geographies” that are parallel to or overlap with other worlds of film culture, complicating a flattened global horizon.13 Given the rapidly expanding field of Chinese-language cinema and media studies in the last three decades, it is surprising and inadequate that there are to date very few monographs on women filmmakers. I regard Yau Ching’s 2004 book on the pioneer Hong Kong filmmaker Tang Shu-shuen 唐書璇 (b. 1941) as a trailblazing work in Sinophone cine-feminism.14 Yau’s political investment is unequivocally on the margins of Chinese culture and Chineselanguage cinema, where Tang, the first Chinese woman to study filmmaking in the United States and then returned to Hong Kong, struggled to find a foothold and identity between conflicting expectations from the highly commercialized local film industry on one hand and the standard-setting Western art cinema world on the other. Injecting the historical, cultural, and social specificities into Eurocentric male-centered French auteurism and American “auteur theory,” Yau reclaims Tang’s authorship—in the spirit 13 Ibid., p. 19. 14 Yau Ching, Filming Margins. She contributed a revised chapter from her book to Chinese Women’s Cinema. Yau’s own film and video work is the subject of Chapter 7 in this book.

20 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

of Foucault’s “initiator of a discourse”—by locating her life and career in the intersection of modern Chinese history, her family history, and film history. Born in Yunnan in Southwest China to its then governor, she grew up in Hong Kong and Taiwan before going to study film at the University of Southern California.15 Upon returning to Hong Kong, Tang made four films in “different genres, styles, and aesthetics,” navigating a tumultuous society and film industry in the aftermath of social and political unrest and a city in the throes of rapid modernization and industrialization.16 Her debut, The Arch 董夫人 (1969), a modernist period drama in black and white cinematography critiquing Chinese patriarchal oppression of women, catapulted her into the spotlight of international art cinema. It was exhibited in Cannes and won top awards at the Golden Horse Film Festival in Taiwan, the most prestigious platform in the Sinophone film world. After another black and white film, China Behind 再見中國 (1974), about the controversial subject of the Cultural Revolution in a quasi-documentary style,17 she made two popular genre films, a satire/comedy, and a melodrama, in color, before she discontinued filmmaking and emigrated to California in 1979. (Like Esther Eng 吳錦霞 [1914–1970] before her, who ran restaurants in New York’s Chinatown late in her life, Tang opened and managed a high-end Chinese restaurant in Hollywood.) The seemingly divergent style and genre address, and “shifts in strategies,” lead Yau to discover a uniquely gendered “body of texts [that] inform, supplement, and frame one another in the way they articulate a voice which embodies a strong feminist subjectivity and agency.”18 My envisaging of a Sinosphere cine-feminist tradition strongly resonates with Yau’s work on Tang’s gendered authorship, as most of the f ilmmakers I study also move between modes and genres, negotiating between aesthetic experimentation and market demands while forging an authorial vision grounded in social, cultural, and political exigencies. To historically situate Tang in Sinophone women’s cinema, Yau provides a crucial genealogy by highlighting pioneering figures such as Xie Caizhen 謝采真 active in Shanghai cinema in the 1920s;19 Ether Eng, who made and 15 Ibid., p. 10. 16 Ibid., p. 12. 17 The film, shot in Taiwan due to the impossibility of access to the prc, was banned by Hong Kong colonial government censors, citing its potential harm to cross-border friendly relations with the neighboring country. 18 Yau, Filming Margins, p. 13. 19 Recent archival and preservation work has re-discovered and restored Marion Wong’s The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West (1916), likely the first film made by a Chinese-American woman.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

21

distributed films between California and Hong Kong; Ren Yizhi 任意之 (1925–1978), sister of the veteran action film director Ren Pengnian 任朋年 and a director in her own right; Kao Pao-shu 高寶樹 (1932–2000), active in Hong Kong in the late 1970s alongside Tang, and Ann Hui 許鞍華 (b. 1947), the most prominent, prolific, and widely studied woman director in the Hong Kong New Wave. Given the attention paid to Hong Kong women directors (largely in the form of articles and book chapters), my book does not cover the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (hksar) extensively. Instead, I choose to focus on Yau Ching herself as an heiress of this legacy who went further in border-crossing and world-making, physically, intellectually, and creatively. The decade-old anthology, Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts, edited by Lingzhen Wang, remains the most comprehensive volume covering women filmmakers from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the mainland, and, to some extent, the diaspora, from the 1920s to 2007.20 Wang’s thoughtful and wide-ranging introduction places Chinese women’s cinema in dialogue with transnational feminist film discourse, in critical response to the prevalent models of national cinema and global media as well as a reconf igured western cine-feminism. Reasserting Chinese women’s cinema studies, often relegated to “area studies” by Western academic studies of non-Western women and feminist practices, as integral to the politics and poetics of transnational feminism, Wang offers a sustained engagement with existing film theory on female authorship from the 1970s to the 2000s, prefiguring White and other recent revisionist efforts. Here I will not rehash her rigorous review of the classical Western feminist theories, but to stress its productive yet qualified application of the more recent transnational feminism that emerged on the heels of postcolonial critique, multiculturalism, “unthinking Euro-centrism,”21 and critical feminist race theory to the study of Chineselanguage women’s cinema. Wang writes, As a historically situated practice, transnational feminism has limitations: its indebtedness to postcolonial, postmodernist, intersectional, and third-world feminist discourses situated in the Western academia reveals its privileged geopolitical position and accounts for its neglect 20 Lingzhen Wang (ed.), Chinese Women’s Cinema. At the time of its publication, “Chinese Women’s Cinema” in the book title would likely mean huaren nvxing daoyan (huaren being a person of Chinese descent), rather than Zhongguo nüxing daoyan (women directors of China as a nation/state), which will be problematic for many who lived in diaspora or are based outside the prc today. 21 Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism.

22 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

of economic issues and of still other parts of the world, such as socialist and postsocialist nations and areas.22

Here Wang certainly had the prc in mind. Yet Wang still underscores transnational feminism’s contribution to an acute awareness of “feminist practices in a politically reassessed global and globalized context without losing sight of women and representation in diverse parts of the world.” Wang then performs a condensed, comparative genealogical “reassessment” of Chinese feminism, from the late Qing period to the present, and the divergent reception of Western feminism in the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Acknowledging the continued, powerful role nation-state and nationalism play in many non-Western, including Chinese, societies, Wang also cautions against an unmediated application of liberal feminism from the West and the romantic embrace of globalism. Of critical importance is also transnational feminism’s political commitment. Wang thus recommends paying “attention to disproportioned movements across borders, and by exposing the underbelly of the ‘global village’.”23 In sum, contemporary transnational feminism as articulated in media and cinema has moved away from the classical conception of modernist auteur and poststructuralist, semiotic “counter” practices to trans-individual or collaborative authorship, infused with a renewed passion for social-political transformation through and beyond representation. The Sinosphere cine-feminist communities and practices—part of transnational, multi-dimensional, poly-chronotopic historical landscape—that I outline in this book embody these aspirations and enrich what Shohat describes as the gendered “cartographies of knowledge” in constantly changing transnational contexts.24 In terms of periodization and feminist historiographic considerations, my project has a certain affinity to Shuqin Cui’s book, Gendered Bodies: Toward a Women’s Visual Art in Contemporary China,25 though my geographic scope goes far beyond the prc. Cui, who previously published on representations of Chinese women by both (mostly) male and (a few) female directors,26 discovered a similar problem when she started researching women artists. She asks: “Where are the women artists, as contemporary Chinese art draws increasing global attention with prominent figures and rising 22 Wang, Chinese Women’s Cinema, p. 14. 23 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 24 Shohat, “Area Studies, Gender Studies,” pp. 67–68. 25 Cui, Gendered Bodies. 26 Cui, Women Through the Lens. She also contributed a chapter, “Ning Ying’s Beijing Trilogy” to Zhang (ed.), The Urban Generation.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

23

market values?” The prevalent “bodily inscriptions” of the female body—“as a discursive subject and visual medium”—in women’s visual art that she saw in various studios and exhibitions in China are part of larger debates and artistic (self-)representations of women’s experience and agency, in which women filmmakers, poets and novelists, also actively took part.27 The filmmakers I have selected for discussion are no less dedicated to embodied representations of women, including themselves. However, enabled by media and platforms including cinema, video, theater, and film festival addressed to a broader audience outside the white boxes, along with their wider cosmopolitical, historical, cultural, and social visions, the filmmakers are hardly confined to obsessive, abstracted formal “bodily inscriptions.” While women are placed at the center stage of their stories, the nuanced attention to differences and intersections in age, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and transnationality present a far more heterogeneous, complex panorama of everyday life strivings and creative expressions. This body of existing scholarly work serves as a critical foundation for my project. Beyond the few book-length studies by Yau, Wang, and Cui with disparate scopes and agendas, there are a considerable number of articles or chapters on women filmmakers from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. These include Chris Berry’s path-breaking introduction of the female directors of the Fifth Generation in the late 1980s28 and Gina Marchetti’s numerous essays on Hong Kong and Chinese diasporic women filmmakers.29 Yang Yuanying’s 杨远婴 and Louisa Shi-yu Wei’s 魏时煜 collaborative volume in Chinese on Chinese and Japanese women directors deserve special mention here.30 Due to the scattered and fragmented nature of publication venues and contexts, these articles, and collections of interviews in Chinese, remain largely overshadowed by scholarly monographs and anthologies focused on New Wave male auteurs or trans/national cinema thematics and aesthetics, in Chinese and non-Chinese academia alike. This book zooms in on a 27 Cui, Gendered Bodies, pp. 8–9. 28 Berry, “China’s New ‘Women’s Cinema’,” pp. 8–19; see also the interviews with Zhang Nuanxin, Hu Mei, and Peng Xiaolian in the same issue. 29 Marchetti, “Handover Women”; “Hong Kong as Feminist Method”; “The Feminine Touch”. Marchetti is currently working on a book on Chinese women filmmakers in the Xi Jinping era (also for Amsterdam University Press). Her periodization and geographic scope tangentially overlap with my book and should also resonate with the transnational Sinophone cine-feminism I am proposing here. 30 Wei Shiyu and Yang Yuanying, Nüxing de dianying (Women’s Film). See also Zhao Jing, Wo shi nü daoyan (I am a Female Director). Prefaced by Ann Hui and Jia Zhangke, it includes interviews with Ning Ying, Xu Jinglei, Li Yu, Tang Xiaobai, Ma Liwen, Yin Lichuan, Guo Xiaolu, Yao Shuhua, Li Hong, and Jiang Lifeng.

24 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

collective of contemporary women filmmakers in Sinophone world cinema, with an explicit focus on their authorship, agency, and contribution to film culture and social change.

Building an Intimate-Public Commons My two-fold agenda connects the portraying of a constellation of contemporary women filmmakers across the Taiwan Strait and beyond to an evolving Sinophone cine-feminist sphere integral to a trans-media intimate-public commons. The latter echoes, but also departs from, a cluster of concepts we have inherited from Jürgen Habermas’s classical notion of the bourgeois public sphere, Oskar Negt’s and Alexander Kluge’s “proletarian counter public sphere,” Anthony Giddens’s “transformation of intimacy” in modernity, Miriam Hansen’s “alternative public sphere,” to Lauren Berland’s “intimate public sphere.”31 A growing body of writings contesting Habermas’s concept acknowledges the limits of the public sphere as a post-Enlightenment modernist legacy grounded and prevalent in Euro-American liberal democracy and a global postcolonial system of nation-states, organized largely around extractive capitalist socio-economic structures. The normative “public sphere” predicated on the “two rights, to vote and to voice,”32 has had a hard time taking root in a number of Asian societies, including the prc, whereas one may find a form of a relatively robust public sphere, for instance, in Taiwan after the lifting of martial law in 1987.33 Founded in 1993, the Women Make Waves International Film Festival (wmwiff) grew out of this nascent public sphere and remained the largest of its kind in Asia. In 2016, Taiwan elected its first female president, Tsai Ing-wen, in the history of the Republic of China (founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1911), and reelected her in 2020. The country legalized gay marriage in 2019, becoming the first nation to do so in Asia. Meanwhile, public spaces, physically and politically speaking, in the prc, periodically expanded and contracted during China’s rapid 31 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; Negt and Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience; Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy; Hansen, Babel and Babylon; Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City. For an insightful commentary, especially on the fear of mass media and a nostalgic exaltation of an alienated “primal” public sphere of “pure reason,” in Habermas’s, Negt’s and Kluge’s ideas, see Polan, “Public’s Fear.” 32 Gripsrud et al., “Editors’ Introduction,” p. 7. This volume contains both classical texts and recent interventions in view of the impact of globalization and new media technologies. 33 For a pioneering collective work on emerging women’s sphere or public spaces in late twentieth century transnational China, see Yang, Mei-hui Mayfair (ed.), Spaces of Their Own.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

25

urbanization and globalization, leading to the recent violent suppression of popular protests and dissent in Hong Kong. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the tightened state control in all aspects in China. Between 2001 and 2014, the mushrooming of art galleries, museums, cinemas, theaters, coffee houses, and other public venues in parallel to a plethora of ngos, grassroots film festivals, artist collectives, alternative social media, and various social movements, including workers’ unionization and feminist campaigns seemed to cohere and build momentum for a possible public sphere in the prc. But much of these turned out to be shortlived, mostly due to the forces of state censorship and ideological control, compounded by economic and financial factors within an authoritarian state-sponsored and state-regulated capitalist environment. The most alarming events that signaled the ending of a relatively “relaxed” era were the massive arrests of civil rights lawyers (the so-called 709 crackdown) and the “Five Feminists” in 2015, and the subsequent suppression and waning of social movements across the nation as a whole (see Chapter 8). #MeToo in China, inspired by the global movements, has faced enormous challenges, with most legal cases dismissed by the courts despite public outcry. The much-anticipated public sphere was stillborn, promoting questioning of its validity or viability in a persistently autocratic society and mono-party state. In this circumscribed reality, how may we talk about the efforts by women artists and filmmakers to carve out spaces of creativity and resistance, individually and collectively? In these thorny situations, Ai Xiaoming, Wen Hui, Yang Lina, Huang Ji, and Zeng Jinyan (and many others I am unable to highlight in the book) have demonstrated their grace, courage, and innovative spirit, availing of local, trans-regional, and global resources. The themes of their films and videos resonate with those based in Taiwan and Hong Kong, especially in terms of women’s subjectivity, sexuality, aging, children, labor, history, human rights, and critique of nationalism and colonialism, but have also to address conditions specific to a post-socialist prc. Their experiments in film form also converge in testing the boundaries, or intersections, of realism, melodrama, and documentary for articulating a plethora of instances of what Berlant calls the “intimate conflict of modernity.” Hansen’s and Berlant’s feminist interventions have deconstructed the bourgeois masculinist tenet of the original concept, along with its downplay or distrust of the domestic sphere, by infusing the power of women’s spectatorship and readership into the debate on the nature of mass culture and modernity. Hansen’s feminist historical reformation of the elite masculine public sphere anticipated a bolder conceptual move in Lauren Berlant’s

26 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

concept of the “intimate public sphere” articulating the mutual imbrication of sex and citizenship in her work on literature, mass culture, and women in twentieth-century America. “A place of fused ideology and everyday practice,”34 Berlant theorized it in relation to the mass production of a prevalent “national sentimentality” in American culture. Scholars of modern China have been reluctant to apply Habermas’s theory to China on the grounds that this country, especially after 1949, has not had a comparable form of individualism and socio-political infrastructures (e.g., free press, direct election, parliamentary democracy) to facilitate rational public dialogues, reflection on social issues, and the aesthetic expression of subjectivity. To move beyond the controversial definitions and applicability of the public sphere theory in non-Western contexts, and for a multi-faceted Sinophone cine-feminist agenda, I adopt a modified term, the intimatepublic commons, in which local, regional and trans-Asian feminist practices and discourses are in constant negotiation with the commercial or statecontrolled mainstream industry systems and film forms in geopolitically circumscribed contexts. These inter-media creative activities, across film and video making, creative writing, theater, dance, popular music, academic work, and festival organization, actively experiment with various modes of production or co-creation, and a wide range of communicative practices through exhibition and discussion, in person or virtually, opening up new avenues and spaces for socially disenfranchised persons or groups and diverse political agendas. The idea of a feminist commons in this book invokes a confluence of material and affective associations and applications, encompassing the shared communal land and water bodies, natural and built environment, resources, institutions (e.g., film festivals), repositories of collective ideas, emotions, and memories, shared repertoires and rituals, and various hard or “soft” archives,35 and so on. At the turn of this century, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri popularized the term “commons” as one of the cornerstones in their political theory for contemporary globalization and collective transformation.36 They use it to replace the opposition of the private and public (properties), as a ground for an ethics of freedom and collectivity in our shared common world.37 In film and media studies, tracing a long 34 Weber, “The Intricacies of an Intimate Public Sphere,” p. 619. 35 See Zoe Meng Jiang in her study of Chinese women artists’ “writing mother” project connecting mothers and daughters, which she calls the “soft archive.” “Soft Archive,” pp. 35–54. 36 Hardt’s and Negri’s Empire trilogy: Empire; Multitude; and Commonwealth. 37 Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp. 300–03.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

27

history rich in contending socio-political ideals, Robert Stam asserts that the “commons counters the fetishizing of exclusive proprietary rights that fuels the corporate drive to privatize everything… Vesting property in the community, the commons evokes ‘communism,’ but without its Stalinist baggage.”38 He continues, “while it might seem utopian to speak of the commons in an age of relentless privatization, the vaguely remembered plenitude and the future possibilities of the commons trope provides a thread that links many social struggles.” It is in this sense I try to “thread” together, or “project” in the way White deploys this term but also as a countering move against the violent interruption of projection at grassroots film festivals, a heterogeneous landscape of Sinophone cine-feminisms by studying this loosely linked community of filmmakers. This evolving trans-media eco-system nourishes shared dreams of a more equal and humane world and common battles against “scattered hegemonies” over several generations born in the second half of the twentieth century.39 My hyphenated coinage of the intimate-public thus resonates with Jennifer Bean’s sensitive parsing of the word “intimate” as a verb—“a rhetorical mode that operates through allusion, a mode in which comprehension often depends on a shared sensibility, experience, and context.”40 An intimate-public trans-media commons as an at once actually existing and always emerging phenomenon may productively serve as a symbolic, discursive and material environment for grassroots movements in the Sinophone world (and beyond) such as independent documentary, feminist and queer cinema, activist media, unofficial or minjian-official hybrid film festivals, diasporic media production and circulation, especially when their institutional or physical forms are outlawed or often rendered invisible. The resurgence of interest in the role of emotion, intimacy, and affect in cultural production and political imagination in sociology and anthropology, film and media studies, and gender and sexuality studies has led to new explorations into the intertwined dynamic between public feelings and intimate acts, and their mediated articulations. On the level of spectatorial address, a trans-cinematic intimate-public commons enables and accommodates experimentation with a range of emotional aesthetics, by means of “public” and “intimate” modes and genres on a wide spectrum: from “woman’s film” in the form of romantic and maternal melodrama (Chang, Huang Yu-shan) to observational “direct cinema” (Yang’s early 38 Stam, Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics, p. 30. 39 Grewal and Kaplan, Scattered Hegemonies. 40 Bean, “Editor’s Introduction.” My emphasis.

28 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

documentary), from first-person-plural “documentary theater” (Wen) to sentimental documentary drama about transnational migrant labor (Lee), from a subjective somatic realist style processing the trauma of sexual abuse (Huang Ji) to candid activist videos advocating villagers’ and workers’ rights (Ai and Zeng). Despite their different social, generational, and professional backgrounds, for most of the filmmakers in the book, the line between fiction and non-fiction is never a barrier but rather an emerging aesthetic commons or borderland to be explored and cultivated. Most of the fictional or non-fictional works that I analyze show a strong affinity to the melodramatic mode or “sensibility” broadly defined. 41 In this sense, melodrama is not perceived as a genre, but rather as a cross-media and inter-genre “forest” (as Linda Williams puts it) of many species and hybrids.42 Melodrama as a global vernacular of modernity has certainly flourished in Sinophone cinemas as well, mixing homegrown cultural repertoire with imported vocabularies and styles. Melodrama in its transmedia forms stems from drastically changing societies coping with human and environmental devastations, and the accompanying crises of faiths and values, especially the fragmentation of existing family and kinship systems and gender relations, making sense of the emotional upheavals, moral confusion, socio-economic precarity, disparity, and injustices, often manifest in physical and emotional forms, and sheds light on obfuscated truth. In short, it processes fluctuating structures of feeling and contradictions brought by (de)colonization, modernization, urbanization, and globalization, particularly the pain these experiences inflict on the weak and feeble, such as the elderly and “leftbehind children,” and women of lower or newly ascendant middle classes whose sense of security and self-fulfillment is compromised by old and new patriarchal powers. My use of melodrama in relation to realism agrees with the revisionist understanding of melodrama as a mode that is historically intertwined with strands of realism and modernism. 43 Yet, many stories are also about sisterhood, cross-generational solidarity, alternative kinship, informal network, self-representation, collective healing, and social transformation. Whether firmly grounded in local terrains (Huang Yu-shang, Wen Hui, Huang Ji, Yang Lina, Ai Xiaoming) or inclined toward transnational mobility (Sylvia Chang, Jasmine Lee, Yau Ching, Zeng Jinyan), 41 See, among other things in this body of scholarship, Mercer and Shingler, Melodrama; Vesudevan, The Melodramatic Public; Gledhill and Williams (eds.), Melodrama Unbound. 42 Williams, “Melodrama Revisited,” pp. 42–88. 43 See Gledhill, “The Melodramatic Field,” pp. 5–39. For the context of Chinese cinema history, see Berry’a and Farquhar’s writing on Chinese “melodramatic realism” in their book China on Screen; and my article, “Transnational Melodrama.”

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

29

there is a perceivable shared distrust of statism and nationalism, including their complicity with capitalism. Richly accented, they articulate ambivalent sentiments toward Chinese cultural legacies, especially poignant reactions to masculine liberational ideology, Confucianism, and blatant totalitarian state control and violence. Many of their aspirations and actions resonate with anarchical feminist discourses and praxis, exemplified by late-Qing feminist He Yin-zhen’s 何殷震 as well as contemporary cosmopolitical feminism.44 They echo each other across temporal-spatial distance, not least in their shared investment in transindividuality (in contrast to individualism and essential gender difference) and critique of the andro-centric state form. These aspirations are in tune with historically and culturally informed feminist melodrama studies invested in embodied experiences, everyday struggles against patriarchal and related systems governing economic and political structures and for justice in livelihood and affective labor, as well as explorations in alternative kinship and sociality beyond patrilineal marriage and family systems instrumentalized by the state and capital. The Sinophone cine-feminist framework questions rigidly def ined national, regional, or “universal” feminism, while it is cognizant of the continued and contending forces of nationalism, often in insidious combinations or “joint ventures” (to borrow a trendy term in reform era China), with colonialism, capitalism, and authoritarianism. I focus on filmmakers who are largely outside the cinematic institutions and infrastructure of the state (though by no means entirely separate from it), while also branching off from the prc-centered perspective. Thus, this project hopes to reframe the productive transnational feminist framework of Chinese Women’s Cinema as a continually reconfiguring Sinophone cine-feminist sphere, through concentrated case studies of women filmmakers who are in one way or another related through micro-level, trans-regional networks of festivals and collaborations, or simply mutual aid, pro-bono work, and everyday emotional support. The term is not a manifesto or theory but serves as a viewfinder, a new methodological lexicon for revising historiographies of Chinese-language cinema, women’s cinema, and world cinema. My work joins the revived, redefined field of women’s cinema as world cinema, as well as a large transnational community of feminist f ilm 44 Liu Huiying, Nüquan, qimeng yu minzu guojia huayu (Feminism, Enlightenment and Discourses of State-Nation). See especially Chapter 5. “The Rise of the Anti-Nation State Discourse.” For an excellent introduction to and translation of He’s writings and ideas, see Liu, Karl and Ko (eds.), The Birth of Chinese Feminism. On contemporary anarchist feminism, see Bottici, Men and States; and Anarcharfeminism.

30 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

historians devoted to revising canonical film historiography in projects such as Women and the Silent Screen and the Doing Women’s Film History biennial conferences. While the latter two have been primarily concerned with early cinema, the research questions on women’s roles in the film industry, aesthetics, and feminism have also fueled studies in more recent decades when the number of women filmmakers has increased significantly, even in non-Western parts of the world. Christine Gledhill and Julia Knight remark that feminist film historiography can “change the story.” Women’s film history’s unorthodox sources of evidence—gossip, novelistic constructions of cinema-going women, the influence of the domestic on the workplace—change what counts in film history. Practices disregarded or marginalized in traditional f ilm histories—such as partnerships, co-creation, and experimental multimedia work—challenge conventional notions both of authorship and the film object. 45

This observation is relevant to the protagonists and my methodology in this book. All the filmmakers I discuss are expert collaborators or midwives of other creative agents. Sometimes their path simply crossed at film festivals. Sylvia Chang is called the “Godmother” of Taiwan New Cinema, playing multiple roles in front of and behind the camera. Years later, in her capacity as a juror, she bestowed an award to Jasmine Lee for Money and Honey at the Taipei International Film Festival. Huang Yu-shan co-founded the original Women Make Waves after returning from studying in New York (see Chapter 2) and served as a mentor and executive producer for many younger filmmakers, including Lee. Huang Ji and her Japanese husband formed a miniature transnational cottage industry of sorts and took turns directing, writing, and producing their projects. Wen Hui, Jasmine Lee, and Yau Ching all consciously invite their subjects to be active participants or co-creators in their multi-year documentary practices. Yang Lina is a close friend of Wen Hui and Huang Yu-shan, who constantly give Yang practical and emotional support or receives it from her. Ai Xiaoming and Zeng Jinyan collaborated closely with fellow filmmakers and activists (Hu Jie, Hu Jia, Wenhai, Trish McAdam) and with each other. I concur wholeheartedly with Gledhill and Knight that feminist film historiography is not simply about “putting women back in history alongside men or about creating a separate space called ‘women’s film history’ apart from ‘men’s film history.’” Rather, 45 Gledhill and Knight (eds.), Doing Women’s Film History, pp. 6–7. The volume includes chapters on India and Turkey, but no Sinophone filmmakers.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

31

“[a]sking about women promises new perspectives on film history itself and the many cinemas it generates, both past and future.”46 The selection and grouping together of these f ilmmakers here also stem from my intimate knowledge of and relationship with them, with the exception of Chang, whom I only met once at Metrograph Cinema in New York during her retrospective in 2018. Interestingly, writing about her work for Chinese Women’s Cinema edited by Wang, when I began to take an active interest in revisionist melodrama studies, inadvertently became a starting point for the book’s Sinophone orientation. 47 Over the span of nearly two decades, I have invited Yau Ching, Ai Xiaoming, Huang Yu-shan, Yang Lina, Wen Hui, Huang Ji, Jasmine Chin-hui Lee, Zeng Jinyan, and other women filmmakers (e.g., Louisa Wei, Ma Li, Jia Kai, Song Fang, Zou Xueping, Wang Nanfu, Yang Mingming) to screen films and discuss their related artistic and cultural work at the Department of Cinema Studies where I teach. Some of these visits were integral to the Reel China Documentary Biennial at New York University since 2001, or to the public programs of the Asian Film and Media Initiative (afmi) since 2012. As a curator, critic, juror, scholar, and collaborator, I have spent considerable time researching, taking part in or initiating symposia and forums, and attending film festivals in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the prc. I have formed deep friendships with many filmmakers and collaborated with several of them. I see my composite role, as a fan, friend, scholar, curator, artist, and mediator or connector, as part of the “sensuous scholarship” intertwined with bell hooks’s vernacular feminism as “passionate politics” that I have always aspired to practice. 48 Thus, the method of participant observation and intimate feminist solidarity have enabled me to “speak nearby,” as a fellow “woman, native, other” as well as a colleague and co-creator. 49 My historical-discursive reconstruction of their evolving authorship is not reserved for one single “representative” f ilm in stylistic terms as it has often been done in many “women’s cinema in world cinema” volumes, but is rather based on an admixture of fieldwork (including festival attendance, curation), forum dialogues, and inter-textual reading, aiming to account for the dynamic intertwining of cinematic and cultural practices, aesthetic 46 Ibid., p. 11. 47 Previously, my research focused primarily on the mainland, from early cinema in Shanghai to contemporary Urban Generation and independent cinema. My master’s thesis (1993), “Poetics of Exile” explored the work of experimental female poets and female directors, especially Zhang Nuanxin and Huang Shuqin. 48 Stoller, Sensuous Scholarship; bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. 49 Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Woman, Native, Other, p. 102.

32 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

and politics. I tried to find and watch as many films as I could get hold of besides the well-known ones, including student work and shorts, and read ancillary works such as poems and fiction before I settled on to a particular selection of texts and themes for organizing my analysis. While engaging with relevant concepts and theories developed in Western academia, wherever possible, I consulted Chinese sources, especially local critics’ views and lay audience’s commentaries in different reception locations. All of these, along with the films and videos, are indispensable building blocks of a trans-media intimate-public commons.

Trans-Asian Horizons and Sinophone Herstories Looking sideways at parallel cine-feminist trends and networks in a trans-Asian context can be illuminating. Indeed, “trans-Asia as method” is congenial to the framework of Sinophone cine-feminism. Developed by critical Asian studies and media and cultural studies scholars to further the decolonizing and de-imperializing objectives advanced by the Inter-Asian Cultural Studies collective, and complicated by the often neoliberal-, neo-nationalist-inf lected paradigm of transnationalism, trans-Asian studies have gained some serious methodological traction for projects that emphasize mutual referencing and genuine comparative work between Asian countries and regions.50 Yiu Fai Chow and Jeroen de Kloet call for trans-Asian studies “to decouple the trans from the national” and learn from intersectional feminism, investing in the prefix “trans-” the constructive meaning of trans-formation (going beyond transgression).51 In the last two decades or so, the number and visibility of women filmmakers have increased in many Asian countries, in part enabled by digital technology. In Indonesia, emerging from Suharto’s authoritarian regime (1966–1998), the first decade of the Reform Order (Reformasi) witnessed positive changes in women’s participation and intervention in the film industry and public culture. Felicia Hughes-Freeland’s article, “Women’s Creativity in Indonesian Cinema,”52 based on multi-year extensive film viewings, interviews, and well-contextualized genre-textual analysis, 50 See, for instance, Yoshimoto, “National/International/Transnational, pp. 254–61; de Kloet et al. (eds.), Trans-Asia as Method. 51 Chow and de Kloet, “What is the ‘Trans’ in Trans-Asia?” In Trans-Asia as Method, pp. 43–57. 52 Hughes-Freeland, “Women’s Creativity in Indonesian Cinema,” pp. 417–44.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

33

outlines a changing cultural landscape in which a sizable number of women filmmakers (as directors, writers, producers, distributors, and publicists) have become active agents in transforming representations of women, from previous stock domesticated images of women or “State Ibuism” (“married women” under the auspices or control of the state) on the one hand and the “femme fatale” in commercial cinema, on the other. The first Reformasi New Wave omnibus film, Kuldesak (1999) was made by two women filmmakers, Nan T. Achna and Mira Lesmana, together with Rizal Mantovani and Riri Riza. Affordable digital technology has additionally spurred an energetic feminist documentary movement represented by figures like Lulu Ratna, Yuli Andrari A., Ariani Djalal and team, and Ucu Agustin. The diverse output by women ranges from fiction films with high production value to “sidestream” ones, including community activist documentaries, addressing sensitive issues such as polygamy, religion, homosexuality, prostitution, and rape.53 In South Korea, a cine-feminism has been “on the move” in the shadow of the international success of a largely masculine South Korean New Wave Cinema that culminated in Boon Joon-ho’s Oscar Best Film win for Parasite (2019). A large international conference celebrating the centenary of Korean cinema in Seoul in 2019 included a session, “Korea, Women, the Cinema: 30 Years of Cine-feminism.”54 Hyun Seon Park, in her introduction to a special issue for Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, proposes “cine-feminism as a new method for critically reshaping Korean film historiography and media ecosystems from a feminist perspective.” Akin to Yau’s and Wang’s work discussed above, Park also traces a genealogy to the pioneering figures, in South Korea’s case, from the post-Korean War 1950s, when women behind the camera were very few, to the 1980s, when small networks of women filmmakers emerged alongside the minjung democracy movement, such as Kaidu Club and Bariteo; the latter was led by feminist f ilm scholarfilmmaker Kim So-young and filmmaker Byun Young-joo (The Murmuring Trilogy 1995–1999, on the “comfort women”). As in Indonesia, “it wasn’t until the 1990s that a feminist vision was fully extended to film production and critical discourse.”55 The cultural diversification in cinema as both a result and response to Saegaehwa (globalization), burgeoned by feminist discourses, deconstructed the “good mothers” and “seductresses” and paved the way for more complex representations of gender and sexuality. 53 Ibid., pp. 423–24. 54 Park, “South-Korean Cine-feminism on the Move,” pp. 91–97. 55 Ibid., p. 92.

34 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Women’s increased professional power in preproduction, public relations, and marketing influenced the expansion and promotion of women-made films. The establishment of the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival in 1997 became a critical platform for showcasing Korean and international films by women and generating transnational dialogues and networks, in ways similar to wmwiff with which it often collaborated.56 Women in Film Korea, a professional organization with some 150 members, was established in 2000. In a move very different from Wang’s critique of “universal feminism” and its role in China, Park notes the interesting phenomenon that the translation of Western feminist theories, including those on “gaze,” “body politic,” spectatorship and melodrama, which had been fading or undergoing revision in Western academia, has paradoxically energized South Korean cine-feminism in their fight against a male-dominant industry and society with “deep-rooted sexism and gender discrimination.”57 While an integral part of the global and trans-Asian currents, Sinophone cine-feminism as a framework also extends to Chinese-language or Sinophone cinema (huayu dianying华语电影) studies, moving further away from the normative national cinema model. The anthology, Chinese-language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics, edited by Sheldon Lu and Emily Yueh-yu Yeh, first presented the umbrella term to account for past and present film practices in the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as an alternative to the “Chinese national cinema” model.58 Inspired by postcolonial Francophone, Hispanophone, Anglophone, and Lusophone studies, and galvanized by a critical move away from US-centered ethnic studies, Shu-mei Shih’s Visuality and Identity develops a radical framework on a trans-Pacific scale in place of the “Chinese diaspora.” She finds the latter, predicated on an ancestral, territorial China as a “regime of authenticity,” to be frequently ahistorical and politically fraught. She unpacks “Sinophone articulations” in the works of a number of filmmakers and other visual culture producers living and working in Sinitic linguistic and cultural territories outside of the geopolitical borders of the Han-dominant “Middle Kingdom” (the mainland).59 Her case studies include New Wave male auteurs Fruit Chan (Hong Kong) and Ang Lee (Taiwanese-American), but also a “feminist transnationality” in Chinese-American artist Hung Liu’s trans-media art (e.g., projecting 56 The sifii was founded by So-young Kim and other women filmmakers and critics. See www. siwff.or.kr/eng/. 57 Park, “South-Korean Cine-feminism on the Move,” pp. 93–94. 58 Lu and Yueh-yu Yeh (eds.), Chinese-language Film. 59 Shih, Visuality and Identity.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

35

archival photographs found in the Beijing Film Archive onto canvas for oil painting).60 Liu’s deconstructive art, argues Shih, articulates fragmented identities and forges a multi-fold “antagonism” against “Chinese patriarchy,” the “Maoist State,” American racism, and the “Western Gaze.” Toward the end of the book, she also highlights a constructive ethical cosmopolitanism in Taiwanese female artist Wu Mali’s work, marked by a rejection of “cliched logic of the relationship between the global and the local” through a certain “hyperbolic universalism,” such as shared childhood experiences, from a minoritarian perspective.61 Such transversal tendencies or comparative strategies resonate with several filmmakers in my study, notably Jasmine Lee, Yau Ching, and Zeng Jinyan. Shih’s book and her subsequent elaborations on the subject have both inspired a new field and stirred up a heated debate in literary, film, and cultural studies.62 The term Sinophone and the postcolonial, critical theory that nourished its formation have been met with strong opposition from mainstream Chinese cinema studies in the prc. Scholars such as Li Daoxin, Chen Xuguang, Lu Xinyu, and Jia Leilei have waged a concerted attack on transnational “Chinese-language” and especially Sinophone approaches for their tendency to critique and deviate from the centrality of of “China” or Zhongguo (i.e., the mainland).63 As a counter move, they coined the term “China film studies school” 中国电影学派 and established state-funded institutions and journals, stressing the “subjectivity” 主体性 (or sovereign body) of the Chinese state and its “discursive power” huayuquan, deploying exclusive, self-sufficient China-based and -centered methodologies. Meanwhile, in Chinese literary and cultural studies outside the prc, David Der-wei Wang proposes the approach of “Sinophone intervention with China” from a “long, sprawling historical perspective.” Invoking “postloyalism” (yinmin 遺民) resulting from dynastic change and migration and its politics of temporality and affect (especially the ambivalent sentiments of mourning and haunting), this approach departs from the spatially or territorially defined modern nation-state politics and its cultural byproducts 60 Ibid., Chapter 2, pp. 62–85. 61 Ibid., pp. 180–83. 62 Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Bernards (eds.); Sinophone Studies; Chiang and Heinrich (eds.); Queer Sinophone Cultures. 63 See, for example, Li, Chongjian zhutixing yu chongxie dianyingshi: yi Lu Xiaopeng de kuaguo dianyingyanjiu yu huayu dianyinglunshu wei zhongxin de fansi yu piping (Re-constructing Subjectivity and Re-writing Cinema History: Reflections and Criticisms Centered on Lu Hsiaopeng’s Transnational Cinema Research and Chinese-language Cinema Discourse) in Dangdai dianying 8, pp. 53–58.

36 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

(i.e., national literature).64 In presenting the Sinophone as “cacophonous reverberations” borne out of a dynamic historical process both within and outside a constantly changing China with shifts in regimes and borders, from premodern to modern times, Wang arrives at the notion that “postcolonialism and postloyalism constitute the dialectic of Sinophone discourse.”65 Scholars working with a wide spectrum of Chinese-language cinemas have responded creatively and critically to the Sinophone discourse. Sinophone Cinemas, an anthology edited by Audrey Yue and Olivia Khoo, prefaced by Shih, is a serious collective engagement with the Sinophone paradigm in the field of cinema studies.66 The volume presents compelling case studies from Britain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, mainland China, and the Chinese Diasporas. Yue and Khoo underscore the fact that “the Sinophone does not necessarily mean the same thing across each of these sites.”67 Like the editors, I concur with volume contributor Sheldon Lu’s revision of the “Sinophone” to be more inclusive so as to accommodate mainland China as well.68 Mainland Chinese cinema is not monolithic; it is not only differentiated by “major” and “minor” cinemas, but also by often mutually unintelligible topolects and a host of inflected “Mandarin” vernacular parlances and writing forms or styles,69 in addition to other ethnic languages such as Tibetan, Uyghur, Korean, and Mongolian. Understood as a multitude of place-based, trans-lingual, trans-media, trans-regional, trans-Asian historical experiences in global contexts, Sinophone cinema and media studies has the potential to deviate from linear, vertical or diffusionist models of historiography that create arbitrary canons, discursive hegemonies, and dubious universalisms (i.e., “Chineseness”). In his chapter, “The Voice of the Sinophone,” Song Hwee Lim continues his critique of the “lingua-centric” model and overemphasis on visuality in both the Chinese-language cinema and Sinophone discourse, underscoring the importance of sound, especially the human voice, in film, television and popular music. His analysis of the materiality of French actress Juliette Binoche’s vocal performance of an ancient Chinese play (as puppetry) in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Taiwanese-French coproduction, Flight of 64 Wang, “Sinophone Intervention with China,” p. 67. 65 Ibid., pp. 64, 67. 66 Yue and Khoo (eds.), Sinophone Cinemas. 67 Ibid., p. 4. 68 Lu, “Genealogies of Four Critical Paradigms in Chinese-language Film Studies,” pp. 13–26. 69 For the Chinese characters used in the book, I follow the complex form used in Taiwan and Hong Kong and the simplified form for the prc. The formatting inconsistency is deliberate to reflect the diverse Sinophone articulations.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

37

the Red Balloon (2007), “declares that the phonic dimension of the cinema is capable of undoing the ‘Sino’ in the Sinophone,” specifically in films that incorporate non-Sinitic languages.70 This reminder is useful when considering the presence of a plethora of Asian and other languages in f ilms by Sylvia Chang, Huang Yu-shan, Huang Ji, Jasmine Lee, and Yau Ching. I argue that the trans-Asian horizons at once complicate and enrich Sinophone cine-feminism, when “Sino-” must always be understood as a historical, cultural, and discursive construct, in dialogue with other cultural and linguistic networks across the world. Wai-siam Hee’s recent monograph, Remapping the Sinophone: The Cultural Production of Chinese-language Cinema in Singapore and Malaya before and after the Cold War, is to date one of the few most productive works on Sinophone world cinema and trans-Asian media studies.71 Hee excavates the complex “roots and routes” of huayu dianying in Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s and 1960s on the frontier of the Cold War and its reenergized use in the region in the 1990s. He also agrees with Wang and others in translating the “-phone” as “orientation,” “trend,” and “scenery,”72 rather than as purely linguistic, for historically mapping a heterogeneous cultural and political landscape. “Neither left nor right or both left and right” vis-à-vis China or the United States, the proponents and practitioners of huayu dianying there deployed the medium to “transcend nationalism” in order to survive and take roots in an agitated place and time. “[I]t loosened the borders between center and margins proposed by nationalist discourse.”73 Following Hee, I will use “Chinese-language cinema” more as a descriptive term when concerning films literally using languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese, but treat the “Sinophone” as both an expanded cultural umbrella and a critical concept mobilized for a foregrounded trans-Asian feminist agenda in a global context. As mentioned earlier, women filmmakers have received limited treatment in the volominous body of scholarship under Chinese, Chinese-language or Sinophone rubrics, especially in survey-style volumes. This applies, regrettably, to Sinophone Cinemas and Hee’s book as well. Gender and sexual politics and feminist agendas are often sidelined by purportedly more important cultural and geopolitical conversations on nation, state, revolution, the environment, globalization, ethnicity, and Chinese-language 70 Lim, “The Voice of the Sinophone,” pp. 62–76. 71 Hee, Remapping the Sinophone. 72 Ibid., p. 16. 73 Ibid., p. 29.

38 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

cinema’s relationship to Hollywood. In contrast, Sinophone queer cinema studies have performed well in this regard. In addition to Yau’s scholarly work in both Chinese and English,74 the books by Song-hwee Lim, Howard Chiang and Ari Larissa Heinrich, Zoran Lee Pecic, Hongwei Bao, and Shi-yan Chao have made significant contributions to the consolidation of the field.75 In her afterword for Queer Sinophone Cultures, Shih outlines “the conjunctive method” that productively link queer studies and Sinophone studies, commending the queering of the Sinophone as “an act of scholarly activism that constructs a different genealogy” by investigating “non-normative kinship, alternative embodiment or queer corporealities, and the disruption of chronotopic temporalities.”76 In the same vein, I argue that Sinophone cinefeminisms and queer Sinophone cultural practices are linked by structural, affective affinities and socio-political allyship. Both can productively and critically illuminate, and perhaps eventually undo, the Sinophone discourse when it has fulfilled its historical purposes. Empirically and conceptually, Sinophone cine-feminisms concern all women filmmakers, straight or queer, and sometimes men who embrace feminism in theory and practice, working with feminist concerns and aesthetic expressions in any place where Sinitic languages or topolects (Minnan, Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka, Hunan dialect, Shanghaiese, etc.) are used in a variety of forms, including pidgin-style or code-switching hybrids, along with non-Sinitic ones. Based in the mainland, Taiwan, hksar, Macau, and other countries in Asia (notably Singapore and Malaysia with large Sinophone demographics), Australia, North America, and elsewhere, they make either monolingual or multilingual films addressed to local, regional, and global audiences in various intersections on varying scales. To delineate an expansive cartography with sufficient complexity of the Sinophone cine-feminist landscape will be an enormous undertaking requiring collective labor over a long period of time. The website “Women Filmmakers and Transnational China in the Twenty-first Century,”77 is a useful starting point for this purpose, although its framework is prc-focused, 74 Yau, Sexing Shadows; Yau (ed.), As Normal as Possible. 75 Lim, Celluloid Comrades; Howard Chiang and Ari Larissa Heinrich (eds.), Sinophone Queers Cultures; Pecic, New Queer Sinophone Cinema, Local Histories, Transnational Connections; Bao, Queer Comrades and Queer China; Chao, Queer Representations in Chinese-language Film and the Cultural Landscape. 76 Shih, “On the Conjunctive Method,” pp. 475–76. 77 It is hosted by Hong Kong University’s Center for the Study of Globalization and Culture. See https://chinesewomenfilmmakers.wordpress.com/. The previous Hong Kong women filmmakers’ website is also incorporated into it.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

39

covering “women filmmakers engaging with China’s economic and political rise in the twenty-first century.” Lingzhen Wang recently published a new monograph, Revisiting Women’s Cinema: Feminism, Socialism and Mainstream Culture in Modern China, focusing on several mainland women directors active between the 1950s– 1960s and the 1980s.78 Her revisionist takes on prc women’s cinema and what she coins a regional “socialist feminism” within the communist party-state under the Cold War fills a gap in Chinese film historiography. But her dismissive assessment of post-Mao feminism as a partner in a “dangerous liaison with the Western post-second wave, radical feminism” (later linked to liberal “universal feminism,” her one-size-fits-all term for post-second wave, neoliberal feminism) borders on hasty simplification. The filmmakers, namely Wang Ping 王苹 (1916–1990), Dong Kena 董克娜 (1930–2016), Zhang Nuanxin 张暖昕 (1940–1995), and Huang Shuqin 黄蜀 芹 (1939–2022), whose “artistic agency” through aesthetic experimentation she studies in great detail, truly deserve serious reconsiderations in terms of their historical significance both in Chinese film history and global women’s cinema.79 Yet the book’s limited scope and a rather dogmatic pro-Party-state and anti-capitalist agenda leave out other alternative voices and film practices that negotiate or even challenge the dominant “socialist mainstream culture,”80 not to mention state-sanctioned discursive and physical violence (the Cultural Revolution is summarily omitted) against a lot of women, as well as ethnic, religious and political minorities. The critique of post-Mao feminism under the reform era, guided by Deng Xiaoping’s “market economy with Chinese characteristics,” seems to be provocative and timely in view of the serious predicaments in gender issues China is faced with today, and serves as a redemptive justification of the top-down ccp-engineered “integrated socialist feminism” as a powerful buttress against Western hegemony, including feminisms across a wide 78 Wang, Revisiting Women’s Cinema. A result of a decade-long work, an early version of chapter 3 on Dong Kena appeared in Chinese Women’s Cinema. 79 Ibid., p. 6. 80 Wang defines it thus: “Chinese socialist cultural practice, which emerged on the premise of socioeconomic equity and political equality and in accordance with the socialist mode of cultural production, thus offers us an alternative model for mainstream cultural practice.” (p.13) Moreover, “[u]nlike mainstream culture in the capitalist West, socialist mainstream culture did not entail a minor, marginalized culture that functioned as a separate or ‘ghettorized’ domain for critical reflection or aesthetic innovation.” (p. 14). For a recent example of more nuanced historical studies of popular film culture during the seventeen years (1949–1966) using archival and ethnographical methods, see Zhou, Cinema off Screen.

40 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

ideological spectrum grown on its terrain.81 The fervent call to revitalize a non-capitalist Chinese socialist feminism integral to the socialist revolution led by the ccp and Mao, while accurately reconnecting it to the paramount (and regulatory) role of the nation-state, seriously lacks the kind of historical nuances in Wang’s earlier work discussed above. Wang blames Western feminism (and the attendant cine-feminism), largely reduced to a monolithic “universalist” discourse, for misguiding post-Mao Chinese feminists (Li Xiaojiang 李小江 is named as its figurehead) and, by extension, women cultural producers, including film directors, into embracing an “essentialist female consciousness,” drifting apart from the previous state-guided or “institutionalized” women’s welfare policies. While there is some validity to this critique in the context of the prc up to the 1990s, its ardent restoration of a “socialist feminism” as an integral institution of the party-state, uncorrupted by individualism and capitalism, and implied to be a remedy for the troubling gender politics in contemporary Chinese society enveloped by global capitalism, risks reintroducing the binary Cold War ideology her project sets out to debunk, and confounds stark differences between different periods and their distinctive historical conditions. Is Wang advocating a resurrection of the early prc and its “socialist proletarian and feminist space,”82 shielded from capitalism by raising the Great “Firewall,” cutting off all transborder circulation of people, goods, and ideas? The backward nostalgic glance also stops short of accounting for recent waves of feminist trends and practices that emerged in the new millennium, in which local and transnational, minjian and official forces more often than not conjoined or competed with each other. Moreover, this favoring of a party-state-sponsored institutionalized feminism simply does not sit well with the situations women filmmakers are faced with in Hong Kong, Taiwan, not to mention the world-wide Sinophone communities. My study tries to revive the critical energy in Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts, tracing a multivalent trans-regional Sinophone cine-feminism in aesthetic and political terms, and is less directly concerned with or validating the “rise of China” as an inescapable grand narrative. My periodization, for example, reaches back to the 1980s when Taiwan was undergoing rapid modernization and ushered in the simultaneous emergence of women filmmakers and the feminist movement on the island nation. The main body of the book thus begins with two veteran Taiwan filmmakers, who have frequently traversed the region and the world and were instrumental 81 Wang, Revisiting Women’s Cinema, p. 19. 82 Ibid., p. 24.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

41

in connecting a women’s cinema to Taiwan New Cinema. In presenting the work of prc post-Urban Generation independent filmmaker Yang Lina, I am paying extra attention to her early documentary work in the 1990s before she turned to narrative film in the new millennium. The same applies to Yau Ching, whose cross-media, trans-Pacific creative work began in Hong Kong in the 1980s and then continued in New York in the 1990s. Ultimately, my grouping of these nine women filmmakers of different generations and geographic locations, and my drawing of overt or indirect connections between them, are aimed at exploring the creative and political commons and routes that bypass or cut across rigid geopolitical and discursive borders frequently imposed by the nation states, film festivals, and academia. The socio-political conditions are far less favorable in the prc and the hksar in comparison to Indonesia and South Korea, and a formal network similar to Women in Film Korea does not exist there to foster a robust and sustainable cine-feminist culture and infrastructure. In fact, modeled after wmwiff and other similar festivals, several women’s film festivals in China had their short runs with varying degrees of success. The most recent case is The one International Women’s Film Festival 山一国际女性电影展, “the only women’s film festival approved by the State’s film bureau.”83 After five years, its most recent edition (2021) had to downsize its program significantly at the authorities’ behest. However, for nearly three decades, the stronghold of wmwiff in Taiwan has played a critical role in connecting women filmmakers in the Sinophone world across Asia and elsewhere. The festival, founded by Huang Yu-shan and her friends in Taiwan in 1993, has nourished generations of women filmmakers across the Strait and beyond. Apart from intersecting with New Wave cinemas in the region, “Women Make Waves” provides both a vivid ecological metaphor and a critical vocabulary for narrating and conceptualizing undulating Sinophone cine-feminisms on multiple wavelengths, converging or diverging over shifting time and space. Indeed, the motifs and imagery of water and waves permeate the many films I am going to discuss: ocean, river, rain, river, pond, “floating,” tide, as well as Bruce Lee’s powerful, world-famous saying “like water.” Here I would like to invoke Japanese scholar Tamako Akiyama’s creative use of the tidal front 潮境 as a concept, introducing an oceanographic imagination into often abstract discussions of transnational flows and land-based, anthropocentric perspectives bound to territorial borders. On tidal fronts, warm and cold currents collide, generating a favorable environment for fish to breed and thrive on increased oxygen and proliferating plankton. It is in 83 See the festival official site: http://www.oneiwff.com/about-shanyi-brand.html.

42 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

this kind of ecosystems that we find historical actors, such as Japanese and Chinese independent filmmakers that Akiyama studies or the Sinophone women filmmakers in this study, forging their transcultural identities and communities.84

Plan of the Book The book is not a survey or history of films in Chinese languages directed by women. I focus on a number of uniquely important filmmakers in Sinophone world cinema (ranging from the middle brow mainstream, New Wave and independent works, to activist media), who have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. The sequence of the following eight chapters is somewhat chronological, but the main objective is to introduce the filmmakers as a circle of friends, fellow artists, teachers and students, and sometimes sisterly activists in the cross-Strait and trans-Asian cine-feminist commons mostly autonomous from state politics. They work with shared yet complexly inflected linguistic, cultural heritage, and feminist concerns and causes, while they are firmly anchored in their respective social and political milieus. In terms of generational lineage, the first and last chapters form a pair of bookends that connect the veteran filmmakers born in the 1950s to the younger generation born in the 1980s. The fact that Ai and Zeng are also close collaborators indicates an inter-generational bond and relay in trans-media activism. In terms of theoretical considerations on the spectrum of the melodramatic and documentary modes that the filmmakers practice and often freely combine, I begin with filmmakers mainly working in fictional mode engaging melodrama and realism. Chapter 1 accounts for Sylvia Chang’s role as the “mother of Taiwan New Cinema,” and her several wenyi melodramas or “woman’s films” made in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland over the decades. They probe the tension between romantic love and “kin-love” in Chinese culture through moving portrayals of women’s independence and bonding across generations and geographical locations. Chapter 2 focuses on Huang Yu-shan, co-founder of wmwiff, feminist scholar, and director of a large body of narrative and documentary films. Among the defining characteristics of her films are a deep commitment to women’s issues, local climate and culture (especially her native Penghu Island and the south), and postcolonial Taiwanese historiography. Chapter 3 84 Akiyama, Chao jing — Zhongguo duli yingxiang de Riben mailuo (When Currents Collide: Chinese Independent Cinema and Japan), pp. 290–322.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

43

turns to prc independent filmmaker Yang Lina and argues that Yang’s work significantly contributed to the digital video (DV) turn in the New Documentary Movement in the 1990s and that she attends to her subjects, in both non-fiction and fictional works, with a compassionate camera and gendered persona. Her films offer poignant social commentaries on the limits of post-socialist neoliberalism. Chapter 4 highlights the courageous and expressive personal cinema of Huang Ji, a forceful emerging filmmaker who, in collaboration with her Japanese filmmaker husband, made two powerful award-winning autographically inflected feature films based on her experience as a sexually abused “left-behind” child in rural Hunan, as well as a home video style documentary about their trans-cultural nuclear family in a time of rising nationalism in China. Then I delve more deeply into the documentary field and its potential for feminist social engagement. Chapter 5 focuses on dancer, choreographer, and multimedia artist Wen Hui’s two experimental films made with her “forgotten” Third Grandmother. Their intimate-public camera constructs female kinship outside the patriarchal family tree and re-writes women’s history through oral storytelling and choreography of the everyday. Chapter 6 situates Jasmine Ching-hui Lee’s critically and popularly acclaimed Money and Honey about her friendship and filmmaking praxis with several female Philippine workers in a Taipei nursing home and their homeland, within the context of her extended “Woman and Homeland” documentary series. An unusual manifestation of the “sentimental” strand in Taiwan’s new documentary in the aftermath of the Taiwan New Cinema, the decade-long transnational project harnesses the power of melodramatic impulses for changing public attitudes and influencing government policies on immigrant labor. Chapter 7 continues on the trans-Asian trajectory and engages Hong Kong queer filmmaker Yau Ching’s non-fictional works, from her earlier experimental short films made in New York to her feature-length collaborative documentary We Are Alive (2010). The latter emanates from therapeutic video workshops she and her team conducted with confined delinquent adolescents in Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan. Its engagement with the so-called “bad kids” (the film’s Chinese title 壞孩子) and their complex selfpresentations question dominant repressive moral strictures and criminal justice systems across several East Asian societies. The participatory, transformational, and comparative project on juvenile delinquency, adolescent femininities and masculinities, and state-sanctioned social conformity offer an instructive case study of minor transnationalism through a queer lens. Chapter 8 discusses the political and aesthetic significance of leading feminist scholar, cultural critic, and activist Ai Xiaoming’s documentaries in

44 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

tandem with those of Zeng Jinyan, in relation to a “digital political mimesis” borne out of the widespread adoption of DV by media activists in China in the new century. In Epilogue, I provide updates on several filmmakers’ recent work and situations, assessing the implications of digital technologies as well as the challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic and neo-Cold War cultural politics. Meanwhile, a new tide of global Sinophone women’s cinema is emerging in Asia, North America and elsewhere, bringing hope for the future in a time of great uncertainty in our world.

Bibliography Akiyama, Tamako 秋山珠子. “Chao jing – Zhongguo duli yingxiang de Riben mailuo” (潮境—中国独立影像的日本脉络) [When Currents Collide: Chinese Independent Cinema and Japan]. Chinese Independent Cinema Observer (中國獨立電影觀察) Special Issue on Sino-Japanese Connections in Independent Film Cultures 1989-2020, 1 (2021): 290–322. Bao, Hongwei. Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2020. Bao, Hongwei. Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Culture under Postsocialism. New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. Bean, Jennifer. “Editor’s Introduction, Affect: The Alchemy of the Contingent.” Special issue on Affect, Feminist Media History 7.1 (Winter 2021): 1–20. bell hooks. Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. New York: Routledge, 2015. Berlant, Lauren. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1997. Berry, Chris. “China’s New ‘Women’s Cinema.’” Camera Obscura 18 (1988): 8–19. Berry, Chris, and Lisa Rofel. “Alternative Archive: China’s Independent Documentary Culture.” In Chris Berry, Xinyu Lv, and Lisa Rofel (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 135–54. Berry, Chris, and Mary Farquhar. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Bottici, Chiara. Men and States: Rethinking the Domestic Analogy in a Global Age. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Bottici, Chiara. Anarchafeminism. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021. Chao, Shi-yan. Queer Representations in Chinese-language Film and the Cultural Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. Chi, Robert. “The New Taiwanese Documentary,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 15.1 (2003): 146–96.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

45

Chiang, Howard, and Ari Larissa Heinrich (eds.). Queer Sinophone Cultures. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2013. Chow, Yui Fai, and Jeroen de Kloet. “What is the ‘Trans’ in Trans-Asia?” In Jeroen de Kloet et al. (eds.), Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practice, London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2019. 43–57. Cui, Shuqin. Women Through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. Cui, Shuqin, “Ning Ying’s Beijing Trilogy: Cinematic Configurations on Age, Class and Sexuality.” In Zhen Zhang (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 241–63. Cui, Shuqin. Gendered Bodies: Toward a Women’s Visual Art in Contemporary China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2015. de Kloet, Jeroen et al. (eds.). Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practice. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019. Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Love, Sexuality and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. Gledhill, Christine. “The Melodramatic Field.” In Christine Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute, 1987. 5–39. Gledhill, Christine, and Julia Knight (eds.). Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Gledhill, Christine, and Linda Williams (eds.). Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Grewal, Interpal, and Caren Kaplan. Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Gripsrud, Jostein and Martin Eide. “Editors’ Introduction.” In Jostein Gripsrud and Martin Eide (eds.), The Idea of the Public Sphere: A Reader. Lanham: MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 6–22. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1989. Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negril. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negril. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Random House, 2004. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negril. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

46 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Hee, Wai-Siam. Remapping the Sinophone: The Cultural Production of Chineselanguage Cinema in Singapore and Malaya before and after the Cold War. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2019. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia. “Women’s Creativity in Indonesian Cinema.” Indonesia and the Malay World 39:115 (2011): 417–44. Jeong, Seung-hoon, and Jeremi Szaniawski (eds.). The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship in Twenty-first Century Cinema. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. Jiang, Zoe Meng. “Soft Archive: Motherhood and Daughterhood in Post-socialist China,” Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art 4, no. 1 (2019): 35–54. Johnston, Claire. “Women’s Cinema as Counter Cinema.” In E. Ann Kaplan (ed.), Feminism and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1973]. 22–33. Li, Daoxin 李道新. “Chongjian zhuti xing yu chongxie dianying shi: yi Lu Xiaopeng de kuaguo dianying yanjiu yu huayu dianying lunshu wei zhongxin de fansi yu piping” (重建主体性与重写电影史: 以鲁晓鹏的跨国电影研究与华语电影论 述为中心的反思与批评) [Re-constructing Subjectivity and Re-writing Cinema History: Reflections and Criticisms Centered on Lu Hsiao-peng’s Transnational Cinema Research and Chinese-language Cinema Discourse] Dangdai dianying 8 (2014): 53–58. Lim, Song Hwee. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2006. Lim, Song Hwee. “The Voice of the Sinophone.” In Andrey Yue and Olivia Khoo (eds.), Sinophone Cinemas. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 62–76. Lin, Sylvia Li-chun, and Tze-lan Deborah Sang (eds.). Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. Liu, Huiying 刘慧英. Nüquan, qimeng yu minzu guojia huayu (女权、启蒙与民族 国家话语) [Feminism, Enlightenment and Discourses of State-Nation]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 2013. Liu, Lydia, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko (eds.). The Birth of Chinese Feminism: The Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. New York: Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 2013. Lu, Sheldon H. “Genealogies of Four Critical Paradigms in Chinese-language Film Studies.” In Andrey Yue, and Olivia Khoo (eds.), Sinophone Cinemas. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 13–26. Lu, Sheldon H., and Emily Yueh-yu Yeh (eds.). Chinese-language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Marchetti, Gina. “Handover Women: Hong Kong Women Filmmakers and the Intergenerational Melodrama of Infidelity.” Intergenerational Feminist Media Studies: Conflicts and Connectivities, special issue of Feminist Media Studies 16.4 (2016): 590–609.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

47

Marchetti, Gina. “Hong Kong as Feminist Method: Gender, Sexuality, and Democracy in Two Documentaries by Tammy Cheung.” In Yiu-Wai Chu (ed.), Hong Kong Culture and Society in the New Millennium. Singapore: Springer, 2017, 59–76 Marchetti, Gina. “The Feminine Touch: Chinese Soft Power Politics and Hong Kong Women Filmmakers.” In Paola Voci and Luo Hui (eds.), Screening China’s Soft Power. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017. 229–51. Marchetti, Gina. “Chloé Zhao and China: The Nomadland Moment.” Film Quarterly (Quorum), April 28, 2021, https://f ilmquarterly.org/2021/04/28/ chloe-zhao-and-china-the-nomadland-moment/. Margulies, Ivone and Jeremy Szaniawski (eds.). On Women’s Cinema: Across Worlds and Generations. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. Mercer, John, and Martin Shingler. Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility. London and New York: Wallflower, 2004. Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Negt, Oskar, and Alexander Kluge. Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 (German edition 1972). The one International Women’s Film Festival. http://www.oneiwff.com/aboutshanyi-brand.html. Park, Hyun Seon. “South-Korean Cine-feminism on the Move.” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. 12.2 (2020): 91–97. Pecic, Zoran Lee. New Queer Sinophone Cinema, Local Histories, Transnational Connections. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Polan, Dana. “Public’s Fear, or Media as Monster in Habermas, Negt and Kluge.” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 260–66. Seoul International Women’s Film Festival, https://www.siwff.or.kr/eng/. Shih, Shu-mei. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Shih, Shu-mei, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards (eds.). Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Shih, Shu-mei. “On the Conjunctive Method.” In Howard Chiang and Ari Larissa Heinrich (eds.), Queer Sinophone Cultures. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. 474–78. Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and Media. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Shohat, Ella. “Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge.” Social Text 20.3 (2002): 67–78. Stam, Robert. Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015.

48 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Stam, Robert. World Literature, Transnational Cinema, and Global Media: Towards a Transartistic Commons. New York: Routledge, 2019. Stoller, Paul. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Tay, Sharon Lin. Women on the Edge: Twelve Political Film Practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Trinh, T. Minh-Ha. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Vesudevan, Ravi. The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema. New Delhi, India: Permanent Black, 2010. Wang, David. “Sinophone Intervention with China.” In Haun Saussy (ed.), Texts and Transformations: Essays in Honor of the 75th Birthday of Victor H, Mair. Amherst, New York: Cambria, 2018. 59–79. Wang, Lingzhen (ed.). Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Wang, Lingzhen. Revisiting Women’s Cinema: Feminism, Socialism, and Mainstream Culture in Modern China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. Weber, Brenda R. “The Intricacies of an Intimate Public Sphere.” Review of Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Contemporary Literature 50.3 (Fall 2009): 619–23. Wei, Shiyu 魏时煜 and Yang Yuanying 杨远婴. Nüxing de dianying: duihua zhong ri nü daoyan (女性的电影: 对话中日女导演) [Women’s Film: Dialogues with Chinese and Japanese Female Directors]. Shanghai: Eastern China Normal University, 2009. White, Patricia. Women’s Cinema/World Cinema: Projecting Feminisms in Film. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Women Filmmakers and Transnational China in the Twenty-First Century. https:// chinesewomenfilmmakers.wordpress.com/. Yang, Mei-hui Mayfair (ed.). Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1999. Yau, Ching. Filming Margins: Tang Shu-shuen, a Forgotten Hong Kong Woman Director. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004. Yau, Ching 游静. “Xing/bie guangying: xianggang dianying zhong de xing yu xingbie wenhua yanjiu” (性/别光影: 香港電影中的性與性別文化研究) [Sexing Shadows: Gender and Sexuality in Hong Kong Cinema.] Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics’ Society, 2005. Yau, Ching (ed.). As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland and Hong Kong. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 2010.

Introduc tion: Projec ting Sinophone Cine-Feminisms

49

Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. “National/International/Transnational: The Concept of Trans-Asian Cinema and the Cultural Politics of Film Criticism.” In Valentina Vitali and Paul Willemen, eds., Theorizing National Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 2006. 254–61. Yue, Audrey, and Olivia Khoo (eds.). Sinophone Cinemas. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Zhang, Zhen. “Introduction: Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation’ (Zhuanxing).” In Zhang, Zhen (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 1–45. Zhang, Zhen. “Transnational Melodrama, Wenyi, and the Orphan Imagination.” In Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (eds.), Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 83–98. Zhao, Jing 赵静. Wo shi nü daoyan (我是女导演) [I Am A Female Director] Hong Kong: Qianxun chubanshe, 2010. Zhou, Chenshu. Cinema Off Screen: Movie Going in Socialist China. Oakland: CA: University of California Press, 2021.

1

Migrating Hearts Sinophone Geographies of Sylvia Chang’s “Woman’s Film” “This is not a grand story. It doesn’t have a big theme. I just wanted to let the audience see how modern Chinese women are.”1 —Sylvia Chang

Abstract Chapter 1 accounts for Sylvia Chang’s role as the “mother of Taiwan New Cinema,” and her several wenyi melodrama or “woman’s films” made in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China since the 1980s. These films probe the tension between romantic love and “kin-love” in Chinese culture through moving portrayals of women’s independence and bonding across generations and geographical locations. Keywords: Sylvia Chang, Taiwan New Cinema, Sinophone geography, “woman’s film,” wenyi melodrama, migration

Chinese film scholar Chen Feibao’s book, The Art of Taiwan Directors, one of the earliest scholarly studies on Taiwanese cinema in the prc, has chapters on Ang Lee and Sylvia Chang back-to-back.2 This arrangement occurred simply because the two were born just one year apart. However, the two have more in common than this age connection. Both came of age and embraced cinema as their creative medium in the burgeoning Taiwan New Cinema movement in the 1980s and early 1990s, and both have actively pursued a career beyond Taiwan, with Lee shuttling between the island and the United States and Chang operating between Taiwan and Hong Kong (and occasionally Singapore and the United States). In subject matter and 1 Walsh, “What Woman Want.” 2 Chen, Taiwan dianying daoyan yishu (The Art of Taiwan Directors).

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_ch01

52 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

style, each has demonstrated a shared propensity for family and romantic melodrama and the attendant cultural and ethical concerns with the changing meaning and practice of love and kinship in cross-cultural and transnational contexts. These features set them apart from the rigorous modernist formal experiments and introspective intellectual orientation that underscore the mainstay of the Taiwan New Cinema and post-New Cinema, whose most internationally renowned figureheads are Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Tsai Ming-liang. In comparison, most of Lee’s and Chang’s art-pop melodramas seem sentimental fare with their skillful orchestration of broken hearts and torn ties. The audiences they address and the spectatorship their textual and extra-textual systems construct tend to be Sinophone and trans-Asian in terms of demographic base while extending into other intercultural domains. Ang Lee’s recent works have shown a greater variety in genre experimentation, including period pieces and fantastical 3D films, and he is proving himself to be a leading global auteur who has transcended linguistic and cultural boundaries in terms of artistic identity, having entered the pantheon of great American or Hollywood directors. Where Chang differs from Lee in terms of geo-cultural affinities and the use of the melodramatic form is where my investigation of the aesthetic and sociocultural significance of her work begins. Chang’s cinema hardly appeals to conventional masculine auteur criticism and the national cinema framework. Chang insists there is an audience for a Chinese movie that does not “show triads or flying swordsmen.”3 Straddling independent and commercial modes of production, Chang’s films work with the melodramatic tradition, especially the wenyi pian strand, in Chinese-language cinema. Literally meaning “literary and art film,” wenyipian has a long genealogy in Chinese-language film history. Functioning more as a mode and a register coursing through a family of genres, it includes romantic and family melodramas that are often, though by no means always, adaptations of both domestic and foreign literary and dramatic sources. 4 Chang renovates and inflects it with accents drawn from various articulations of the genre (or mode) broadly conceived, including the so-called “woman’s film” (with a pronounced female spectatorial address) from classical Hollywood that fueled much of the earlier revisionist discourse on melodrama.5 This chapter 3 Walsh, “What Woman Want.” 4 On the transnational sources and local manifestations of wenyi film melodrama, see Yeh, “Wenyi and the Branding of Early Chinese Film,” pp. 65–94; Zhang, “Transplanting Melodrama.” 5 For seminal studies on film melodrama and “woman’s film,” see Gledhill (ed.), Home Is Where the Heart Is, especially her own comprehensively and astutely argued essay, “The Melodramatic Field.” See also Doane, The Desire to Desire.

Migr ating Hearts

53

contextualizes her multifaceted authorship as she emerged as an auteur in her own right by focusing on three early films which she wrote (or co-wrote) and directed, and in which she co-starred, Zui ai 最愛 (Passion, 1986), Xin dong 心動 (Tempting Heart, 1999), and 20 30 40 (2004). Their onscreen and off-screen settings include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada, and Malaysia, and the characters are a motley group of evolving subjects with diverse cultural backgrounds, class standings, and sexual orientations. At the emotional center of her films is women’s struggle over the meaning of home and love. At the same time, Chang’s alternately sentimental and reflective treatment of the vulnerability of intergenerational bonds, as well as border-crossing love (and, to an extent, sexuality), is filtered through a restyled maternal melodrama and staged against the backdrop of significant historical and cultural changes in the region and the world at the turn of a new century.

Beyond the “Treasure Island” While Chang as a Taiwan-born actress and director is a well-known entity among Chinese-language and pan-Asian audiences and critics, she is conspicuously absent in the growing body of scholarship in English on Taiwanese cinema, which has largely followed the conjoined model of auteur criticism and national cinema when it comes to non-Western cinemas. This model highlights male directors—in particular, those of the New Cinema movement—and their intellectual and aesthetic meditations on Taiwan’s ambivalent colonial legacy and cultural identity in a time of rapid modernization. Chief among these scholarly works is Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island by Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrel Davis, which offers an eloquent yet highly selective presentation of several old and new Taiwan masters of the cinematic art, devoting one chapter each to Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Ang Lee, and Tsai Ming-liang.6 June Yip’s intertextually woven and theoretically driven book, Envisioning Taiwan: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation in the Cultural Imaginary, on the other hand, cuts deeply into the cultural and postcolonial “imaginary” terrain that gave rise to the nativist writer Hwang Chun-ming and Hou Hsiao-hisen, and singles them out as true voices and potent seers for an alternative national consciousness.7 The list of “national treasures” in Chris Berry’s and Fei-i Lu’s anthology, Island 6 Yeh and Davis, Taiwan Film Directors. 7 Yip, Envisioning Taiwan.

54 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After, collects a few more names (or films), such as Wu Nien-jen and Chang Tso-chi, but the large bulk of the volume is again devoted to Yang, Hou, Lee, and Tsai (with four out of twelve essays on Hou alone).8 Guo-juin Hong’s Taiwan Cinema: A Contested Nation on Screen laudably delves into the historiography of colonial and pre-New Wave eras, but largely continues the male auteur line of inquiry.9 Taiwan Cinema, Memory and Modernity, the most recent book working with the globalization framework, has a somewhat more updated list of male auteurs (Wei Te-sheng and Chung Meng-hung) and one single woman director, Zero Zhou.10 Beyond these Taiwan-focused studies, the only woman included in Michael Berry’s Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers is the Hong Kong New Wave director Ann Hui, whose film career incidentally was launched with support from Chang.11 The almost exclusively male profile of Taiwan New Cinema and overall Taiwanese film historiography,12 along with the omission of female authorship (in various capacities), in the previously mentioned scholarly works is especially glaring given the relatively more visible presence of female directors in the Hong Kong New Wave and China’s Fourth and Fifth Generations, which emerged and flourished in the 1980s and early 1990s. While the fiction writer and scriptwriter Zhu Tianwen has received some attention thanks to her long-lasting collaboration with Hou Hsiao-hsien,13 Sylvia Chang’s prolific and innovative work has not been treated adequately. This is surprising given the fact that she starred in some of the most important New Cinema films (for example, Edward Yang’s That Day on the Beach 海灘的一天, 1983), which she helped plan. She also had leading roles in other Hong Kong New Wave directors’ films, including Jonnie To’s All About Ah Long 阿郎的故事 (1989, in which Chang is co-writer with her co-star Chow Yun-fat), Mable Cheung (Eight Taels of Gold 八兩金, 1989) and Stanley Kwan (Full Moon in New York 人在紐約, 1990). Her career behind the camera started as early as 1980 and seriously took off in the 1990s, punctuated by popularly or critically 8 Berry and Feii Lu (eds.), Island on the Edge. 9 Hong, Taiwan Cinema. 10 Chang, Taiwan Cinema, Memory and Modernity. 11 Berry, Speaking in Images. 12 Recently, the highly popular and influential woman writer and producer Qiong Yao has received some scholarly attention, but hardly any substantial work in English on her has been produced so far. Yingjin Zhang’s chapter on Taiwan cinema in his Chinese National Cinema has but one page on her as fiction writer (p. 140). For a pathbreaking study in Chinese on Yao’s work and its cultural significance, see Lin, Jiedu Qiong Yao ailing wangguo (Interpreting Qiong Yao’s Kingdom of Love). 13 See Lupke, “Chu Tien-wen and the Sotto Voce of Gendered Expressions.”

Migr ating Hearts

55

acclaimed f ilms such as Siao Yu 少女小漁 (1995), Tonight Nobody Goes Home 今天不回家 (1996), and Tempting Heart 心動 (1999). Her output has been consistently on relationships between women, work, and family in a changing world. The award-winning 20 30 40, a refashioned wenyi melodrama, focuses on the vicissitudes in love and professional lives of three women of different generations in cosmopolitan Taipei. Recent films, Murmurs of the Heart 念念 (2015) and Love Education 相親相愛(2017), pivot more to complex “family ethic melodrama”家庭倫理劇 (a long-lasting tradition in Chinese-language film history), probing sibling love and kinship between different generations of women within broader webs of social life. All the while, Sylvia Chang continued to thrive as an actress, performing in both her own and others’ films. Her role as a single working mother to three gay sons while running a family restaurant in Singapore’s Chinatown in Rice Rhapsody 海南雞飯(dir. Kenneth Bi, 2004) won her a Best Actress Award at the New Beach Film Festival (California, United States) in 2005. Her latest Best Actress Award was for her role as a daughter-in-law in Love Education at the 12th Asian Film Awards, which also honored her with the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Critic Sean Gilman is not exaggerating when he writes that Metrograph’s retrospective (May 18–27, 2018) of Chang’s fifteen films, which she directed or starred, provides “a crash course on Chinese language cinema of the last 40 years.”14 Several features of Chang’s border-crossing career and films may offer clues as to why her name and work have been excluded from the auteurist canons of the New Cinema or post-New Cinema. Like Ang Lee, Chang’s home base and work base tend to be more transnational than bound to the “treasure island.” She continuously shuffles her life and film locations between Hong Kong and Taiwan, while making occasional forays to Singapore, the United States, and Japan. After her father’s death in an accident, Chang spent her adolescence in Hong Kong and New York with her mother before returning to Taiwan at fifteen. While attending the Catholic Sacred Heart School in Taipei, she began her career in music, anchoring a radio program and singing on television. In 1972, as a budding teen pop singer and TV music host, she moved to Hong Kong, to play leading roles in Golden Harvest’s new kung fu films which were gaining global fame with Bruce Lee’s meteoric rise. However, she soon quit Golden Harvest, tired of the “flower 14 Gilman, “All About Sylvia Chang.” Chang’s transnational acting credit also includes the role of Sooni, a young Korean girl, in the TV series M*A*S*H (1979), a mainland immigrant in Soursweet (Mike Newell, United Kingdom, 1988), and as a musician from Shanghai in The Red Violin (François Girard, Canada/United Kingdom/Italy, 1998).

56 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

vase” roles in these male-hero-centered films and went back to Taiwan to star in several popular wenyi melodramas, working with Liu Chia-chang, Pai Ching-Jui and Lee Hsing, among other directors.15 Her craft was garnered, not from attending film schools in the West as several New Wave directors did, but through her deep immersion in the golden-age commercial cinema of Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1970s, working as an A-list actress with the preeminent Mandarin masters such as Lee Han-hsiang (Dream of the Red Chamber紅樓夢, 1977) and King Hu (Legend of the Mountain 山中傳 奇, 1979). In 1979, she inadvertently joined Hong Kong’s New Wave Cinema by producing and starring in Ann Hui’s first feature The Secret 瘋劫 (1979). Shortly after, she found herself at the forefront of the rising Taiwan New Cinema, planning, acting, and producing for emerging directors such as Edward Yang and Yu Kan-Ping, prompting some critics to call her the “mother of the new directors.”16 Rather than abandoning acting as she outgrew her teen idol image and young leading lady roles, Chang’s multitasking film career in front of and behind the camera confounds the conventional wisdom about stardom and authorship, especially with regards to women, as few if any in the world film history have been able to do, not to mention succeed in, both aspects of f ilmmaking over a lifetime. Chinese critics including Chen Feibao thus tend to characterize Sylvia Chang as a one-of-a-kind cainü 才女(“talented woman”), linking her to the genealogy of literary women in premodern Chinese cultural history produced or patronized by the patriarchal order.17 Since she is also a jiaren 佳人(“beauty”) by virtue of her profession as a movie star, her talents in areas (in particular directing) usually dominated by men are not taken as seriously as her performance onscreen. Interestingly, a rare scholarly article in English that introduces Chang’s work as a director connects her with another Taiwanese leading actress, 15 Li and Ernest Chan (eds.), Jiaodian yingren Zhang Aijia (Sylvia Chang: Filmmaker in Focus), pp. 7–8. 16 Chen, Taiwan dianying daoyan yishu, p. 232. In fact, a critical precursor to the Taiwan New Cinema is the anthology TV project, Eleven Women (1981), which Chang adapted from a collection of short stories by women writers and produced for Taiwan Television. She invited ten young filmmakers to join, each making one episode while she directed one, Our Sky, herself. The series was well-received and shortly after, Central Motion Picture Corporation (cmpc) sponsored In Our Time (1982), an omnibus that became the first Taiwan New Cinema film. See Li and Chan (eds.), Sylvia Chang, pp. 12–15, 86–89. 17 On the tradition of “talented beauty” in late imperial China, see, among other things, Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chamber, and Widmer and Kang-i Sun (eds.), Writing Women in Late Imperial China.

Migr ating Hearts

57

Yang Hui-shan.18 Shiao-ying Shen argues that traces of feminine writing, or écriture fèminine (from the French feminist writer Hélené Cixous), can be located and connected in Yang’s performing body and Chang’s film Siao Yu. A Taiwanese version of Gong Li ahead of the latter’s time, Yang’s viscerally and emotionally powerful portrait of suffering yet sexually autonomous women in a series of films by Chang Yi in the 1980s (Jade Love 玉卿嫂, 1984; Kuei-mei, A Woman 我這樣過了一生, 1985; This Love of Mine 我的愛, 1986) galvanized heated public debates on gender and sexual politics and injected an intense feminine presence in Taiwan’s film culture in an era of drastic sociopolitical and economic transformation. If Yang’s body-writing remained a circumscribed product of male authorship, the decline of the star system and the rise of the actress-turned-director Sylvia Chang and a new generation of actresses (such as Rene Liu Ruo-ying), who stars in Siao Yu and 20 30 40), observes Shen, allowed the emerging feminine writing initiated by Yang’s ambivalent performance to extend and ramify in a new era. Sylvia Chang’s career and work is better placed in the Sinophone cultural geography. As outlined in the introduction, the Sinophone as conceptualized by Shu-mei Shih and others applies not only to languages and speeches of Sinitic origin that have been historically displaced or relocated to areas away from the Chinese continent but also to non-Sinitic articulations in other forms of hybrid languages and media that permeate the life and expression of overseas Chinese worldwide. Thus, Shih sees Ang Lee’s early films, which are mostly about Chinese people past and present, in the mainland, Taiwan, and the United States, who speak “Chinese” with various inflections as well as English, as “Sinophone articulations” par excellence.19 Chang herself speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and English fluently; many of her characters do the same or with varying degrees of proficiency or accents. Some even speak Japanese and Malay (as in Tempting Heart, 20 30 40), indicating their migrating trajectories. Siao Yu is set entirely in New York, focusing on a young mainland immigrant couple (Siao Yu and her husband) and their emotional and legal entanglements with an aging Italian-American writer through a “green card marriage.” Although the film was produced by Central Motion Picture Corporation (cmpc), a government-sponsored corporation in Taiwan that was behind the Taiwan New Cinema, and has a predominantly Taiwanese cast and crew, the story and sensibility have little to do with or say about Taiwan. The fact that it is based on an original story by Yan Ge-ling, a mainland-born and United States-based woman writer whose mainland-set fiction was 18 Shen, “Locating Feminine Writing in Taiwan Cinema.” 19 Shih, Visuality and Identity, Chapters 1–2.

58 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

frequently adapted by Fifth Generation directors including Zhang Yimou, adds one more layer to Chang’s cinematic Sinophone écriture fèminine.20 Yen’s literary imagination, Liu’s nuanced performance in her screen debut, and Chang’s assertive co-writing and direction weave a compelling trans-Pacific tale of women’s capacity for survival and self-transformation.

Home(land) Is Not Where the Heart Is Whether melodrama is a genre or a mode has been widely debated in film studies, and critics and scholars of East and West have also contended on the applicability of the term to non-Western forms of melodrama. But one thing has stayed at the focal center of these debates: that the meaning of family and home undergirds the central mise-en-scène of the large bulk of film and television melodrama. The groundbreaking volume edited by Christine Gledhill that reshaped melodrama studies is entitled Home Is Where the Heart Is, referring to the centrality of the trope in the melodramatic tradition in the West, particularly in classical Hollywood cinema. No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema,21 Johannes von Moltke’s study on the genealogy of “Heimat film” in modern German cultural history, offers another variation on the enduring trope in the melodramatic imagination in the West. Chris Berry’s and Mary Farquhar’s engagement with revisionist melodrama studies in the context of Chinese-language cinema also affirms the persistent preoccupation with the home and family, but with an important twist. They stress that Chinese cinema’s preoccupation with melodrama and the meaning of home and family is intimately bound to the fate and definition of the nation at different historical moments and places in modern Chinese history. “All in all,” they observe, “melodramatic realism is a major strain in the Chinese cinema because its central theme of outraged innocence was often perceived as real in national, and not just personal, terms.”22 As 20 The script was initially adapted from Yen’s short story by Ang Lee and Yen. Lee passed on the job of directing it to Chang when he got signed up for Sense and Sensibility (1995). Chang says she fleshed out the Siao Yu character significantly after taking over the script. Siao Yu was a shadowy existence in the story and Lee’s script. Lee allegedly said, “I don’t care about this woman.” Chang replied, “Maybe you don’t care, but I care.” Li and Chan (eds.), Sylvia Chang, p. 26. 21 Von Moltke, No Place Like Home. As the author indicates in the preface, the book title and his main approach are inspired by Dorothy’s famous line at the end of Wizard of Oz. 22 Berry and Farquhar, China on Screen, p. 82.

Migr ating Hearts

59

a “mixed mode of the national,” melodramatic realism has been continuously utilized and reshaped to account for the “divided families, divided nation” and their restitution in various forms under different sociopolitical arrangements throughout Chinese film history (including Taiwan and Hong Kong). However, these painstaking efforts, often dictated by the hegemonic nation-building interests of the state (be it the Republic of China founded in 1911 or the People’s Republic of China founded in 1949), began to erode in the late twentieth century under the parallel and sometimes intersecting forces of postcolonial, post-socialist, and neoliberal experimentation. A number of New Wave films in the Chinese-speaking region, notably Allen Fong’s Father and Son 父子情 (1981), Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth 黄土地 (1984), and Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive l’amour 愛情萬歲 (1994), visibly articulate the “emptying out” of the family home in both cinematic registers and cultural imaginary.23 The term “emptying out” is first coined by the Taiwanese feminist scholar Chang Hsiao-hung in her trenchant analysis of Vive l’amour in which she argues that the emptied-out jia 家 (family home) on screen is indicative of changing Taiwanese society and culture, which deconstructed traditional Chinese family structure.24 While Fong’s and Chen’s films are deeply steeped in a neo-realist-cum-modernist ethos and aesthetic, Tsai’s films, in my view, mark out a new terrain of the melodramatic imagination that goes beyond not just “home” but also homeland, or nation. Tsai Ming-liang’s queer identity and Sinophone belonging as a Malay Chinese, along with his Buddhist faith, are important factors to consider in this regard. Sylvia Chang’s take on the family home trope at the heart of the Chineselanguage film tradition may not appear as philosophically and formally radical as Tsai’s. Yet her feminist perspective and her own less homeland-bound life and career are no less significant clues for understanding her interest in exploring the shifting parameters of the family home outside the allegorical space of the nation. While the family home is not exactly emptied out in her films, and sometimes a sense of home may even be restored (several of her films resort to some form of happy ending or closure), Chang’s interest in the enduring trope resides in its inherent gender problematic and its everyday expressions below or above the national scale, and beyond the prevalent allegorical deployment centered on “fathers and sons” (which also appears, albeit in a radically transmuted form, in Tsai’s films). An overview of the thematic concerns in Chang’s f ilms reveals the recurring motif of the incomplete family and its attendant anxieties and 23 Ibid., pp. 98–107. 24 Ibid., pp. 98–99.

60 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

experiments in love relations and family structure. Her films are heavily invested in pairing or clustering female protagonists, especially mothers, daughters, and sisters or quasi-sisters. Passion pivots around the ambivalent friendship of two middle-aged middle-class women, who were close girlfriends until they found themselves in love with the same man—a United States-trained lawyer. Mingyu marries the lawyer she works for as a secretary, fulfilling the typical “marry well” expectation of a socially mobile woman according to the normative gender codes even in a rapidly modernizing Taiwanese society. Bai Yun (played by Chang), a designer at an advertising company, has an affair with Mingyu’s newlywed husband. This results in a parallel shadow family, as the two friends each give birth to a daughter.25 The heteronormative contract in the form of marriage alienates but also strangely binds them together, as Bai Yun seems to knowingly get herself pregnant almost at the same time as Mingyu. (In the middle of the film, the two compare the sizes of their protruding bellies and give birth in the same hospital.) Bai Yun resorts to marrying another man for her daughter’s sake; but the lives of the two women and their children are now irrevocably connected. The secret love affair is unraveled—or more precisely, reflected upon— through a series of flashbacks during their meeting for lunch at a country club years later, confessing their mixed feelings about love and marriage. Taiwanese f ilm critic Huang Chien-ye disparages the “hateful” (恨意) theme of two women fighting over one man’s love even into his grave as fundamentally conservative, as they seem to linger on painful memories rather than seeking possible liberation. The device of flashback is thereby seen at the service of a regressive “fateful history” (命定歷史).26 The overwhelmingly elaborate sets, décor, and color palette of the film, along with the stylized performance of the two women in their maturity (outside of the flashbacks) invite a different perspective on the melodramatic configuration or stylization of gender relations. The film begins with the engagement ceremony at the lawyer’s home—later the couple moves to a brand-new “nuptial” house—but ends in a relatively open space outside domesticity, in a country club nestled in a lushly beautiful setting. This setting seems more theatrical than realistic—a hybrid, manufactured landscape of an emerging generic global upper-middle-class that cuts across 25 Li and Chan (eds.), Sylvia Chang, pp. 96–97. Chang had newly become a mother, giving birth to a son as an unmarried woman. As a celebrity, she also championed a new lifestyle option for independent women. 26 Huang, Renwen dianying de zhuixun (In Search of a Humanist Cinema), p. 202.

Migr ating Hearts

61

the American suburbs, European country estates, and Hong Kong and Taiwan’s nouveau riche playgrounds. (There are frequent references in the film to the American or European education of several male characters deemed more desirable as husbands.) The death of the lawyer, the love of each of their lives, effectively reunites the two lifelong girlfriends, joined by their daughters. As the day cools and the sun sets against an indigo blue sky, the children call the mothers to the dining table. As if bidding farewell to the guilt-ridden memories associated with the deceased man, Bai Yun says to Mingyu that the “past is full of too much fantasy” (幻想). She extends her hand to the latter and they walk with arms intertwined to the patio to join their daughters and a future son-in-law. Two roses stand in the middle of the table, behind them are the two friends smiling at each other intently, with candlelight flickering in their eyes. The somewhat surprisingly warm glow of the concluding scene foregrounds the overall artif ice of the f ilm’s mise-en-scène, especially in scenes set in the houses of the married couple and the country club. Hong Kong film critic Sek Kei sees the film as a refreshing take on the “typical middle-class sentimental wenyi film,” full of “women’s drama” though not quite “feminist.”27 Chen Feibao f inds, in the lavish décor reeking with “high-quality sense of material life” (高質感的物質生活), echoes of Qiong Yao film and television melodramas of the 1970s, and argues that it serves well for contrasting with Bai Yun’s simpler life as a youthful, tender-hearted working woman.28 I think, however, that the nearly clichéd upper-middleclass paraphernalia (from furniture to dress to tennis playing), drenched in an overly saturated color palette and unnatural lighting, resonates with Douglas Sirk’s postwar “Hollywood Baroque.” Sirk’s “ironic mise-en-scène,” according to John Mercer and Martin Schingler, “suggests a critique of bourgeois ideology that reveals wider conflicts and tensions that manifest themselves through the dominant cinema of the period.”29 The rejoining of the two girlfriends’ hands indeed puts an ironic spin on a key mise-en-scène element in the film—a painting of two intertwined hands suggesting intense erotic union that Bai Yun brings to her friend at the opening of the film [Figs. 1–2]. It has since been hung in the bedroom of the couple. While it is meant to be a token of Bai Yun’s blessing for the 27 Sek, “Yi rou ke gang: yinxiang Zhang Aijia” (Overcoming Hardness with Softness: Impressions on Sylvia Chang), p. 153. 28 Chen, Taiwan dianying daoyan yishu, p. 234. Incidentally, Sylvia Chang’s first award-winning role is a poor schoolgirl struggling with economic survival and moral obligations in Posterity and Perplexity (1976), adapted from Qiong Yao’s novel of the same title. 29 Mercer and Schingler, Melodrama, Genre, Style, Sensibility, pp. 39–40.

62 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig.1.1 A painting of two intertwined hands suggesting intense erotic union (Passion, 1986)

Fig.1.2 Two girlfriends rejoin their hands at long last (Passion, 1986)

newlywed, unwittingly the painting has become the witness to the fractured marriage at its inception. Huang is right to observe that the plot and the motivations of the characters are utterly “unrealistic,” but that critique does not take into account the hyperbolic nature of melodrama, especially the kind poised to expose the maddening strictures of bourgeois sensibilities and values, or illusions of happiness, especially as regards patrilineal family and social structures. In this context, Bai Yun’s realization that they, as young women, had too much “fantasy” about romantic love and marriage makes more trenchant sense. They may have been trapped in a historically overdetermined “fate,” but the “hatefulness” in their shared

Migr ating Hearts

63

act of remembrance is really directed at that past-tense fantasy or illusion that has estranged them. The redemptive trope of female bonding in Passion, reinforced by the friendship and sisterhood between their daughters (who seem oblivious to the family secret), finds continued expression and reconfigurations in her other works to follow. The Cantonese-spoken Sisters of the World Unite 莎 莎嘉嘉站起來 (Hong Kong, 1991) is explicitly structured around a pair of sisters and their divergent fates and choices with regard to love and work. Both struggle with their economic and emotional dependence (as housewives or mistresses) on men at home or at the workplace, and also with each other in trying to affirm their connection and mutual support. In Tempting Heart, two high school best friends, Xiaorou and Chen Li, again find their closeness tested and alienated by their attraction to a young man, a high school senior, and an amateur guitarist (played by Taiwanese-Japanese heartthrob Kaneshiro Takeshi). However, this tale of female bonding is filtered through a conscious queer lens, through which the female affection latent in Chang’s earlier films is articulated more saliently (a motif she returns to in 20 30 40).

Farewell to Love Tempting Heart differs from Chang’s earlier efforts in melodrama while retaining Chang’s favored sentimental tonality mixing tears and laughter. Here she shifts her focus to adolescent girls on the brink of social and sexual initiation, and sets a tale of triangular love beyond Hong Kong, in a transmetropolitan geography that includes Tokyo (and alludes to other global cities). Family and home are presented here as even more fragmented and unstable grounds for the formation of personhood and social and cultural cohesion. More notable is the deliberate framing of a local teen love story and its trans-Asian aftermath within the metanarrative of Cheryl (played by Chang), a middle-aged filmmaker developing the script together with a young screenwriter, as the work-in-progress story based on her own experience unfolds with trials and tribulations. To begin with, the two female protagonists’ bonding may be attributed to their tenuous ties to their own immediate families. Xiaorou lives with her unmarried aunt while her mother has emigrated to Canada (the father is hardly mentioned), where she tries to remarry and settle so that she could bring her daughter over. Xiaorou frequently sleeps over at Chen Li’s place, where her parents are barely seen. Several intimate scenes show the

64 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

two girls sleeping in the same bed, with arms or legs around each other. Chen Li is visibly in love with Xiaorou, whereas the latter perceives their mutual affection as a close friendship. Chen has a crush on Haojun when the three meet at a concert. Haojun is the only one among them with a visible but no less troubled nuclear family. The stern father derides his guitar playing and urges him to study harder to enter college while his soft-hearted mother looks silently on. The budding love between Xiaorou and Haojun is quickly snipped by Lin’s father and Xiaorou’s mother (who returns for Christmas) after the young lovers spend a cold night together in a hotel on Lantau Island. Xiaorou, presumably a virgin, is forced to get a medical check to see whether or not they have had sexual intercourse. Haojun is ordered to stop seeing her until he has passed the college exam, to fulfill Xiaorou’s mother’s expectation that he would be able to provide and care for her daughter. The misunderstanding between the three friends accelerates the premature ending of an innocent romance and an intimate female friendship. The plot takes a surprising turn after Haojun, having failed the exam twice, is sent off to Japan by his father to find his own way of life. He becomes a tour guide for Chinese tourists in Tokyo where Chen Li abruptly shows up and intrudes into his lonely life. The two lead a struggling immigrants’ life in a cramped apartment in Tokyo and reluctantly pass as a couple, as they realize their hearts belong elsewhere, to an aching yet carefree youthful past back in Hong Kong embodied by the memory of Xiaorou. Meanwhile, Xiaorou has grown into a fashion executive-cum-global-jetsetter. She has also taken her mother under her wings in her upscale apartment. On a business trip to Tokyo, she runs into Haojun and the two at long last consummate their love in her hotel room. All the while, Chen Li is in the know and confronts Haojun one day, “Let’s get a divorce… The truth is, all this time, we have been in love with the same woman.” Sometime later, she literally fades away from the triangulation after she dies of a fatal disease. A more conventional melodrama aimed at a satisfying resolution might have used Chen Li’s convenient disappearance to propel the reunion of the heterosexual couple, now that obstacles, including parental objection and socially unsanctioned same-sex love, are out of the way. Instead, the pathos induced by the “too-lateness” of a finally consummated love is not recuperated by the “just in time” effort to create a happy ending. Haojun flies to Hong Kong to propose to Xiaorou, beseeching her to move to Japan. Xiaorou hesitates, but no clear indication is given as to exactly why. In discussing this scene with her co-writer—a young man on the brink of marriage, Cheryl interprets it in terms of Xiaorou’s (her younger self) pragmatism or lack of

Migr ating Hearts

65

Fig.1.3 “These are the days when I missed you… Now I return them to you.” (Tempting Heart, 1999)

courage for a risk-taking move to a foreign country. Yet other elements in the film suggest that Xiaorou’s feelings and situations are constantly in flux. She has a coworker boyfriend who shares her everyday reality in Hong Kong, and she is practically her aging mother’s sole caretaker. Her ambition as a professional woman and her responsibility as a filial daughter (despite their earlier unhappy frictions) intertwine in paradoxical present tense, compounding modern aspirations and traditional moral obligations, whereas her love for both Lin and Chen Li has remained in the past. Encountering her youthful flame in Tokyo, while solving the mystery of Haojun’s sudden disappearance, only helps to affirm her distance from her past self—a teenage girl at the mercy of others’ emotional and economical provisions. Now in full possession of herself and her future, she has a change of heart and chooses not to marry Haojun, even though she could, and with her mother’s endorsement this time. But this choice comes at a cost—a profound sense of loss pervades the film’s epilogue, now overlapped onto Cheryl’s present life. Haojun moves on to marry a young Japanese woman, drifting further away from the orbit of his paternal homeland. After attending Chen Li’s funeral, Haojun (now in the form of an older man played by a different Japanese actor) bids Cheryl (the middle-aged Xiaorou) farewell at the airport and gives her a box. She opens it on the plane—it is filled with the snapshots of clouds that he took during his first wandering days after leaving Hong Kong, and on top of them is her high school portrait [Fig. 1.3]. Every picture is dated clearly— “these are the days when I missed you… Now I return them to you.” Cheryl looks tearfully out of the cabin window and her mind is swept away by the floating

66 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

clouds and an unmitigated sense of loss. The box has in essence delivered to her a broken heart and a time bomb that blasts open a deep-seated crater in her seemingly well-balanced life as a successful professional woman as well as a mother and wife (yes, in that order). The image of Xiaorou/Cheryl the jetsetter holding the box that contains a photographically condensed passion not fully lived is underscored by a chanting female voice overlaying, or mediated, by the vanishing “marvelous clouds” inducing an overwhelming pathos.30 This scene resonates with what Rey Chow has identified as a modern tradition of Chinese feminine expression of a deeply ambivalent “psychic interiority.”31 From Bing Xin’s fiction in the 1930s to Ann Hui’s film Song of the Exile 客途秋恨 (1990), Chow traces the recurrence of the motif of an educated woman’s struggle for self-identity vis-à-vis an enduring patriarchal kinship system that marginalizes deviant conducts and affects. Qiuxin (or “Autumn Heart”) in Bing Xin’s short story experiences a moment of regret or “belated illumination” for giving up love (and marriage) for individual growth and social worth after encountering her youthful lover (now a mature career/ family man). Hueyin, the world-weary female protagonist in Ann Hui’s autobiographical film is less trapped in a heteronormative fantasy than in a more entrenched Chinese patriarchal politico-ethical fortress that first excluded and then assimilated her Japanese mother. Their sense of melancholy and homelessness is “semiotically reexternalized or metaphorized as nature in the form of elements of seasons, west wind, late autumn, and so forth.”32 Even Hui’s ingenious use of the layered flashback and voice-over that unveil the impossibility of “psychic interiority” as a solution to modern female subjectivity cannot seem to counter the excess of the “ethnosocial stronghold” or “‘natural’ environment” of the Chinese family tradition.33 Despite the many affinities between Tempting Heart and Song of the Exile—in the uses of flashbacks, long temporal arc (allowing growth emplotment), voice-over, images of nature, not to mention the two filmmakers’ early collaboration—the sentimentalism culminating in Chang’s f ilm has a skewed relation to patriarchal tradition. In fact, fathers are seen as largely missing or inept in directing the young generation into a normative ethnocentric kinship system. The mothers are themselves adrift between 30 Peters, The Marvelous Clouds, pp. 254–60. 31 Chow, “Autumn Hearts.” 32 Ibid., pp. 88–89. 33 Ibid., p. 102.

Migr ating Hearts

67

conflicting values and sentiments, and, in the case of Xiaorou’s, between Hong Kong and Canada. As Hong Kong itself is faced with the historical rupture of the handover of 1997 (the film was made in its immediate aftermath), its equivocal and even painful relationships to two competing sovereign “homelands” (Britain and China) are often reflected in the multifarious explorations of gender and sexual identities, as well as cultural belonging on the Hong Kong screen in that period (see also Chapter 7). If many pre1997 Hong Kong films articulate a nostalgic longing for China as source of cultural roots (as embodied by the benign yet authoritative grandfather in Song of the Exile), the Taiwan-born Chang seems less lured by the “mainland complex.”34 The sense of loss as evoked by the “natural image” of the floating clouds at the film’s end flows not out of regret for a failed personal life (unmarried or childless) as an educated and socially ambitious woman (as in Bing Xin’s text), or for the passing of a paternal figure associated with an authentic cultural home (as in Hui’s film). Xiaorou/Cheryl in fact seems to have it all—career, family (child, husband, mother), and romance, except for a father. What she mourns on the plane is really her severed bonds with two sweethearts of her formative period—a culturally doubly marginalized young man and a queer girl.35 She herself may have realized that she is the survivor of a tumultuous recent past with confusing passions and identities and is now paradoxically the arbiter of a heteronormative “ethnosocial stronghold.” In the end, her heart-wrenching tears call for a renewed probing of the all-powerful affective machinery of the Chinese kinship system, which has shown its insidious capacity to recruit women for lubricating its operation and rejuvenation. Even though Cheryl is en route home to Hong Kong, a piece of her heart has been stolen and left among the vanished clouds the young Haojun meditated upon, and with Chen Li in her grave in Japan.

34 On the “Mainland Complex” or the “China Syndrome” in Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, see, Li, “The Return of the Father”; Yau, “Border Crossing”; and Teo, “Reverence and Fear.” 35 The male musician—often “emotionally or psychologically disturbed”—is a significant companion f iguration of the “feminine” emotions in classical woman’s f ilm. See Laing, The Gendered Score, especially Chapter 5. For this figure in early Chinese sound cinema, see Chapter 8 in my book, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896–1937. The casting of Kaneshiro as the young Haojun is not without significance here. Born in Taiwan, to a Japanese father and a Taiwanese mother, Kaneshiro’s bi-ethnic identity and multilingual gift made him a darling of contemporary East Asian cinema with a trans-Asian appeal. For an incisive analysis of his stardom, see Tsai, “Kaneshiro Takeshi.”

68 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Seismic Shifts in an Inter-Generational Saga Sylvia Chang’s fascination with generational bonds and rifts, especially those between mothers and daughters, is articulated with different emphasis in Passion and Tempting Heart, and with varying scales and styles of the transnational imaginary. In 20 30 40, this thematic concern receives a more playful treatment. What connects these three films—and, to an extent, Conjugal Affairs 新同居時代 (1994), which Chang co-produced, co-starred, and co-directed—is Chang’s multifarious authorial signature as a writer, director, and actress. Moreover, she consistently casts herself in the role of a middle-aged woman, and often a single or divorced mother at that, who juggles her multiple responsibilities, as well as her own desires. If Bai Yun in Passion remains mired in the sacrificial mold of maternal melodrama and the artifice of mise-en-scène, Cheryl’s role as a para-diegetic mother figure in relation to her off-screen daughter and to the evolving project as her brainchild shows a more experimental impulse in redefining the borders of love, home, and melodrama in a volatile time for Hong Kong society. 20 30 40 showcases, however, the polyrhythmic everyday life of a post-Y2K Taiwan through three parallel women’s tales wrought locally, regionally, and globally. Chang, Rene Liu Ruo-ying, and Lee Sin-je (aka Angelica Lee) play three women in convergent and divergent transitions. Their first simultaneous appearance (unbeknownst to each other) is at the airport. Lily (Chang), a forty-year-old florist, is busy video-filming her daughter and husband, both distracted by their cellphone calls. (They have just returned from a family vacation abroad.) Early in the f ilm, she divorces her husband after she discovers that he has kept another family in the same city—an unimaginable act for Mingyu in Passion. Xiang (Liu) is a thirty-year-old flight attendant who has several boyfriends but is eager to find Mr. Right to settle down with. She blames her itinerant profession as a hindrance to finding true love. Jie (Lee) is the wide-eyed twenty-year-old arriving from Malaysia, excited about her prospect of becoming a singer, only to be stranded in a foreign city where she experiences the first love of sorts—with a girl named Tong from Hong Kong. The latter, as it turns out, is in turn on a private mission to figure out her mother’s secret love object, a recording artist and agent (Anthony Wong) whose career goes nowhere (recalling the character Haojun in Tempting Heart). The film is an apt illustration of a trans-artistic commons. In the dvd bonus feature for 20 30 40, Sylvia Chang and her co-stars relate the creative process behind the film. [Fig.1.4] The title and the film initially came from

Migr ating Hearts

69

Fig. 1.4 20, 30, 40: Cross-generational collaboration between three actresses and singers

a song album idea—a collaborative project between the three screen-pop music idols of different generations.36 After realizing the broad significance behind the emblematic title connoting the best years of a woman’s life, Chang and her fellow singers and co-stars started a collective brainstorm, with each contributing autobiographical or semiautobiographical writings to an eventual script. This method invokes the metanarrative frame of the collaborative “script-developing” in Tempting Heart. While 20 30 40 does not explicitly include a similar storytelling device, it recalibrates it in other manners, such as Lily’s home-video filming (which Cheryl does in Tempting Heart as well, especially in the opening and ending scenes at the airport), and Jie’s and Tong’s shared audio dairy. As a result, the film, with its multidirectional, transmedia narrative lines crisscrossing Taipei’s urban geography, is by far the most polyphonic in articulating a Sinophone women’s world among Chang’s works. Here Chang probes the ambivalent generational relations beyond that of family confines by extending them to both the actors’ personal experiences and the larger world of women’s lives. Chang confesses that she initially found it hard to communicate with the novice Lee (perhaps in part because of her far younger age and a different national and cultural background), but the making of the f ilm allowed her to “grasp” (捕捉) Lee’s personality and acting style. Likewise, Lee is grateful for the opportunity to reflect on her experience as a newcomer to Taiwan from the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia; writing about it enabled her to connect with the subtle feelings her character has toward another girl. 36 Sylvia Chang, 20 30 40 (2004).

70 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

The making of the film in fact created an ad hoc family, enabling the three actresses to solidify their feminine and professional “kinship.” (Lee fondly says that “we are her children” in an interview years later.)37 Through a skillful orchestration of the mise-en-scène and deliberately loose-fitting narrative weaving, the film literally draws the three women— who remain strangers throughout the film—into the same neighborhood toward the end of the film. Resolute about changing her life’s direction, Xiang moves to an apartment near Lily’s flower shop. While hailing a taxi in front of the shop one morning, she meets the widower who had knocked on her door before, wanting to buy her old piano—a memento from her dead mother (a single mom and piano teacher)—for his young daughter. It turns out that the inn where Jie has been staying is also nearby. Homesick and broke, she wanders by the shop and peeks inside—perhaps the image of Lily surrounded by tropical flowers has reminded her of her mother back in Malaysia? Sensing her gaze, Lily turns around and is also reminded of her own daughter in Canada, who has decided not to come home for Christmas holidays. Lily has been struggling with loneliness and the daunting task of finding a new mate at the “too late” age of forty.38 The melodramatic coincidence at one urban intersection—here reconfigured as haphazard neighborly proximity—shows how the metropolis at once generates painful alienation for striving women, young or older, and connects them in positively “fateful” ways. A geological event provides a crucial linchpin of the three parallel tales of displacement and attachment. After Xiang gets home from the airport and barely utters the words “home, sweet home,” an earthquake strikes, and she ducks under for protection. [Fig. 1.5] A little while later, she turns on the TV for updates. On screen, Jie and her new friend are giggling, relating their earthquake experience to the reporter on the street outside their inn. What actually transpired between them in their room during the brief period of shock is revealed in the next sequence (the film as a whole is structured around synchrony and contiguity rather than linearity). The two girls, strangers a minute ago, are brought into a tight embrace by forces of nature when the heart of the earth experiences a sudden seizure. [Fig. 1.6] Lily’s life also takes a dramatic turn after the quake. Her shop is a mess but it is only when she must deliver flowers, unwittingly, to her husband’s mistress’s home, that she is really hit by the “aftershock.” [Fig. 1.7] A “family” portrait on the wall shows her husband smiling gleefully, and his young son emerges 37 Li and Chan (eds.), Sylvia Chang, pp. 82–85. 38 Ibid. Liu says, “Thirty is a paradoxical age in search of a sense of security… But it’d be just too late at forty …. [to settle].”

Migr ating Hearts

71

Figs. 1.5–7 Three women living in the same neighborhood experiencing an earthquake and its aftershocks

from the hallway. She immediately obtains a divorce and plunges herself headlong into the dating scene. “Why not? I’ll go for it if there is a good catch out there,” she says emphatically to herself in front of her bathroom mirror. She also takes up another project—caring for and talking to an older

72 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

woman in a permanent coma at a hospital.39 The film ends with an echo of the earlier quake, after Lily experiences another shock of betrayal (her love interest decides to follow his fiancée and her career to Beijing). Once again, we find her shaving her armpits in front of the mirror, sobbing, and repeating: “I’m an abandoned woman.” Just then, another earthquake hits the city. She shakes in fear but resolves to withstand the shocks by standing tall and holding up the shaving blade in the air. Her final utterance of “I’m an abandoned woman” is energized by the shockwaves and now carries the tone of defiance, implying “so what!” The geological event abruptly imparts a non-human scale, as it often happens in melodrama, on the follies of (hu)man society such as naturalized gender difference and discrimination, propelling a critical awareness of what anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli calls the “late liberal geontopower.” The characters as well as the spectators are shocked by the difference of Nonlife (the earthquake), realizing that “Life is merely a moment in the great dynamic of the unfolding of Nonlife.”40 Earthquake, serving as a metaphor for fateful transformation—is also poignantly encapsulated in Jie’s and Tong’s acceptance of their transient love. When Jie finally decides to go back to Malaysia, Tong bids her farewell at the airport. 41 She gives Jie a parting gift—a cassette tape with sounds of their shared moments in Taipei—the earthquake and many ordinary days and nights, including their breathing during sleep. “There are you and me inside it,” says Tong tenderly [Fig. 1.8]. The cassette tape, like the box containing pictures of emotion-ladden clouds in Tempting Heart, becomes a miniature time machine that rekindles murmurs of the heart and tremors of passion. The two may have failed in becoming “Twins”—a pop brand embodying a “hybrid and borderless world” concocted by their ineffective agent—but they have formed a deep bond and come to embrace their affection for each other. (Jie kisses Tong on her lips before proceeding toward the security check and passport control.) The earthquake has precipitated their rites of passage from home and homeland, as well as their discoveries of both the pain and richness of becoming women and citizens of the world. 39 This is an interesting variation of a similar motif in Edward Yang’s Yiyi (Yi Yi: A One and a Two, 2000), in which an extended Taipei family is thrown into a crisis after the matriarch falls into a coma. Members of the family re-confront the family’s history and their own place in it by taking turns talking or confessing to the comatose old woman. 40 Povinelli, Geontologies, p. 176. 41 The film was shot during the sars epidemic. Officials only allowed 50 people including the crew and extras on the scene at Taipei airport. Chang had the fifteen extras changing costumes between takes to manufacture the impression of a crowded airport, which was practically empty. Walsh, “What Woman Want.”

Migr ating Hearts

73

Fig. 1.8 Tearful parting at the airport (20 30 40, 2004)

The lighthearted feminist sentimentalism—no major accident, no death, no outrageous rebelliousness—of 20 30 40 departs from the more somber tone of the two earlier films in its investment in action over meditation, in the future rather than in past (hence the absence of the flashback structure and voice-over). Here Chang’s storytelling is not just from the regretful or circumspect perspective of a middle-aged professional woman, which more or less harks back to the aforementioned tradition of feminine melancholy in modern Chinese culture that Rey Chow incisively dissects. In refiguring the popular Chinese narrative formula “three women stage a drama” (三個女 人一台戲) into a transregional inter-generational saga, 20 30 40 offers a new wenyi melodrama without centering the affective energy on a single male protagonist. The stage the three women share is the city of Taipei and the multiple worlds with which it is connected. By virtue of their symbolic ages, they also perform the varying stages of womanhood—a lifelong process of becoming rather than attaining prescribed identities or roles. The objects of affection in turn become plural and more diffusive, heterosexual, or queer. The film’s plot and production are contemporaneous to its time. Released in the aftermath of the sars epidemic and actual earthquakes, the heart-rending and hopeful film about love, pain and acceptance proved to be healing and very popular. Momentarily suspending national and sociocultural references, the earthquake binds these women and the people around them affected by it and reminds us that each human being exists, moves, and changes with fellow beings. The earthquake motif accentuates what the late French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy calls the “turning” of the everyday. They are

74 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

both extraordinary (in terms of frequency) and ordinary earthly events—intensely localized yet regionally and globally resonant. The scattered narrative lines of 20 30 40 that loosely connect the particular phases each of the three (or four) women undergo illustrate the “interlacing” (l’entrecroisement) of strands whose extremities remain separate even at the very center of the “knot.”42 The “knot,” or the earthquake, may have pulled these lines together for a contingent period of time but does not subsume all the extensions that may lead to other points of interlacing and knot-tying. In its reiteration of the constant “local turning” or “circulation” of the everyday and the crisscrossing of trans-individual existence in contiguous temporal and spatial relations, we begin to appreciate in a serious way the seeming “middlebrow” sentimentalism of Chang’s “woman’s film” and its implications for an everyday feminist agenda. Such an agenda acknowledges the persistent social fantasy about a “normal” family structure as embodied by Xiang’s longing. She is the only one among the three who receives a happy ending in the form of (an implied) heterosexual union, albeit to a widower single father, and thus taking on the role of (step)mother in a kinship without blood ties. At the same time, this hardly militant agenda pushes the envelope of the “ethnosocial stronghold” of Chinese patrilineal kinship by allowing a range of other women characters in Chang’s body of work to seek alternative forms of attachment and intimacy without necessarily resorting to normative expectations or closures.

“Renaissance Woman” This chapter is an attempt to situate Sylvia Chang’s filmmaking in parallel to and dialogue with both Hong Kong and Taiwan New Wave cinemas in the 1990s and at the turn of the twenty-first century, within the contexts of an evolving Sinophone film culture and transcultural melodrama studies. My interest in the versatile authorship of this “renaissance woman”43 has led me to focus on her triple screen signatures as actress, writer, and director, as most visibly inscribed in Passion, Tempting Heart, and 20 30 40. Her comprehensive skill sets in filmmaking make her nearly a one-of-a-kind phenomenon in the Chinese-language film world. The conspicuous lack of scholarly interest in her work within both Chinese-language film studies and 42 Nancy, Being Singular Plural, pp. 5, 9–10. 43 The epithet is coined by an online fan, see Anonymous, “Sylvia Chang Pictures.” http:// www.brns.com/pages3/sylvia1.html.

Migr ating Hearts

75

women’s world cinema studies may in part be attributed to the tenacious traditions of auteur criticism and art cinema canon-making underlying the foundation of film studies as an academic discipline. It became more entrenched when a whole generation of scholars and critics was preoccupied with a narrowly interpreted model of national cinema (and “national style”). The preference for an austere and largely masculine modernist and intellectual style of (purportedly non-Western) filmmaking has created a certain critical myopia and even discrimination against middlebrow melodrama, especially those addressed to women by women, regarding it as aesthetically conventional and socially conformist. This kind of perception risks relinquishing opportunities for understanding the richness and complexity of melodrama as the thermometer of a society’s fluctuating body temperature, especially when a woman filmmaker creatively rewrites this globally favored mode of storytelling in Sinophone cinema. Moreover, the transnational horizon of Chang’s themes and characters and her worldly feminism place her films in a broader cultural geography of gender and sexual politics, 44 in relation to reconsiderations of the meanings of the individual, family and kinship, community, and the natural environment. The deep bonds between women—sisters, daughters, mothers, girlfriends, and coworkers—in Chang’s films manifest a sustained effort to construct a feminine world empowered by memory, affect, and solidarity. In consistently playing the role of the mother herself, varying from the sacrificial mistress to the confident provider with her own desires, Chang has also refashioned the maternal melodrama in this set of films with an embodied authorial signature. Whereas Ang Lee famously made his contribution to the post-New Cinema and Chinese-language melodrama film through his “Father Knows Best” trilogy (Pushing Hands, 1991; Wedding Banquet, 1993; and Eat Drink Man Woman, 1994), what I would like to call “women’s love” trilogy by Sylvia Chang discussed in this chapter, and the two recent films she co-wrote and directed, demonstrate that mothers know even more. Not merely a “mother of the new directors” in her capacity as a producer and leading actress, Chang is also the proud mother of her own films. In her versatile, prolific career as actress, singer, producer, writer, director, and festival jury (and chairwoman of the Golden Horse Film Festival), Chang has tirelessly crisscrossed Sinophone and world cinema in the past 44 The queer subtexts in Chang’s films partake in a broad cultural discourse and social formation. For scholarly work on queer cultural practices in Hong Kong and Taiwan at the turn of the century, see for example Leung, “Queerscapes in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema”; Martin, Situating Sexualities in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Culture; and Lim, Celluloid Comrades.

76 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

four decades. 45 She has performed in more than a hundred films (and TV series) and was nominated and awarded as best actress and best supporting actress numerous times. As a screenplay writer and director, her name also appeared frequently as a nominee and awardee at the Golden Horse Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Awards, and Asia-Pacific Film Festival, and so on. Love Education won her five awards in various categories in 2018. The same year, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 12th Asian Film Awards. Outside Asia, 20 30 40 was nominated for the Golden Bear Best Film category at the 54th Berlin International Film Festival in 2004. (Chang had served on the jury at the same festival back in 1992.) In 2018 she was a jury member in the main competition section at the 75th Venice Film Festival. The aforementioned New York’s Metrograph retrospective of her accomplishments in acting, producing, writing, and directing, if belatedly, brought her unique body of work to serious critical attention in North America. Chang’s contribution to world cinema, not least in her persistent exploration of the “woman’s film,” has made her a preeminent embodiment of Sinophone cine-feminism dedicated to the building of a transnational intimate-public commons through moving images.

Bibliography Berry, Chris, and Mary Farquhar. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Berry, Chris, and Feii Lu (eds.). Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005. Berry, Michael. Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Chang, Ivy I-chu. Taiwan Cinema, Memory and Modernity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Chen, Feibao 陈飞宝. Taiwan dianying daoyan yishu (台湾电影导演艺术) [The Art of Taiwan Directors]. Taipei, Yatai, 1999. Chow, Rey. “Autumn Hearts: Filming Feminine ‘Psychic Interiority’ in Song of the Exile.” In Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films. Columbia University Press, 2007. 85–104. Doane, Mary Ann. The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s. Bloomington, IN: Indian University Press, 1987. 45 Chang is also an executive producer of Concrete Clouds (Lee Chatametikool, Thailand, 2013), awarded Best Film at Thailand National Film Awards.

Migr ating Hearts

77

Gilman, Sean. “All About Sylvia Chang.” mubi, 2018. https://mubi.com/notebook/ posts/all-about-sylvia-chang. Gledhill, Christine (ed.). Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute, 1987. Gledhill, Christine. “The Melodramatic Field.” In Christine Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute, 1987. 5–39. Hong, Guo-juin. Taiwan Cinema: A Contested Nation on Screen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Huang, Chien-ye 黃建業. Renwen dianying de zhuixun (人文電影的追尋) [In Search of a Humanist Cinema]. Taipei, Yuanliu, 1990. Ko, Dorothy. Teachers of the Inner Chamber: Women and Culture in Seventeenth Century China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. Laing, Heather. The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2007. Leung, Helen Hok-sze, “Queerscapes in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema.” positions 9. 2 (2001): 423–47. Li, Cheuk-to. “The Return of the Father: Hong Kong New Wave and Its Chinese Context.” In Nick Browne et al. (eds.), New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. Cambridge University Press, 1994. 160–79. Li, Cheuk-to 李焯桃 and Ernest Chan 陳志華 (eds.), Jiaodian yingren Zhang Aijia (焦點影人張艾嘉) [Sylvia Chang: Filmmaker in Focus.] Hong Kong: Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (香港國際電影節協會), 2015. Lim, Song Hwee. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2006. Lin, Fangmei 林芳玫. Jiedu Qiong Yao aiqing wangguo (解讀瓊瑤愛情王國) [Interpreting Qiong Yao’s Kingdom of Love], Taipei: Commercial Press, 2006. Lupke, Christopher. “Chu Tien-wen and the Sotto Voce of Gendered Expressions in the Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien.” In Lingzhen Wang (ed.), Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 274–92. Martin, Fran. (2003). Situating Sexualities in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Culture. Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Mercer, John, and Martin Shingler. Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility. London and New York: Wallflower, 2004. Moltke, Johannes von. No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Nancy, Jean-Luc. Being Singular Plural. Trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Peters, John Durham. The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

78 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Povinelli, Elizabeth. Geontologies: A Requiem for Late Liberalism. Duke University Press, 2016. Sek, Kei 石琪. “Yi rou ke gang: yinxiang Zhang Aijia” (“以柔克剛: 印象張艾嘉”) [Overcoming Hardness with Softness: Impressions on Sylvia Chang]. In Li Cheuk-to and Ernest Chan (eds.), Jiaodian yingren Zhang Aijia (焦點影人張艾 嘉) [Sylvia Chang: Filmmaker in Focus.] Hong Kong: Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (香港國際電影節協會), 2015. Shen, Shiao-ying. “Locating Feminine Writing in Taiwan Cinema: A Study of Yang Hui-shan’s Body and Sylvia Chang’s Siao Yu.” In Sheldon H. Lu and Emilie Yue-yu Yeh eds., Chinese-language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. 266–79. Shih, Shu-mei. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Sylvia Chang Pictures, http://www.brns.com/pages3/sylvia1.html. Tan, Tammi. “Sylvia Chang Says the Birth of Her Son, Who Was Kidnapped as a Child, Is the ‘Greatest Challenge’ She Has Ever Had.” November 7, 2021. https://www. todayonline.com/8days/sylvia-chang-says-birth-her-son-who-was-kidnappedchild-greatest-challenge-she-has-ever-faced. Teo, Stephen. Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions. London: bfi, 1997. Tsai, Eva. “Kaneshiro Takeshi: Transnational Stardom and the Media and Culture Industries in Asia’s Global/Postcolonial Age.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 17.1 (Spring 2005): 100–32. Walsh, Bryan. “What Woman Want.” May 15, 2004. http://www.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,600935,00.html. Widmer, Ellen, and Kang-i Sun (eds.), Writing Women in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Yau, Esther. “Border Crossing: Mainland China’s Presence in Hong Kong Cinema,” in Nick Browne et al. (eds.), New Chinese Cinemas, 180–201. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu. “Wenyi and the Branding of Early Chinese Film.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6.1 (2012): 65–94. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu, and Darrel Davis. Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Yip, June. Envisioning the Nation: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation in the Cultural Imaginary. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Zhang, Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896-1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Zhang, Zhen. “Transplanting Melodrama: Observations on the Emergence of Early Chinese Narrative Film.” In Yingjin Zhang (ed.), A Companion to Chinese Cinema. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 25–41.

2

Floating Light and Shadows Huang Yu-shan’s Chronicles of Modern Taiwan “For me and my creative life, southern Taiwan is not just the earthly mother, but the homeland of my heart.” —Huang Yu-shan 1

Abstract Chapter 2 focuses on Huang Yu-shan, co-founder of Women Make Waves International Film Festival, feminist scholar, and director of a large body of narrative and documentary films, some of which are docu-fiction hybrids. Among the defining characteristics of her films are a deep commitment to women’s issues, local culture (especially her native Penghu Island and the south), and postcolonial Taiwan historiography. Keywords: Penghu Islands, Women Make Waves International Film Festival, docu-fiction hybrids, modern Taiwan art, postcolonial historiography

The last scene of The Strait Story 南方紀事之浮世光影 (2005) epitomizes Taiwan filmmaker Huang Yu-shan’s 黃玉珊 deep attachment to the island nation’s southern landscape. In East Pond 池東, Penghu Islands 澎湖島2, protagonist Hsiu-hsiu, an art conservationist from Tainan, pays respect 1 My heartfelt thanks go to Huang Yu-shan for her friendship, wisdom, and generous support (including mailing dvds and print material, patiently answering my queries, offering constructive comments on an early draft, and, above all, showing me her beloved southern Taiwan; and to novelist Yeh Tze-lin for our unforgettable trip to Penghu; to Ting-wu Cho for assisting my research on this chapter. 2 Penghu is a small archipelago made of a string of islands off the western shore of Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait. Isolated but strategically located, it was penetrated by strong Japanese colonial dominance. During the Cold War, Penghu was made famous by an eponymous “campus” ballade paying homage to its beautiful tropical landscape. I learned the song and fantasized about the place in my adolescence in the prc.

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_ch02

80 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

to colonial-era artist Huang Ching-cheng’s 黃清埕 tombstone (dedicated to him and Lee Kui-hsiang, his wife). She has been working on his newly found paintings while trying to piece together his life story. Standing by the seaside, under a sky of melancholy, purple-gray clouds floating in an enchanting light, Hsiu-hsiu bows to the tombstone, hair flowing in the strong wind. The film abruptly ends here in a freeze-frame that looks almost like a painting by the artist. Arriving at the source of the shimmering light and intriguing shadows in Huang’s paintings, Hsiu-hsiu has literally entered the iridescent landscape both as a place and art. This scene is also emblematic of the film as a cinematic intervention in Taiwan’s modern art historiography, as indicated by the Chinese title of the film, literally, “Chronicles of the South in Floating Light and Shadows.” The plot centers on the protagonist’s (and Huang Yi-shan’s) uncle Huang Ching-cheng, a talented young artist who cofounded, with several Taiwanese artists, the mouve group in Tokyo but died prematurely in a tragic shipwreck in 1943 on his return from studying in Japan. Both the narrative feature and the documentary, The Forgotten: Reflections on Eastern Pond 池東紀 事 (2006), made at the same time, demonstrate Huang’s deep interest in the intertwined histories of modern Taiwanese politics, culture, art, and literature. Huang’s penchant for weaving together multiple points of view across different cinematic modes over time has become a distinctive authorial trait. To project the forgotten historical figures and artistic visions on screen, geography and landscape in Huang’s (both fiction and non-fiction) cinema become saturated with everyday life, memories, and pathos. Her engagement with the environment of the south echoes yet differs from the mainstay of Taiwan New Cinema’s insistence on the country’s geo-cultural identity through a nostalgic backward glance at either the mainland or Taiwan’s native soil hsiang-tu 鄉土.3 Less concerned with the waishengren (originally from the mainland) diasporic sentiments as seen in, for example, Hou Hsiao-hisen’s early works,4 landscape and natural elements in Huang’s cinema are more regionally specific and imbued with an uncanny power in shaping and portraying her characters—especially women’s strength and growth. They carry both documentary indexicality and emotional intensity, textured with moving details and tonality, visually and aurally. An organic presence, landscape is cinematically portrayed as integral to the 3 On Taiwan New Cinema’s roots in the nativist literature, see Yip, Envisioning Taiwan. 4 Hou was born in Guangdong province, China, in 1947. His family moved to Taiwan fleeing the civil war in 1948. This background is, with a mixture of melancholia and nostalgia, poetically treated in his A Time to Live, A Time to Die (1985).

Floating Light and Shadows

81

historical experience of modern Taiwan, especially the south where most of Huang’s films are set and made. Huang’s “authorship of place” is rooted in the southern locations where she has produced her films, organized film festivals, and taught filmmaking and film history for decades, embodying the late cultural geographer Yi-fu Tuan’s notion of “emplacement”—“a process of engaging with and within one’s social, material, and imagined environments that make a space feel intimately familiar, visible, and knowable.”5 Embedded in and embodying this distinctive landscape and historically evolving geography are women like Hsiu-hsiu, who overcome debilitating or constraining conditions, and obtain agency and insight. While both Huang and Sylvia Chang (discussed in the previous chapter) belong to the second wave of Taiwan New Cinema and are concerned with women’s place in society, they diverge significantly in style and focus. Chang’s contemporary wenyi melodrama is largely set in urban and cosmopolitan middle-class milieus where Mandarin is a primary language. Indeed, Huang’s films consistently also present a gallery of female characters of different ages, yet they are from varying class backgrounds, nourished or constrained by the specific regional, often benshengren 本省人geo-cultural environments surrounding them. Huang’s cinema is, moreover, audibly southern accented, with Taiwanese (or Minnan topolect) used as a primary language, especially in films set in the colonial era. The women in her films appear headstrong against the oppressive social pressures, often symbolized by ambiguous mise-en-scène of natural forces, and struggle to attain new vistas of their own and their communities’ existence. My discussion of Huang’s cinema is grounded within the context of Taiwan New Cinema as well as a nascent feminist movement, as Taiwan emerged as an open democratic society during this period in the last two decades of the twentieth century and into the new millennium, while paying attention to the close connections between Huang’s work and the historiography of modern Taiwanese art and culture.6 Highlighting and 5 As quoted in Lo and Shakes, The Authorship of Place, p. 19. Challenging the text-centric approach in auteur studies, the authors practice a type of “location studies” employing interviews and location visits to concretize the meaning of place-making, especially rural places, in several male auteurs, notably Hou Hsiao-hsien and Jia Zhangke. While I appreciate their methodology, the male-auteur-centric approach, unfortunately, continues the gender bias in the bulk of Chinese-language cinema studies. 6 Existing English-language scholarship on Taiwanese women filmmakers is very limited, especially when compared to those of the mainland and Hong Kong. In Chinese Women’s Cinema edited by Lingzhen Wang, for example, only three chapters concern Taiwan, including one by me on Sylvia Chang. Another chapter is about Chu T’ien-wen, the famous novelist and screenwriter with whom Hou Hsiao-hsien has frequently collaborated. See Lupke, “Chu Tien-wen and the Sotto Voce of Gendered Expressions in the Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien,” pp. 274–92. The third

82 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

reading Huang’s work within the general context of Taiwanese film history not only serves the purpose of rediscovering an important woman director overshadowed by male auteurs widely known outside of Taiwan, but also enables us to reconsider, from a historical feminist perspective, the parameters and spectrum of melodramatic realism for representing the Taiwanese experience of modernization and decolonization before and beyond Taiwan New Cinema’s golden age in the 1990s. I focus on key thematic and formal characteristics, including the centrality of female bonding and growth, the integration of landscape and character development, and the fiction and non-fiction hybrid in Huang’s films during 1988–2008, her most prolific period on multiple fronts. To this end, I synthesize a number of interviews and critical commentaries on Huang’s work in Chinese,7 along with my conversations with her. My research trips to Taiwan, especially visits to her studio office in Taichung, her hometown in the Penghu Islands, the city of Tainan with her as a guide, and the Tainan National University of the Arts (tnnua) where she taught for over a decade until recently, also allowed me to experience the landscape and culture of southern Taiwan that is at the heart of Huang’s work in a tangible way.

Daughter of the South A brief biographical sketch is instructive to better understand Huang’s filmmaking and related practices. Born in Penghu in 1954 during the heyday of the Cold War, Huang grew up in the port city of Kaohsiung 高雄 in southern Taiwan. After graduating from Cheng-chi University with a degree in Western Languages and Literatures in 1976, she took up several jobs as an art magazine editor, script girl,8 and film critic. Deciding to broaden her horizons and acquire academic training in film, she went to the United States and studied film at the University of Iowa before enrolling in the Department of Cinema Studies’ master’s program at the Tisch School of one, “Post-Taiwan New Cinema Women Directors and Their Films: Auteurs, Images, Language,” is translated from an article in Chinese, which paints a collective portrait of contemporary Taiwanese women filmmakers including Sylvia Chang, Huang herself, and Zero Zhou. Huang and Wang, “Post-Taiwan New Cinema Women Directors and Their Films: Auteurs, Images, Language.” 7 Collected on Huang’s own blog site. Available online: http://yushan133.pixnet. net/blog. 8 Huang apprenticed with Taiwanese director Lee Hsing during 1977–1979, serving as script girl or assistant director on Never Gives Up (1978), Story of a Small Town (1979), Good Morning, Taipei (1979). Huang and Wang, “Post-Taiwan New Cinema Women Directors and Their Films,” p. 140.

Floating Light and Shadows

83

the Arts in New York University in 1980.9 While in New York, Huang formed friendships and professional relationships with fellow Taiwanese students, including Ang Lee, also native to southern Taiwan. Huang is one of the few women directors in postwar Taiwan to have enjoyed a long career, played a leading role in the community and institutional building, and consciously infused a feminist vision into her work as part of or in parallel with Taiwan New Cinema. Huang’s career straddles many media and realms; she is a filmmaker, fiction writer,10 stage director, educator, scholar, public intellectual, and feminist activist. Her cinema involves occasionally working with major studios such as the commercial Cosmopolitan Co. (associated with the Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong) and the government-owned Central Motion Picture Corporation (cmpc) in Taiwan, but largely consists of independent works outside the mainstream industry. Huang spearheaded the Taiwan Women’s Visual Arts Festival 台灣女性視覺 藝術節 in 1993, in collaboration with the Women Awakening Association, laying the grounds for the now world-famous Women Make Waves International Film Festival. [Fig. 2.1] In an article published in the journal Inter-Asian Cultural Studies in 2013, Huang recalls the background and early activities of the festival. Stressing the interdependence between the festival and the women’s rights movement, she mentions the festival’s close ties with the Women’s Rights Promotion Association, public television, Alliance of Community of Mothers, and Women Rescue and Support Association. These organizations made and sponsored film projects that are “not only about people or events told from female viewpoints and consciousness, they are also films that have exposed and written a new truthful ‘herstory,’ which was once repressed and erased.”11 Black and White Film Studio, her cottage-industry style company, which organized and sponsored the early editions of the festival and other art events, was also dedicated to distributing small-budget independent films, including Vival Tonal: The Dance Age 跳舞時代 (Kuo Chen-ti and Chen Wei-ssu, 2003), which won the Golden Horse Best Documentary Award in 2004.12 9 In Iowa City and New York University she worked with, among others, Dudley Andrew, David Bordwell, Kristine Thompson, Peter Wollen, Annette Michelson, Jay Leyda, Brian Winston, and George Stony. 10 Her collection of short stories or novellas written between 1974 and 1991, Shi nian zhi yue (Rendezvous after a Decade), was published under the pen name Ke Li in Taiwan in 1991. In the preface, the author describes the female protagonists in the collection as having grown from inexperienced young women chasing the dream of love and life adventure to self-conscious feminists embedded in social transformations (p. 3). 11 Huang, “‘Creating and Distributing Films Openly’.” 12 See the studio’s website: http://yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/category/1555780.

84 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 2.1 First Taiwan Women’s Visual Arts Festival, 1993. (Huang Yu-shan, fourth from right in the back row) (Courtesy of Huang Yu-shan)

Huang’s work as a whole is defined by a deep commitment to women’s issues as part of a larger social movement, to the culture and environment of the Penghu Islands and the south, and to the historiography of postcolonial Taiwan. Well-educated, and widely traveled, Huang is nonetheless firmly rooted in the south of Taiwan which has nurtured her creative imagination. While studying and working in Taipei, she frequently visited family and shot her films in Tainan, where her father had studied and worked. After the September 21, 1999 earthquake, Huang decided to move back south permanently, taking up a position at the tnnua where she taught filmmaking, film culture and industry, Asian cinema, women’s cinema, and independent film while hosting an annual Sinophone cinema forum. Her Black and White Film Studio was later relocated to Taichung, the gateway city to the Penghu Islands, and proximate to the tnnua campus in the rural south. Teaching and administrating the university’s Audio-Visual Documentation and Moving Image Preservation Research Institute 音像 纪录与影像维护研究所—the first institution in Taiwan offering graduate degrees in documentary making and film preservation—consumed much of her time and energy. She has helped train a large number of filmmakers, many women (including Jasmine Ching-hui Lee—see Chapter 6), who formed a major force in Taiwan’s New Documentary movement. Meanwhile, Huang continued to make and produce films, and founded the South Taiwan Film Festival 南方影展 and Kaohsiung International Film Festival 高雄國

Floating Light and Shadows

85

際電影節 in 2001, promoting the film culture of the south and connections with regional and global alternative cinema. In short, Huang’s authorship is not solely or readily evident in the form of a distinctive auteur style, but rather evolved from and is imbricated in a cluster of creative, critical, pedagogical, and institutional practices. As a way of tracing her career across many realms, including narrative and documentary, melodrama and realism, public sphere and artistic world, my discussion below revolves around Huang’s early “Feminist Tetralogy” and, subsequently, what I call the “The Postcolonial Tetralogy,” which The Strait Story inaugurated.

The Feminist Tetralogy Huang’s filmmaking career, riding the waves of the New Cinema,13 quickly took off upon her return to Taiwan in 1982.14 Three narrative features, Autumn Tempest 落山風 (1988), Twin Bracelets 雙鐲 (1989), and Peony Birds 牡 丹鳥 (1990), earned critical acclaim at home and abroad.15 Several years later, Huang made Spring Cactus 真情狂愛 (1998), a bold work of documentary realism closely based on a real incident that explored the sharper edges of gender and sexual politics in urban Taiwan under rapid modernization.16 This series of films marked the rise of a talented and socially committed filmmaker at a time when Taiwan was undergoing radical socioeconomic and political transformations, from the Nationalist Party’s authoritarian rule under martial law (officially lifted in 1986) to an open democratic society. The new cinema movement was burgeoning, even though the Taiwanese film market was in a slump due to the dominance of Hong Kong and Hollywood films, exacerbated by the avalanche of the vhs technology and 13 The start of Taiwan New Cinema is commonly associated with the release of the omnibus film In Our Time (1982). The four male directors are Edward Yang, Ko I-chen Ko, Tao Te-chen, and Chang Yi. Other well-known directors include Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wang Jen, and Wu Nien-chen. 14 Two documentary shorts won top awards and showed her promise as a newcomer and her first feature-length documentary, Letter from Taipei (1985), won the best documentary award at the Golden Horse Film Festival, the most important festival for Chinese-language cinema in the region. 15 These include the Shanghai International Film Festival, Creteil Women’s Film Festival in Paris, the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in San Francisco (Audience Award for Best Feature), and the India International Film Festival. 16 Spring Cactus was shown at festivals in Manila, Chonju, and New York’s Taiwan Women’s Film Festival, and was the closing film at the Chicago Asian American International Film Festival in 2000.

86 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

piracy culture. Concomitantly, a feminist movement had been gathering momentum in Taiwan17 Huang was engaged in these parallel movements, connecting filmmaking with feminist causes, as exemplified by her first three films comprising a “Trilogy of Erotic Desire” 情慾三部曲 with its focus on women’s plight and rights, desire, and resistance, which extended into the “Feminist Tetralogy” 女性主義四部曲 after Spring Cactus was released.18 Notably, the titles of the three films indicate the significant role Taiwan’s natural environment (season, landscape, climate, birds, and plants) plays in narrative and character development. As I will analyze in some detail below, this intimate relationship between nature and culture, for instance, in the dramatic link between the windy hilltop and the female protagonist’s desire and growth in Autumn Tempest, and the caged bird in Peony Birds, is a consistent feature of Huang’s cinema that blends melodramatic mise-enscène, modernist stylistic features, documentary impulses, and historical reflections. These early works exposing women’s suffering, female bonding, and subjectivity effectively established Huang as an important member of the second-wave Taiwan New Cinema. She was fortunate to benefit from cmpc’s government-sponsored program supporting new filmmakers including Ang Lee, Tsai Ming-liang, Sylvia Chang, and herself. However, the social and economic conditions for women filmmakers remained constrained. In 1988, shortly after the lifting of the forty-year-long martial law, Huang founded the independent Black and White Film Studio as a platform for promoting women’s film production and distribution. Peony Birds was among the first works it produced and released. The film’s framing imagery of the caged “love birds” eager for freedom is indicative of the zeitgeist and a burgeoning feminist cinema. The tetralogy as a whole is informed by an unabashedly feminist perspective, characterized by an acerbic critique of patriarchal oppression of women and sophisticated construction of female subjectivity through woman-centered points of view and innovative cinematic storytelling. Huang admits that her background in literary modernism, especially its emphasis on the unconscious and subjective, crisscrossing viewpoints, has informed her filmmaking. This is observable, for example, in the dream or hallucination scenes shot and edited to simulate or enhance sensorium or delirium, in which the female protagonists process repressed memories and 17 See Chen (ed.), (En)Gendering Taiwan. On the entry of feminism into Taiwanese academia, see Chapter 8 (in the same volume) by Chou, “Gendering of Academic in Taiwan.” 18 These are Huang’s own terms, and commonly used by Taiwanese film critics as well.

Floating Light and Shadows

87

emotions, on their way to regaining renewed consciousness and knowledge. A telling instance can be found toward the end of Peony Birds, when the daughter in her liminal state (following a suicidal attempt) sees a series of fragmented images of the bird cage, father’s tomb, and ghostly wedding procession amid fire, while her mother is performing a ritual before the tomb and burns a portrait of herself, painted by a lover in their youth, to appease the dead. The two women’s antagonism seems to dissolve in this overlaid moment of communion, mediated by f ire, ritual, and cinema (editing).19 Huang’s approaches go significantly beyond previous representations of women in the male-dominated Taiwanese film industry. Taiwanese critic Shi Wan-jong observes that Huang’s films forego the spectacle of suffering, and instead portray women who are “no longer submerged river goddesses or flat mother images, but appear as unique and lively individuals, endowed with the capacity to speak.”20 According to Huang’s own research, under the authoritarian regime, women’s screen images tended to be of chaste or sacrificial farm girls, songstresses, teachers, and factory workers, who have to compromise their desire and freedom for the family and the nation’s stability and prosperity, especially in the so-called “Health-Realist” films and popular Qiong Yao romances.21 Women of different ages and class backgrounds in Huang’s films appear complex and persistent even when circumstances lead them to desperate actions. In Autumn Tempest,22 Su Pi, wrongly blamed for infertility and rejected by her husband and mother-in-law, discovers her own sexual desire 19 Lu, “Special Interview with Huang Yu-shan.” Huang was interested in applying some aspects of experimental cinema theory and practice to her work, trying to move away from the predominant static long take favored by male directors of Taiwan New Cinema. 20 Quoted in “Nü ying xian chang” (On the scene of women’s cinema), Chinese Women’s Film Festival, Beijing’s Next Wave exhibition and forum. 21 Huang’s article in Chinese, “Nüxing yingxiang zai Taiwan — nüxing dianying fazhan chutan” (Female Screen Images in Taiwan—Exploring the Development of Women’s Cinema) offers a comprehensive overview not just of the changes of female screen images but also of the emergence of several generations of female filmmakers, institution builders, and media activists. It was originally published in Riben Shehui wenxue yuekan, (Japan’s Social and Literary Monthly). Qiong Yao is a famous, prolific romance fiction writer whose work has been widely adapted to cinema and television. Largely seen as sentimental and superficial, the meaning and social, historical significance of her fiction and films has been reassessed in recent years. See related discussion in the previous chapter. 22 Adapted from f iction by Wu Nien-chen, a leading screenwriter for many Taiwan New Cinema works including The Day on the Beach (Edward Yang, 1983) and A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989), and a director in his own right (A Borrowed Life of 1994 and Buddha Bless America of 1996) and actor (Yi Yi, Edward Yang, 2000).

88 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

out of wedlock, ironically in a Buddhist temple on a mountain hill. The “tempest” that sweeps over the steep mountain by the seaside is evocative of Su Pi’s erotic passion for a young student, who is sent to the temple to prepare for the college entrance exam. In Twin Bracelets, two teen girls in a traditional fishing village in China’s Fujian province establish a sanctuary for their mutual affection and reliance by swearing into a “sisters’ marriage” in the temple of Mazu 媽祖, a female deity popular across the Strait. One of them ultimately resorts to suicide as a protest against arranged marriage and domestic violence, whereas the surviving one leaves the village for Shenzhen, Southern China’s new special economic zone bordering Hong Kong. The saturated colors, elaborate costumes and studio sets, and picturesque seaside scenery (largely shot in the Penghu Islands) together orchestrate a melodrama of repression and implosion. Viewed as a lesbian film when it was shown at festivals overseas, the film is now widely regarded as a pioneering work in Taiwanese queer cinema. More ambitious in terms of narrative complexity and historical depth than the previous two films, which straightforwardly indict the abuses of a procreation-centered patrilineal system inflicted on women, Peony Bird’s longitudinal narration carries its characters from the dissolving small town and its rural kinship system in the 1960s to the competitive neoliberal environment of Tainan in the 1990s. Adapted from the autobiographically inflected fictional writing of Tainan-based woman writer Chen Ye, the film extends the theme of female bonds under patriarchy by focusing on a mother and daughter’s ambivalent relationship over three decades in the late twentieth century, as Taiwan transformed from an agrarian to an industrializing society with an export-led economy. Delving deeply into the sources of the birthing pains of modern female subjectivity, the film nonetheless affirms the struggles of the two generations of women in attaining both economic and emotional independence despite a steep learning curve and abundant pain. Echoing Mildred Pierce (1945) from the immediate postwar United States and its motifs of class mobility, a single entrepreneurial mother’s hardship, and a teenage daughter unappreciative of her mother’s sacrifice while seeking protective affection from her mother’s suitor, Peony Birds is, however, firmly grounded in Taiwan’s experience. The film anchors the starting point in the protagonists’ painful growth during the land reform, or rural modernization, promulgated by the nationalist regime in its effort to assert its control of the island as a frontier during the Cold War. It unfolds a larger socioeconomic landscape in which Taiwanese women of different generations make difficult decisions regarding love, desire, family, and

Floating Light and Shadows

89

work as Taiwan becomes a “little dragon” in Asia as part of a transnational capitalist system. Unlike the murder and charged sexual tension in Mildred Pierce, Huang’s tale of women attaining agency has less of Hollywood’s melodramatic devastation and more of Taiwan New Cinema’s neo-realism’s quiet ruptures. It is invested in the vicissitudes of industrialization and urbanization, and their impact on social mores and gender politics, against a broader cultural and historical backdrop. Peony Birds elaborates a Chinese folktale motif of the caged peony birds (or “love birds”) into a structural metonymy for women’s illusory faith in heterosexual romantic love as a means of self-fulfillment and security, and their struggle to negotiate old and new gender expectations in order to liberate themselves from the fate of the “love birds.” Both Chan-juan (mother) and Shu-chin (daughter) are given equal treatment, and their respective values and actions are presented as ambivalent and often contradictory. [Fig. 2.2–3] Meanwhile, an array of male characters surrounding the two women contributes to a varied representation of masculinity and the changing face of patriarchy under modernization and globalization. The parallel lines of narration crisscross past and present, and multiple points of view that weave a complex pattern of the social world and historical experience will become more evident in Huang’s subsequent works. The director continues to experiment with conjoining fiction and nonfiction. In between a number of documentary projects mostly dedicated to the portrayal of prominent Taiwanese women in culture and politics,23 Huang made Spring Cactus in 1998, a new narrative feature exploring the desire and subjectivity of a younger generation of women who are swallowed up by the bubble economy in the 1990s. A more pronounced urban film with a strong noir ambiance, Spring Cactus is based on a real-life story and tackles the prevalent phenomenon of young women’s prostitution and drug addiction in fervently modernizing Taiwan. [Fig. 2.4] Regarded as the representative work of Huang’s prime, the film continues to deliver the raw energy and sharp social critique of the trilogy. The mise-en-scène of repression and confinement in Autumn Tempest’s temple, Twin Bracelets’ wedding chamber, and Peony Birds’ cage is now transposed to the karaoke bars and brothels of the floating world in the modern city awash in neon lights. The steep mountain cliffs and crashing ocean waves that offered 23 These documentaries include Chiang Ching-kao and Chiang Fong-liang (1997) and The Petrel Returns, about dancer and choreographer Tsai Jui-yueh (1997), which won Excellent Documentary awarded by the Taipei Film Festival. In the following years, Huang made Women of the Century: Hsu Shih-hsien (2000), about a female politician, and Female Architect Hsieu Ze-lan (2003).

90 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 2.2 “Love birds” trapped in domesticity and art, Peony Birds (1990) (Courtesy of Huang Yu-shan)

Fig. 2.3 Mother and daughter reconcile, Peony Birds (1990) (Courtesy of Huang Yu-shan)

sublime metaphors of repression and release in the early films are absent in Spring Cactus. Instead, the lonely teenage girls wander the artificial landscape of a desolate theme park (shot inside the former Taiwan Film Studio) and hold on to tiny potted cactus plants as tokens of love and hope. Similar to the two female protagonists in Twin Bracelets, the girls here are forced to part ways. Only this dissolution of the bond happens faster and more violently: Lian jumps to her death after being raped by a gangster, and Lan, the surviving

Floating Light and Shadows

91

Fig.2.4 Spring Cactus (1998): Urban desert (Courtesy of Huang Yu-shan)

protagonist, leaves home and school to work in the sex industry. Lan’s seeming independence and fiery spirit, recalling Shu-chin in Peony Birds, conceals her insecurity and craving for genuine love and care. Unlike Shuchin, who is educated and economically independent as a popular music producer, Lan slides deeper into a world of drugs and violence. Despite a redemptive resolution in the form of marriage to a Christian priest, the film ends in Lan’s sudden collapse due to heart failure on the street. Yet, Huang adds a dreamlike coda (reminiscent of the sequence of delirium and ritual release in Peony Birds discussed above), where Lan “awakens” on the rocky hills by the ocean and resolutely walks toward the thunderous waves, as if to embrace a new life of challenges and possibilities. Here, the landscape is not an object of contemplation but rather acts as an agent or medium of change. On the one hand, it is part of Huang’s authorial signature with an active homage to the forces of the southern landscape, especially its rugged coastline; on the other hand, it carries weighty commentaries on the destructive power of a rapidly transformed natural and social landscape. More importantly, it serves as a means to explore women’s psychic and cultural unconscious, tumultuous life worlds, and the articulation of emerging feminist consciousness. In contrast to the contemplative long takes associated with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s style (also prevalent in other male director’s works), Huang prefers to put the camera into motion, “making it a bit more flowing and more free,”24 capturing the topsy-turvy experience of migration and urbanization, ruptures in kinship 24 See Lu, “Special Interview with Huang Yu-shan.”

92 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

and friendship, and the moral fabric of Taiwanese society in general, as well as the unstable mixture of desire, despair, and fantasies harbored by her characters. In sum, Huang’s “Feminist Tetralogy” is united by the focus on female desire and bonding (Twin Bracelets, Spring Cactus), the use of stream of consciousness (dream, delirium, sublimation, or transcendence in Autumn Tempest, Peony Birds), expressive mise-en-scène, voice-over, and metonymic use of landscape and natural flora and fauna, such as the colorful flowers in the hair and bedrooms in Twin Bracelets, the bird imagery in Peony Birds and the documentary The Petrel Returns 海燕 (1996). The free-flowing expressive blending of fiction and semi-fiction, and melodramatic and realist modes mark these early works as a significant body of thematically and stylistically cogent yet evolving works by a rising female director of post-New Cinema.

Casting Light on Overshadowed Histories After relocating back to her hometown region in 1999, Huang devoted herself to a pair of fiction-documentary hybrid films that brought her deep into her family history and postcolonial Taiwanese historiography. Centered on her uncle Huang Ching-cheng and his wife, also a young artist, the pair of films, The Strait Story and The Forgotten: Reflections on Eastern Pond, delves into a critical period of Taiwanese history straddling the colonial and postcolonial eras, through the reconstruction of the forgotten events and figures associated with the tragic sinking of Takachiho Maru 高千穗丸 after it was hit by American torpedoes on March 19, 1943. The Song of Chatain Mountain 插天山之歌 (2007) also portrays a similar historical figure—a young intellectual returning from Tokyo as the Pacific War approaches its end—and the woman who inspires and fights by his side. In the same vein as the “twin” films related to Huang Ching-cheng, The Song of Chatain Mountain has similarly many overlaps with a documentary film, The Literary Route of Chon Chao-cheng, about the writer whose life and an autobiographical novel inspired the feature film.25 These four films could be seen together as Huang’s “Postcolonial Tetralogy,” as they share reference points and are concerned with the complex formation of Taiwanese cultural identity from transnational and translocal perspectives. The titles and settings of this set of films reveal indexical coordinates of Taiwan’s geography and evoke the act of writing and composing. “East 25 Huang created a composite character in The Song of Chatain Mountain, especially by adding the scenes in Japan and the opening shipwreck. In reality, Chon never went to Japan.

Floating Light and Shadows

93

Pond” refers to Huang’s hometown in Penghu, while “reflections” is a literary translation of jishi 紀實, or “chronicles,” also used in the Chinese title for The Strait Story. Jishi also invokes the historiographical act and meaning of “documenting” or “recording,” suggesting the filmmaker’s conscious attempt at salvaging and rewriting “forgotten” personal and collective histories of Taiwan. Huang embarked on the two intertwined films about her uncle and his wife at a time when post-martial law Taiwanese new documentary was flourishing, alongside and against the tides of commercial cinema. These documentaries, independently made or commissioned by public television stations, address a variety of subjects but focus particularly on marginalized groups and suppressed cultural memory.26 Taken together they present a fuller picture of multicultural Taiwan and enrich the work of the tnc in constructing postcolonial Taiwanese identities. The forgotten story of Huang Ching-cheng is one that Huang Yu-shan decided to tell after she learned more about his life and those around him. [Fig. 2.5] She employed transmedia historical research methods, excavating both private and public archives by delving into newspapers, magazines, family albums, and scholarly writings, and conducting interviews with family members, art historians, and even a surviving passenger of the sunken ship. The two films, as with the narrative modes they employ and mix, are in some ways inseparable like Siamese twins. The making of The Forgotten preceded the narrative feature and served to develop its script and structure the preproduction. But the final version of the documentary contains numerous clips from The Strait Story as a means of reenactment to supply vital information and missing links. Yet, the effect goes beyond filling evidential gaps, endowing the documentary with a more palimpsestic and reflexive quality—reminding the audience not only of the truncated nature of that history but also of the aesthetically constructed and performative nature of cinema as historiography. The resulting documentary is a hybrid film combining archival material, photographs of Huang Ching-cheng’s artworks, and talking-head interviews with poetic reconstructions of episodes from the past. For example, after the opening segment introducing the artist’s legacy (in a contemporary art museum), a female narrator speaking in Taiwanese guides the viewer to the old house and the village, accompanied by photographs of the family and surrounding landscape. When she speaks 26 See Chi, “The New Taiwanese Documentary”; Lin and Sang (eds.), Documenting Taiwan on Film; and relevant chapters in Chiu and Yingjing Zhang, New Chinese-language Documentaries. On the “tnnua school of documentary” in 1995–2004, see Huang Yu-shan (2004).

94 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 2.5 Huang Ching-cheng’s self-portraiture in The Forgotten: Reflections on Eastern Pond (2005). Huang Yu-shan’s uncle, the artist, died in the tragic sinking of Takachiho Maru in 1943.

of the community’s “stress on children’s education,” the film cuts to a series of bit clips and frame enlargements depicting the high-school-age uncle studying (or rather sketching) in Kaohsiung (the south’s largest port city) and his father’s pharmacy back in East Pond, and shots of the island and ocean. The remix here is seamless and provides an imaginative, historical dimension to the otherwise matter-of-fact documentary narration. This editing pattern occurs frequently in the film, creating a collage of still and moving images, oral testimonies and reconstructed memories, fiction, and non-fiction modes, and past and present temporalities.27 Likewise, the narrative feature is interspersed with ample archival material that in some measure contributed to the realization of the initial conception of a docudrama. Watching the two films in succession, irrespective of their order, offers an expansive, multidimensional historical narrative. While the documentary provides a wealth of details on the artist’s short 27 Huang had experimented with this method in her earlier documentaries, in particular, The Petrel Returns, about Tsai Jui-yueh, a pioneer Taiwanese modern dancer and dance teacher’s tumultuous life and career that spanned the colonial and postwar eras across Taiwan, Japan, and eventually Australia.

Floating Light and Shadows

95

life and testifies to the significance of his work in Taiwanese modern art, the narrative film dramatizes her uncle’s deep attachment to Penghu. As Hsiu-hsiu’s research finds out, for Huang Ching-cheng, this attachment included the three women he loved and portrayed in his art—the village girl Ah Lan, an unknown lady with a love for flowers and other beautiful things, and Li Kui-hsiang, a pianist and modern woman from Penghu, whom he met and married in Tokyo, and who perished with him during the shipwreck. [Fig. 2.6] Several of his paintings and sculptures appear to have been inspired by these Penghu women close to his heart. The f ictional female protagonist steers the narrative away from a straightforward biopic about Huang Yu-shan’s uncle. Hsiu-hsiu casts light on the forgotten history in two significant ways. Her role as a conservator connects past and present, shedding light on the obscured or damaged areas in the paintings and the broader background history. Her interest in and research on the roles the three women played in Huang’s life and art, give her project as well as the film a more conscious female point of view and allow for feminist considerations.28 Significantly, Hsiu-hsiu’s conservationist character is a young woman suffering from a debilitating immune system deficiency who is kept alive by medication with serious side effects. Her live-in boyfriend cares for her and advises her not to overexert herself on work. Like other headstrong women in Huang’s films, Hsiu-hsiu is fiercely independent despite her health conditions, stubbornly searching for lost works and painstakingly researching and restoring the surviving paintings. We see her crouching over the damaged paintings, probing their intricate color palette and patterns of light and shadow while enduring the pain in her body. She conducts interviews (we see her carrying a video camera) with one of Huang Ching-cheng’s nieces, studying photos in the family albums and old newspaper clippings (shown also in The Forgotten), and visiting Huang’s old residences in the south. Her bodily pain and an acute sense of life’s vulnerability and urgency are resonant in her object of study—the precarious existence of artists under colonialism. While she manages to restore color and light to the extant paintings, a life-size sculpture of Li Kui-hsiang, the pianist, chopped into two pieces during chaotic times, can never be restored to its original shape, with the body lost in the ocean forever. 28 Huang’s and Wang’s aforementioned article also made a similar observation. Huang and Wang, “Post-Taiwan New Cinema Women Directors and Their Films,” p. 142. The section on Huang, likely written by Wang, argues that Hsiu-hsiu effectively becomes the historian of Huang’s art. In contrast, her boyfriend, who badly wants to be her caretaker, serves as a foil to her in her headstrong quest for historical truth.

96 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 2.6 In Tokyo. Li Kui-hsiang, pianist, and Huan Ching-cheng’s wife, is also from Penghu. (Courtesy of Huang Yu-shan)

Fig. 2.7 The remaining head of a sculpture of Li Kui-hsiang. Its body sank during the shipwreck.

The remaining head, seen as a representative work of Huang’s sculpture, is centrally featured in both films. [Fig. 2.7] Huang realizes early on that reconstructing her uncle’s story in complete past tense is both impossible and undesirable for genuine “reflections” on history. The fictional-documentary pair of films become a mutual life-sustaining

Floating Light and Shadows

97

supplement like a Siamese twin. Both begin in the present in interior exhibition spaces where Huang Ching-cheng’s rediscovered works are on display, but quickly cut to exterior scenes of Penghu—the old family house in the seaside village, photos from family albums, and archives. The artist’s biography is affectionately pieced together in relation to local geography, kinship ties, and community. A female voice-over articulating the filmmaker’s double presence as filmmaker and family member threads the storytelling in both films. In The Strait Story, Hsiu-hsiu embodies Huang’s subjective perspective as the filmmaker (with family relations to the main characters), who embarks on an obsessive search not just for the female model’s identity, but also for the context of the painting she is working on, the possible love stories behind it, the sources of light and shadow in the uncle’s paintings and, ultimately, a missing link in modern Taiwanese art history. We follow her wandering the streets of Tainan, trying to locate the air shelter where Huang’s paintings were at one point allegedly hidden, but it is nowhere to be found. She seems possessed by the power of the past emitted by the painting and wants to “have a love relationship” with the artist by traveling through the tunnel of time and memory. [Fig. 2.8] The film entails a double reenactment, with pop idol Freddy bringing Huang Ching-cheng the forgotten artist back to life and Hsiu Hsiu standing in for Huang Yu-shan, the filmmaker. Theorizing reenactment in postwar and contemporary realist cinema, Ivone Margulies argues, “it works to ritually renew the bonds with an original event, to provide an exemplary image of conversion, or to create a form of embodied memorial.” She elaborates, “reenactment brings into the picture of a foreign body, a changed presence that is transformative both in the film and for the viewers.”29 In the case of The Strait, we may argue there are two foreign bodies—the drowned artists of the past and the disabled conservationist of the present—who connect through the recovery of a traumatic colonial archive through the ritual work of conservation. While the scale of the “chronicles of the south” in the documentary far exceeds the biography of a forgotten family member and artist, Huang Ching-cheng’s charismatic personality and creative output are given vivid dramatization and endowed with historical significance in the narrative feature, precisely through the parallel temporal structure and multiple perspectives (i.e., the invisible female narrator, Hsiu-hsiu, the people she interviewed, and archival material). As a project of remembrance and revising Taiwanese modern art history, The Forgotten largely accomplishes the goal of evidence-gathering and interpretation through linking documentary 29 Margulies, In Person, p. 5.

98 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 2.8 Hsiu-hsiu, the art curator/conservationist with a debilitating condition, “casts light on forgotten history.” (Courtesy of Huang Yu-shan)

and fiction, art, and cinema. It establishes Huang Ching-cheng as a leading member of the mouve art movement during the colonial era. Several young Taiwanese artists, including Huang Ching-cheng, conceived the movement (naming it after the French word mouvement) in Tokyo around 1935. The works of Huang Ching-cheng and several members were selected by the “Imperial Exhibition”—an authoritative yet conservative institution in Tokyo—in recognition of their art despite their status as colonial subjects. However, as vividly depicted in the film, Huang and his fellow Taiwanese artists were inspired by post-impressionist art movements in Europe and other avant-garde trends in Japan and championed radical avant-garde art theory and practice. They discussed Eastern and Western philosophy and aesthetics, supported each other’s work, and mounted group exhibitions as part of their mouve movement, emphasizing the root meaning of “action” and “tendency” in French. In 1938, the movement was brought back to Taiwan and the “mouve Artists Association” 行動藝術家協會 was formed in Taipei.30 In the words of Taiwanese art historian Hsieh Li-fa, interviewed extensively in The Forgotten, “his [Huang Ching-cheng’s] generation wanted to create a new page for Taiwan art.”31 However, the bulk of Huang’s paintings 30 Huang, Nanfang jishi zhi fushi guangying, pp. 42–44. 31 Hsieh Li-fa’s book, Riju shidai Taiwan meshu yundong shi (A History of Taiwan Art Moments during Japanese Occupation Era), is extensively quoted in the documentary as well.

Floating Light and Shadows

99

and sculptures, along with his story, disappeared and were forgotten after the war, due in particular to an American bombing that destroyed an art benefactor’s air shelter housing a large collection in Tainan. It was not until the late 1980s, when a collector brought pictures of Huang’s sculptures to the Huang family for authentication, that serious research for his legacy and restoration of his surviving works began. The two films are by-products and effective means of his family and a public initiative to enable Huang Ching-cheng’s art and the personal and cultural history behind it to emerge from “darkness” and “see the light of day again.”32 The Strait Story structurally connects the materiality and metaphor of “light” in Huang Ching-cheng’s post-impressionist-inflected paintings with an essential cinematic property, effectively associating the work of art conservation with the work of filmmaking, both as keepers of history. The extensive archival research and fieldwork led Hsiu-hsiu to identify the sources of light in the paintings in Penghu and southern Taiwan’s landscapes. Even her boyfriend, influenced by Hsiu-hsiu’s passion for her conservation project, sees the light in the paintings reflected in the magical flickering light of the fireflies, a vestige of the agrarian period, by the riverbank in Tainan away from over-illuminated urban center. This point is also echoed by the Taiwan modern art museum director’s comment, pointing to the painting “Woman in Black” (which inspired Hsiu-hsiu’s pursuit) while giving a guided tour of the museum at the end of Reflections. The Strait Story ends with Hsiu-hsiu paying respect to Huang Ching-cheng’s tombstone by the windy seaside in East Pond, Penghu, in the same enchanting light we have seen in earlier scenes of play and love during the artist’s childhood and adolescence. The last freeze-frame, a subtle nod to Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les Quatre-cent coups, 1959) and perhaps also Ang Hui’s Boat People 投奔怒海 (1982), indicates not so much Hsiu-hsiu’s completion of her research for the conservation project as her arrival at the emotional and natural source for Huang’s art, as well as her resolve to continue to struggle against the ravages of time symbolized by her disease. Framing the entire film through the story and voice of this independent woman in contemporary Taiwan, whose work has a strong affinity with her subjects, accentuates the feminist perspective on this work of revisionist historiography. Critics have lauded the film’s refusal to turn the disastrous sinking of Takachiho Maru into a Taiwanese version of Titanic.33 Even though the love 32 Huang, Nanfang jishi zhi fushi guangying, pp. 6–7. 33 Sun, “Yi yingxiang ‘li yan’ — lun Taiwan nü daoyan Huang Yushan” (Speaking through Images: On Taiwan Woman Director Huang Yu-shan), p. 68.

100 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

story of Huang Ching-cheng and Lee Kui-hsiang was ready material for a “scholar meets beauty” romance/disaster blockbuster, Huang’s cinematic recounting of a truncated episode in her family’s and Taiwan’s modern history, according to Lai Shen-chon’s view, resorts to “poetic realism” and “cultural reflection.”34 The hybrid documentary-fictional narrative “restores” and revives the spirit of “youth, passion, and lucidity” (青春, 熱情, 明朗)—the motto of the mouve movement that Huang Ching-cheng cofounded and put into artistic practice—through the shimmering light and shadow of cinema. Lai observes that the “floating light and shadow” in the film title refers not to the haunting reflections on the ocean water in the Taiwan Strait, after the deadly blow to the ship swallowed approximately 1,100 passengers including the artist couple, but rather to the conjoined empowering force of earth and light (of Taiwan).35 The Strait Story is arguably the most important work of Huang’s mid-career, demonstrating her maturation as both a feminist filmmaker and public intellectual in articulating her deeply felt ruminations on Taiwan’s colonial experience and its ambivalent legacy. These concerns are carried into Song of Chatain Mountain. Adapted from a novel by the prominent writer Chon Chao-cheng, the film is set in the period prior to the end of the Pacific War and depicts the fugitive journey of a Taiwanese intellectual among the Hakka, Minnan, and aborigine peoples in the mountainous region of northern Taiwan. With this tale of survival and resistance against Japanese colonization involving the participation of ethnic minorities, Huang continues her exploration of Taiwan’s evolving, multi-ethnic cultural identity. Like The Strait Story, the protagonist’s fate in Song is also bound with a sunken ship from Japan in the ocean outside Keelung. But while Huang Ching-cheng perishes, Lu Chih-hsiang, a returning student (and a judo master) escaping arrest in Japan, survives by clinging to a log and is rescued by a fisherman. Lu’s political awakening in Japan toward the end of the war propelled him to choose resistance over assimilation, returning to Taiwan’s native land and people rather than going to China as Huang intended to do.36 Sheltered by kind and brave people of different ethnicities inhabiting Chatain Mountain, Lu moves from one household to another, one village to another to flee the Japanese police. In the course 34 Lai, “Chaoyue fushi de yishu guanghua — Huang Yushan dianying Nanfang jishi zhi fushi guangying” (Artistic Light that Transcends the Floating World). 35 Ibid. 36 Many colonial-era Taiwanese intellectuals, feeling detached from and even humiliated by the Japanese empire, regarded China as the ancestral land and source of Taiwan’s cultural identity. But this often ended in disappointment and alienation. A representative text is Wu Zhuoliu’s seminal novel, Orphans of Asia.

Floating Light and Shadows

101

of this itinerancy, he learns farming, logging, and fishing—basic skills of rural work and daily sustenance—and forms deep bonds with the mountain peoples and their cultures. Lu’s development as a locally grounded intellectual is inseparable from his relationship with Ben-mei, a Hakka girl. The love story resonates with Huang’s previous works, in that it is woven into an evolving dynamic of gender, kinship, and local history. Ben-mei lost her mother at the age of sixteen and never went to school. The disparity in education and class is hardly a hindrance to their intimate relationship. Lu is attracted to Ben-mei’s strong mind and body, feeling protected and empowered by her courage and equanimity. While she is his model of hard work and strong spirit under harsh circumstances and the inspiration for his proletarian emphasis on Taiwanese identity, he helps her and others to see that they are not Japanese imperial subjects, proclaiming, “we are Taiwanren (people of Taiwan).”37 They get married under constrained conditions and in near secrecy. However, he is hunted down and arrested just when Ben-mei is about to give birth to their child. Fortunately, the war ends and Lu is released. Reminiscent of the restorative ending of The Strait Story, The Song of Chatain Mountain’s final scene frames in bright light the couple holding their baby standing in front of their simple shack on the mountain hill, looking into the future. The symbolic power of landscape and spatial movement here is evident. The film begins in a sinking ship and Lu’s near-death in the ocean, and ends with the birth of a child and the reunion of the family atop the mountain, greeting the dawn of a new Taiwan. [Fig. 2.9] From homelessness to finding shelter(s) and eventually building a new family, from the perils of a fugitive life to the arrival of newfound security, the film pays homage to “the special quality of Taiwan’s land and her new life road.”38 Film critic Sun Song-jong compares the film’s use of mountain and forest to European paysage films in the silent period. He believes the horizontal movement of Lu’s constant escaping and relocation delineates a different kind of salvation for the protagonist. Lu nestles into the community and finds roots for a collective identity. The natural landscape here, less a metaphor for erotic conquest and sublime spiritual ascendency as in film-paysage, rather becomes a “theatrical field composed of history, emotions, openness and closeness, public-ness and privacy, death 37 In the novel, it was “We are Chinese.” Huang suggested the change, which Chon agreed to. The “Taiwanese” reference would have been far more dangerous in the colonial era. The change also poignantly echoes contemporary Taiwanese cultural politics. 38 Lai, “Taowang yu anju: Huang Yushan dianying Chatianshan zhi ge de xingsi” (Escape and Dwelling: Reflections on Huang Yu-shan’s Song of Chatain Mountain).

102 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 2.9 Landscape as a “theatrical field” in The Song of Chatain Mountain (2007) (Courtesy of Huang Yu-shan)

and birth,” and “an active, harmonious participant, and an indispensable, visible character.”39 This observation can indeed be extended to the role of landscape in Huang’s films as a whole. The Song of Chatain Mountain is a moving allegory of Taiwan’s tortuous “route” toward decolonization and the reconstruction of local livelihoods, based on the lived and changing experiences of individuals and ethnic groups (including their differences and alliances), rather than the imposed second-class Japanese “citizenship” or an abstract homogeneous Chinese identity centered in the mainland. In The Song of Chatain Mountain, Huang’s views on Taiwan’s postcolonial cultural identity are both more explicit and complex. The film was hailed as the first Hakka-spoken narrative film in Taiwan, and its setting, miseen-scène, and soundtrack meticulously depict the Hakka rural landscape, vernacular architecture, and lifestyle. 40 Huang herself is not a Hakka; a southerner, her family is scattered across Taiwan, China, and the United States. “We are United Nations,” she says, and “Taiwan is a multicultural island.”41 A mainland Chinese critic dismissively identifies in her work a “light green” position, i.e., between the “blue” and “green” political parties and 39 Sun, “Kejianxing de biyu: duanping Huang Yushan de Chatianshan zhi ge,” (Visible Metaphor: A Brief Review of Huang Yu-shan’s Song of Chatain Mountain). 40 See Yu, “Kongjian zaixian yu zuqun rentong — lun 1895, Chatianshan zhi ge zhi lishi yu jiyi” (Spatial Representation and Ethnic Identity: The History and Memory). 41 Lu, “Special Interview with Huang Yu-shan.”

Floating Light and Shadows

103

agendas, “Chinese” and “Taiwanese,” with equivocal allegiance to China. 42 This view is itself simplistic and biased. The sophistication of Huang’s cinema as a whole speaks volumes about her personally involved investigation of the historical experience of modern Taiwan, and a feminist intervention in decolonial historiography. Even though the primary protagonists in the series are male artists or intellectuals, the films use ample space to examine the formation of their masculinities in tandem with strong female subjectivities. Lee Kui-hsiang, for example, initially protests against Huang’s decision to accept the post in Beiping (today’s Beijing), China, “How could you make such a big decision without consulting me?” “I don’t speak Mandarin, how shall I survive there?” This question is not simply diegetically directed at her husband but is raised on behalf of a large portion of Taiwan’s population, then and now, especially among minority groups with limited political and symbolic power, or economic and financial stakes in cross-Strait relations.

Coda Ever energetic and prolific, Huang directed her first low-budget digital narrative film, Southern Night 夜夜, in 2008. It is a special curricular development project of the tnnua, supported by government funds. Huang organized a training workshop (Southern Taiwan Film and Video Workshop) on the tnnua campus, with the aim of training future filmmakers and industry professionals who will dedicate themselves to the flourishing of cinema culture in the south. The film, developed from a script by two students (Lin Wei-chieh and Yang Chen-hsia), is a teacher-student co-creation in cottage-industry fashion. Although the script shows signs of inexperienced student work, Huang’s direction and film style leave familiar imprints. Set in downtown Tainan at the crossroad of the old and the new, the dreamlike, and at times surreal mise-en-scène in Southern Night gives poignant expression to the fleeting connection between a sixteen-year-old local girl and an enigmatic young Hong Kong woman named “Visa,” and their mysterious entanglement with a college student who peddles pirated adult videos. Although the film lacks the weight and complexity of the “Feminist Tetralogy” and “Postcolonial Tetralogy” discussed above, the themes of restless youth, female bonding and growth, desire, trauma, recovery, and wandering and searching resonate with Huang’s early works. 42 Sun, “Yi yingxiang ‘li yan’,” p. 68.

104 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

The thinly developed story and characters paradoxically yield more space for the lovingly shot vernacular urban landscape in the ancient city with a Mazu Temple where teens perform rites of passage, the local food street featuring the famed southern-style oyster omelet, and winding lanes with old houses and gardens enveloped by age-old plants and memories. The street-level Tainan life is frequently intercut with high-angle shots of rooftops of the downtown area in rain or sunshine, and the verdant mountains surrounding the city. The sensuality of the landscape and the unique light of the south here again assert their primacy—the three characters are magically touched and connected by a dazzling ray of warm sunlight, recalling the enchanting light Hsiu Hsiu discerns in Huang Ching-cheng’s painting in The Strait Story. Southern Night is a love poem for Tainan and the south from the commingled perspectives of different generations across the new century. In addition to training local filmmakers, this locally grown film, Huang stresses with palpable emotion, is “also meant to invite people to re-discover these places, the beauty of the south, and to engage with them on a deeper level.”43

Bibliography Berry, Chris, and Mary Farquhar. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Black and White Film Studio, http://yushan133.pixnet.net/blog. Chen, Ya-chen (ed.). (En)Gendering Taiwan: The Rise of Taiwanese Feminism. Springer, 2018. Chi, Robert. “The New Taiwanese Documentary,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 15.1 (2003): 146–96. Chiu, Kuei-fen, and Yingjin Zhang (eds.). New Chinese-Language Documentaries: Ethics, Subject and Place. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. Chou, Bih-Er. “Gendering of Academic in Taiwan: From Women’s Studies to Gender Studies, 1985–2015.” In Chen, (En)Gendering Taiwan. Springer, 2018. 115–47. 43 In the interview featured on the film’s dvd (Tainan National University of the Arts and Southern Taiwan Film and Video Workshop, 2010). After Southern Night, Huang wrote an awardwinning script (New Moon, 2011), made the documentary short The Literary Vision of Yeh Shih Tao (2012), and directed Taste of Life (2015), a middlebrow melodrama about a mother-daughter relationship, food and love, gender and class revolving around a Chinese restaurant in Taichung. In 2022, Huang edited and published a book in Chinese, Days of Taiwan Film Studio 台影歲月 and she is completing a new documentary, Memories of Military Villages 念念眷村 in 2023. She is currently teaching at Hsuan Chuang University.

Floating Light and Shadows

105

Hsieh, Li-fa 謝里法. Riju shidai taiwan meishu yundong shi (日劇時代台灣美術 運動史) [A History of Taiwan Art Moments during Japanese Occupation Era]. Yishujia (藝術家) [Artist], 1995. Huang, Yu-shan. “‘Creating and Distributing Films Openly’: On the Relationship between Women’s Film Festivals and the Women’s Rights Movement in Taiwan.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. 4.1 (2003): 157–58. Huang, Yu-shan 黄玉珊. “The Rise and Characteristics” of the tnua School of Documentary” (南藝學派紀錄片之崛起與表現特徵). “兩岸傳播學術與實 務研討會”, 朝陽科技大學與國立台南藝術學院合辦 (Symposium on Crossstrait Communication Scholarship and Practice, Co-organized by Chaoyang Technology University and Tainan University of the Arts), June 7–11, 2004. Huang, Yu-shan 黃玉珊. Nanfang jishi zhi fushi guangying (dianying shu) (南方紀 事之浮世光影 (電影書) [The Strait Story ( film book)]. Taipei: Caogeng, 2005. Huang, Yu-shan 黃玉珊. “Nüxing yingxiang zai Taiwan – nüxing dianying fazhan chutan” (女性影像在台湾——女性电影发展初探) [Female Screen Images in Taiwan—Exploring the Development of Women’s Cinema], July 2, 2008. http:// yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/post/26423556, originally published in Riben shehui wenxue yuekan (日本社會文學月刊) [Japan’s Social and Literary Monthly], March 2008. Huang, Yu-shan 黃玉珊. Taiying suiyue (台影歲月) [Days of Taiwan Film Studio]. Taipei: Yuanjing, 2022. Huang, Yu-shan, and Chun-chi Wang. “Post-Taiwan New Cinema Women Directors and Their Films: Auteurs, Images, Language.” In Wang (ed.), Chinese Women’s Cinema. Columbia University Press, 2011. 132–53. Ke, Li 柯里 (Huang, Yu-shan). Shi nian zhi yue (十年之約) [Rendezvous after a Decade]. Taiwan Chengxing publishing house, 1991. Lai, Shen-chon 賴賢宗. “Chaoyue fushi de yishu guanghua – Huang Yu-shan dianying Nanfang jishi zhi fushi guangying” (超越浮世的藝術光華—黃玉 珊電影《南方紀事之浮世光影》) [Artistic Light that Transcend the Floating World]. Ziyou shibao fukan (自由時報副刊) [Liberty Times Net], November 9, 2005. http://yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/post/26425574. Lai, Shen-chon 賴賢宗. “Taowang yu anju: Huang Yu-shan dianying Chatianshan zhi ge de xing si” (逃亡與安居:黃玉珊電影《插天山之歌》的省思) [Escape and Dwelling: Reflections on
Huang Yu-shan’s Song of Chatain Mountain. Ziyou shibao fukan (自由時報副刊) [Liberty Times Net], 2007. http://yushan133.pixnet.n et/ blog/post/28096500. Lin, Sylvia Li-chun, and Tze-lan Deborah Sang (eds.). Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. Lo, Dennis, and Will Shakes. The Authorship of Place: A Cultural Geography of the New Chinese Cinemas. Hong Kong University Press, 2021.

106 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Lu, Meijing 吕美静. “Fenghuangwang wenhua – zhuanfang daoyan Huang Yu-shan” (凤凰网文化—專訪導演黃玉珊) [Special Interview with Huang Yu-shan]. Fenghuangwang wenhua December 2, 2014. http://yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/ post/44283415-凤凰网文化—專訪導演黃玉珊. Lupke, Christopher. “Chu Tien-wen and the Sotto Voce of Gendered Expressions in the Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien.” In Lingzhen Wang (ed.), Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 274–92. Margulies, Ivone. In Person: Reenactment in Postwar and Contemporary Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. “Nüying xianchang“ (女影现场) [On the Scene of Women’s Cinema]. Beijing Houlang fangying and Penghao luntan (北京·后浪放映 & 蓬蒿论坛) [Chinese Women’s Film Festival, Beijing’s Next Wave Exhibition and Forum], November 23, 2014. http://yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/post/47042152. Sun, Sun-jong 孫松榮. “Kejianxing de biyu: duanping Huang Yu-shan de Chatianyang zhi ge” (可見性的比喻:短評黃玉珊的《插天山之歌》) [Visible Metaphor: A Brief Review of Huang Yu-shan’s Song of Chatain Mountain]. Fangying zhoubao (放映週報) [Screen Weekly], November 2007. http://yushan133.pixnet.net/ blog/post/26425018. Sun, Weichuang 孫慰川. “Yi yingxiang ‘liyan’ – lun Taiwan nü daoyan Huang Yu-shan” (以影像“立言“– 論臺灣女導演黃玉珊) [Speaking through Images: On Taiwan Woman Director Huang Yu-shan]. Dianying yishu (電影藝術) [Film Art]. Beijing, China, no. 326, March 2009. Wang, Lingzhen (ed.), Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Wu, Zhuoliu. Orphans of Asia. Trans. Ioannis Mentzas. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Yip, June. Envisioning the Nation: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation in the Cultural Imaginary. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Yu, Shao-wen. “Kongjian zaixian yu zuqun rentong – lun 1895, Chatianshan zhi ge zhi lishi yu jiyi” (空間再現與族群認同 ──論《一八九五》、 《插天山之歌》 之歷史與記憶) [Spatial Representation and Ethnic Identity: The History and Memory in Blue Brave 1895 and The Song of Chatain Mountain], Donghai daxue wenxueyuan xuebao (東海大學文學院學報) [Tunghai Journal of Humanities] 52 (July 2011): 121–42. Zhang, Zhen. “Transnational Melodrama, Wenyi, and the Orphan Imagination.” In Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (eds.), Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 83–98.

3

From Sidewalk Realism to Spectral Romance Yang Lina’s Post-Socialist Beijing and Beyond

“Life has taught me to become a feminist.” —Yang Lina 1

Abstract Chapter 3 discusses the films by Yang Lina in relation to her unique career path from a state-employed dancer and performer to independent filmmaker as Beijing was transforming into an unevenly developed global city. Yang’s work significantly contributed to the DV Documentary Movement in the 1990s. She attends to her subjects, in both non-fiction and fictional works, with a compassionate camera and feminist concerns. Keywords: DV, the compassionate camera, postsocialist urbanization, Chinese Dream, spectral realism

In the mid-1990s, Yang Lina, a young dancer in the China Central People’s Liberation Army (pla) Spoken Drama Troupe, moved from a military compound by Wanshousi 万寿寺, near today’s West Third Ring, to an ordinary residential area of Beijing called Qingta 青塔.2 Her move was motivated by many reasons—to escape the suffocating atmosphere of the compound, to seek space for growth, and to move more freely. Yet that relocation inadvertently ushered her into the emerging arena of Chinese independent cinema, as her curiosity about a group of old men sitting on the 1 Wang and Yang Lina, “Yang Lina: Shi shenghuo rang wo biancheng le nvxing zhuyi zhe,” pp. 110–27. 2 Qingta is near Wu Ke Song 五棵松 further west outside today’s Fourth Ring Road.

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_ch03

108 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

neighborhood’s sidewalks led her to a project that would help precipitate the DV turn in the Chinese New Documentary that emerged in the late 1980s.3 This chapter shifts to the post-1989 prc and highlights the main threads in Yang’s career as an independent filmmaker that interweave the private and the public, the personal and the political, and documentary realism and cinematic spectrality. I explore how these seeming dichotomies are complexly recalibrated in Yang’s films about marginalized inhabitants of Beijing, at a time when this erstwhile ‘Third World’ socialist capital city was being transformed into a post-socialist capital and global city. Spanning more than two decades, the multiply-awarded Old Men 老头 (1999), 4 The Loves of Lao An 老安 (2008, hereafter, Lao An), and her narrative debut Longing for the Rain 春梦 (2013, hereafter, Longing) are significant milestones in Yang’s career as well as in Chinese independent cinema and serve as a cinematic archive of the physical and psychic transformations of the ancient capital. Through these films, we can trace an evolving gendered aesthetic mediated by not only the portable digital camera but also a compassionate Buddhist lens. These moving images, which were created outside the state-sanctioned mainstream, are touching and provocative but also constitute a kind of talismanic object for those who believe in the magic power of alternative cinema.

The DV Turn and a Gendered Xianchang Yang is among the first independent filmmakers who adopted DV to document the rapidly changing urban landscape and social fabric of Beijing around the turn of the twenty-first century. Distinct from the pioneering independent documentary makers who still used professional equipment and a multi-person crew, Yang approached her subject with an immersive, street-level observational documentary approach and a portable camera that alternated between dancing and pensive reflection. While Old Men retains indelible traces of a largely vanished socialist capital city, Yang’s two interlocking documentaries on retirees of mixed age groups and social backgrounds—Let’s Dance Together 一起跳舞 (2007) and Lao An—capture 3 See Berry et al. (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement. 4 The awards include the Asian New Current Award at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and the Jury’s Award at Cinema du reél in France, both in 2000. It was also sold to Arte for 12,000 francs, an impressive price at the time. The critical acclaim and financial success were unique for an independent documentary from China at the time.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

109

the rhythms and dynamism of social dance as a conduit for self-expression, desire and mutual aid staged in the city’s public parks in the late-socialist era, when mono-party rule and global capitalism flirted and danced with each other. In spring 2013, she completed her first narrative feature, Longing, which premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.5 A clear departure from her previous documentaries, the film pivots around the spiritual loss and “paranormal” erotic longing of a lonely young mother qua housewife, a product of a regressive gender economy engineered by the prc’s dalliance with brutish capitalism. Quitting the city for a Buddhist temple in the remote northwest countryside, the traumatized woman finds her suffering only worsened as she realizes that the temple is hardly a refuge or sanctuary of healing and redemption. Close intertextual reading of these films made during Yang’s transition first from a pla-employed dancer and actress to amateur documentary filmmaker, and then to narrative feature, in light of numerous formal and informal interviews others and I conducted with her, offers a unique point of entry into the affective labyrinth of post-reform Chinese society under the spell of relentless developmentalism. Besides documenting “China’s most vulnerable,” the filmmaker critically and creatively engaged with the social consequences and traumatic effects of the accelerated urbanization sanctioned by authoritarian capitalism. As we travel with her work from public spaces like sidewalks and parks to the physical and psychic interiors of the new middle class, from a post-socialist Beijing to the neoliberal red capital and beyond, it becomes evident that the “gendered persona” that Bérénice Reynaud observed in Yang’s early films has become a more conscious and serious, though no less affectionate, feminist exploration.6 The concept of xianchang 现场 (literally, “the present scene”) and an attendant documentary realism as a critical and creative strategy have become inexorably associated with the New Documentary Movement and Urban Generation cinema that flourished in the 1990s. However, existing scholarship tends to attribute its conception to male figureheads of these movements such as Wu Wenguang, Zhang Yuan, Wang Bing, Jia Zhangke, and Zhao Liang, partly due to their international visibility as avant-garde auteurs.7 Retracing the genealogy of the independent documentary move5 The film project received a grant from the Hubert Bals Fund administered by the festival. The premiere rights are part of the conditions. 6 Reynaud, “Chinese Digital Shadows,” p. 196. 7 Zhang, “Introduction.” The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century, pp. 18–19.

110 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

ment, Yang Lina undoubtedly takes her place among the most important practitioners of a recharged xianchang aesthetic by initiating the DV turn, with her camera tracking and navigating the drastic changes in the urban geography and social landscape over the past two decades. Regrettably, scholarship on Chinese independent cinema has not offered sustained treatment of Yang’s work other than fragmented discussions related to other filmmakers or specific themes.8 This chapter thus aims to address that gap, situating Yang as an emblematic transitional f igure between Urban Generation cinema, DV documentary, and independent feminist filmmaking in the prc on the eve of Xi Jinping’s “new era.” The recent ebb and flow of the independent film culture, especially in the realm of alternative exhibitions, witnessed new trends with explicit attention to women. The three women’s film festivals that were held in Beijing between 2013 and 2017, despite many obstacles and internal rifts, helped increase the visibility of women filmmakers and revitalize feminist discourse in China.9 After a period of retreat into private life and motherhood, Yang Lina re-emerged into this burgeoning scene of alternative film culture, somewhere between the radicalized indies represented by the Beijing Independent Film Festival (biff) in Songzhuang (forcefully stopped by the authorities in 2014) and the middlebrow arthouse cinemas that have been gaining both official approval and mainstream popularity. Unfortunately, Longing, with its direct treatment of religion and sex—two taboo subjects—could not be shown publicly, even at these alternative venues. Instead, it went to several international festivals and won critical acclaim, while also triggering some speculation and misgivings about the director’s turn to the fictional mode. The author of an online commentary on the film’s premiere in Rotterdam, where it was nominated for the Tiger Award, wondered what Yang was trying to do in the last half-hour of the

8 See for example Wang, “The Amateur’s Lightning Rod”; Braester, “Excuse Me, Your Camera Is in My Face!”; Yu, “Toward a Communicative Practice”; and Zhang, “Toward a Digital Political Mimesis.” The latter has been signif icantly revised and expanded into Chapter 8 in this book. 9 The three festivals are the Beijing International Women’s Film Festival 北京国际女性电影节, the China’s Minjian Women’s Film Festival 中国民间女性电影节, and the China International Women’s Film Festival 中国国际女性电影节. The f irst of these ceased operation after only one gathering, and the last was run by the only male member of the organizing team of the China’s Minjian Women’s Film Festival after a break-up. The latter has ceased operation. The One International Women Film Festival, based in Chengdu, allegedly took over the mantle of the Minjian Women’s Film Festival and rebranded it in 2017. But it ran into trouble with the authorities in 2021. Its prospects are uncertain.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

111

film, citing “too many priests, fortune tellers, other misty figures.”10 This critical viewer laments that the suspenseful family melodrama of the first portion seems to lose its way, failing to deliver a “logical continuation and a gratifying finale.”11 Indeed, was it sensible for Yang to try her hand at a narrative feature without any formal training? Why did she take these risks instead of continuing with the sidewalk DV blend of direct cinema and cinema verité that she had intuitively perfected? Viewing Longing together with her earlier documentaries invites us to see how Yang re-embeds the previous sidewalk documentary realism within what I would like to call a certain spectral melodramatic realism that anatomizes contemporary Chinese urban life with sharp precision. From the melancholy of late socialist Beijing to the fast and furiously commodified capital, Yang’s films constitute a living archive of the city as a lost home, first for the elderly and then for women of the new middle class, along with the child of a nuclear family born under the “one-child policy” and economic boom.12 Yang’s work not only echoes but also complements other f ilms by contemporary women directors, notably Ning Ying, an important Urban Generation director whose work has focused on Beijing as well, though Yang takes important departures. Whereas Ning was professionally trained and works primarily with middle to large-scale feature productions aimed for commercial release, Yang, an amateur who inadvertently became the “godmother of DV documentary,”13 persistently treads the tightrope of “personal film” both in terms of production mode and formal approach. Ning’s cinematic vision of Beijing illustrates well what Yomi Braester calls the “urban contract,” or the power relations between cinema, citizenry, and city planning.14 Yet, as Shuqin Cui observes, Ning’s protagonists are mostly male strollers, and Cui, therefore, calls for a “conscious female vision” in Chinese urban cinema.15 10 imdb member @jvH48, “First hour is promising, arousing our interest in a logical development and ending. Alas, nothing of the sort happens,” https://www.imdb.com/review/ rw2790607/?ref_=tt_urv. 11 Ibid. 12 The “one-child policy” was strictly enforced until 2015, when the government changed to “two children” and more recently to “three children” due to China’s serious aging problem. For a scathing critique of the devastating impact on social life and gender equality, especially in rural areas, see Nanfu Wang’s documentary, One Child Nation (2019). 13 In challenging the “godfather” narrative prevalent in Chinese independent f ilm circles, which mimics conventional patrilineal film historiography, I began to call Yang by this label in several forums, including alternative festivals and social media in China, in 2012. 14 Braester, Painting the City Red. 15 Cui,“Ning Ying’s Beijing Trilogy,” p. 262.

112 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Yang’s decidedly more personal films on Beijing, using portable digital cameras and created entirely outside of the studio, offer an intimate urban vision nurtured by an embodied xianchang aesthetic and a gendered, performative persona of a self-taught f ilmmaker trained in dance and performance. Her innovative approach, resonating with the work of other contemporary filmmakers and artists, ultimately extends beyond the arenas of sidewalk xianchang and social dance, probing the perceptual borders and spectral dimensions of stressful urban life under the relentless forces of state-sponsored global urbanism and consumerism.

Hanging out on the Sidewalk in Green Pagoda Compound When Yang embarked on filmmaking in the mid-1990s, the New Documentary Movement and Urban Generation cinema had already given rise to several important works by veteran filmmakers such as Jiang Yue (The Other Bank, 1995), Zhang Yuan (Sons, 1996), and Ning Ying (On the Beat, 1995)—all of whom had some training and experience in film and television production. Their mode of production, even when the works had independent status, involved institutional support of one kind or another and a relatively large crew along with standard studio equipment. Yang, who had practically no connection with the emerging film community and was unfamiliar with their work, was inspired to make a documentary after encountering a group of old men on the sidewalk. Intrigued by their persistent presence in this inconspicuous space, she felt as though they were an ancient species that “grew out of the soil.”16 [Fig. 3.1] Their wrinkled faces and fragile bodies seemed incongruous with the post-socialist urban development so eager for a radical facelift, yet their appropriation of the sidewalk staged a daily performance of communal interaction and camaraderie that Yang found vital for a livable and sociable city. Old Men is not one of the “special theme” films 专题片 that were in vogue on Chinese TV,17 but a personal film 16 Yang, “Wo pai Laotou” (How I filmed Old Men), p. 170. (In Wu Weici, Jilu yu tansuo) Yang Tianyi was Yang Lina’s artist name which she has stopped using. Wu is a member of Taiwan’s Women Film Association and on the board of the wmwiff. She was among the early Taiwanese scholars and curators who took an active interest in the independent cinema movement in the mainland. She is also in the group photo (second from left, second row) in “Introduction” (Fig. 0.2). 17 The “special theme” documentary was a trend that came to dominate state television in the reform era. While a critical departure from previously explicit propaganda newsreels, this type of documentary, resembling bbc- or pbs-style documentary to some extent, often deployed a “godlike” voice-over and exuded an official and righteous air.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

113

Fig. 3.1 Old Men (1999) (Courtesy of Yang Lina)

about her aging neighbors before the avalanche of real estate development and commodification of urban space relentlessly disposed of them. The perspective of the film-maker is one of “looking after” or care taking 照顾, which embeds the act of “photographing” 照相 within the act of caring. In an interview conducted a few years later, Yang recalls, One day I was moving, I saw this string of old men sitting under the bridge, like on a thread. It was quite warm already, but they still wore thick winter jackets. I could hear their loud chatting even when I was just passing by at a distance. I had never seen so many old men together—it was a beautiful sight. My friend and I got some stools and sat down to look at them, at a distance.18

Soon she rented a professional camera, bought cassettes, and hired a cameraman and soundman, but the arrangement failed. She was displeased with 18 Zhu Rikun and Wan Xiaogang, Duli Jilu: duihua zhongguo xinrui daoyan (Independent Record), p. 47. Unlike other similar books, this collection of interviews includes several women other than Yang, such as Ji Dan (together with her partner Sha Qing), Ning Ying, Wang Feng, Huang Ruxiang, and Mi Na (together with her partner Su Qing).

114 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

their overly formal shooting style, while they could not understand her ganxing 感性 (affective) approach. Getting hold of a much smaller and mobile Panasonic EZ-1 camera, Yang returned to the sidewalk and started the unprecedented one-woman DV production. Her extensive footage impressed Wu Wenguang, who was by then an established figurehead of the New Documentary Movement, but was experiencing a creative impasse: I was surprised that a young woman should have directed her camera towards the elderly, for it was widely said that busy people were increasingly neglectful. … I did not notice any special relation between the portable video camera and the footage she showed me until after watching for several hours. I discovered that the pictures were unique to a small video camera and an individual point of view. … As a veteran, I could not imagine such scenes being seen through the lens of a large intimidating camera.19

Two key elements of Wu’s observation stand out: the individual point of view of a small DV camera and the patient, even exhaustively long, duration of the shots. Yang spent about six months editing the 97-minute film out of sixteen hours of footage. What Wu did not note, however, was the unique style of the aesthetic approach: the low position of the camera and the predominance of sidewalk scenes, almost as though the camera was squatting, alternately, on the other side of the street or alongside the old men. The first scene establishes the structure of the film as a whole: summer, under the trees of a residential area, a string of about ten old men chatting idly while fanning themselves, one of them chasing a fly, and next to them a man was repairing a bike—a typical scene in Beijing at that time. Then the camera shifts to the old men leaving one by one, until only the bike repairman is left, and a woman with young children passes by. This outdoor set-up, alternating between quiet observation and close encounter, repeats dozens of times, interspersed with interior scenes where two old men (Lao Wu and Lao Song) struggle with daily tasks. Yang’s background in dance and drama lends her filming and editing a palpably embodied presence, measured movement and grace, and a touch of theatricality. The sidewalk doubles as an outdoor stage on which the old men perform their daily rituals. The portable camera effortlessly became part of her body, welcomed by the group as a confidant and friend. After a lot of squatting and shooting, however, she paused. What was the film about? 19 Wu, “Just on the Road,” p. 133.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

115

Where was it going? Then one morning, she had an epiphany: “I decided that I’ll just focus on these words: eat, drink, shit, pee, sleep 吃喝拉撒睡. Recording their daily routines such as cooking, and brushing teeth, made me calmer and more confident about the shooting.”20 Indeed, Old Men is a harbinger of the reorientation towards “filming the everyday” that occurred in independent documentary. It inspired, among others, Wu Wenguang and the projects he and Wen Hui would later carry out with younger filmmakers at Caochangdi Workstation in Beijing.21 The finished film, of course, is not merely about everyday bodily functions observed from the perspective of “a fly on the wall,” as Wu advised her to do after having just met American filmmaker and documentarian Frederick Wiseman and learned about his method. Rather, the close attention to the difficulty with which the elderly performed the elementary daily gestures serves as a compassionate meditation on human suffering and acceptance, and as an elegy for a vanishing epoch and lifestyle. The idle chatter of the old men consisted mostly of greetings and goodbyes, comparisons of seniority, complaints about the rising costs of healthcare, and laments about aging and death. Yang deliberately left their grown-up children out of the frame, to highlight their loneliness. She and her camera would be the last to leave, seeing off the last of the men as he leaves with his folding stool and walking stick or old rattan stroller. A recurrent image is the back of whichever old man left last, in sunset, rain, dust, wind, snow. Daily, the old men stage their little dramas of chasing the sunshine while keeping each other company, punctuated by small incidents, holidays, and sudden deaths. Left behind by a country that was gearing up to leap into the world, they cling to the sun-bathed walls of a late socialist community designed for the working class. Yang saw something both ancient and childlike in them—they talked about how Beijing used to be under the ocean and whether or not the airplanes above their heads had windows —and how anachronistic their existence seemed in the era of globalization.22 As the film extends into fall and winter, Yang’s camera also tracks their slow, strenuous movement through the strong winds, drifting dust, and debris, as she follows them to the edge of the housing community where the waves of real estate development have 20 Yang, “Wo pai Laotou,” p. 172. 21 Pickowicz and Zhang Yingjin, Filming the Everyday. The bulk of the anthology is devoted to the Caochangdi Workstation. Surprisingly, it has practically no mention of Wen Hui, its co-founder, also the filmmaker and choreographer behind most of the collective’s performance projects. I devote Chapter 5 to Wen’s work. 22 Yang, “Wo pai Laotou,” pp. 171–72.

116 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

encroached. It is as though these old men are about to be swallowed by the sandstorm of the next aggressive urbanization. The pensive pace of long shots on the sidewalk and closer shots inside the homes are infused with a deep sense of trust and intimate rapport between the filmmaker and the elderly. The old men call Yang Lina by the nickname “Yangzi,” welcoming her. Yang admits that DV made her feel as though she was “intimately tied to the old men, unrestricted by time and other factors.”23 In fact, they would be disappointed if she failed to show up or did not have the camera on to zhao 照 or photograph them. They urged her to zhao them as much as possible while they were still alive, “when we are gone, you can then stop it.” This was a revelation to Yang; zhao allowed her to feel calm while filming the elderly as if just holding a mirror for them, “more objectively” than the more intrusive pai (shooting). Over time, “they became part of my life, and me on their daily thought. … Together we became a scene in the community.”24 The word and act of zhao derive from “looking at the mirror” 照镜子 and “taking a picture” 照像 and invoke other related words such as sunshine/sunbathing 日照 and looking after 照顾. Instead of “a helpless, yet cruel, compulsion to stare at actual, uncouth situations” on the part of the filmmaker,25 the old men felt they were being photographed by someone whom they knew, perhaps like close kin, or the neighborhood studio photographer whom they visited for ID photos. They loved that Yang shared her footage with them throughout the shooting process, and they often commented on how each appeared in Yang’s “photographing” or “mirroring,” yet never bothered with the final product. Their need for a camera to be a trusted mirror, an old friend, and even a bonfire is intertwined with their thirst for warmth, light or exposure to sustain the remainder of their lives. These urges leave palpable imprints on the film as a desire to leave traces for posterity. The sidewalk thus becomes an outdoor studio for the restaging of time-honored pictorial realism, “approaching life-likeness” 逼真, or “approaching reality” in Victor Fan’s apt translation,26 ingrained in Chinese vernacular life and art, as the old men approach the finish line of life. Hardly a “fly on the wall” commonly associated with direct-cinema shooting style, Yang and her camera lent the old men (and one dying old woman) a companionate mirror and sounding board for their leisurely chats or anguished cries. They felt they were being cared for 23 Zhu and Wan, Duli Jilu, p. 48. 24 Yang, “Wo pai Laotou,” pp. 172–73. 25 Wang, “The Amateur’s Lightning Rod,” p. 20. 26 Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

117

in a special way and taken seriously, even well after their deaths, as their images and voices had been preserved by someone they trusted—a young member of the residential community who gave them extra attention and patiently saw them into the dark of the night. Yang’s filming was thus also an act of memorializing while they slowly took their leave of their beloved city. Yang’s immersive approach on location and her subtly decisive editing paradoxically juxtaposed the natural disintegration of the elderly against the unnatural disintegration of the old capital. Bypassing the commentary and narrative allegory prevalent in “special theme” documentaries, her haptic xianchang aesthetic—which organically connects sidewalk and domestic scenes—refreshes Bill Nichols’s notion about a certain type of documentary film’s insistence on the presence of the body and human agency. He writes, “The question of magnitude involves a different order of engagement. The terms remain emotional, experiential, visceral. At issue is vivification, rendering felt what representations only allude to.”27 Vivif ication—or the animation of life forms and experiences through time, narrative, and history—differs decidedly from (disinterested or disembodied) representation and sensation-rousing spectacle. Far from the spectacularized documentaries prevalent in Chinese state-owned television, and different from representative New Documentary works that focused on disenfranchised intellectuals or ethnic minorities, Yang’s film “circles around nascent structures of feeling, experiences as yet uncategorized within the economy of a logic or system,” probing the “obtuse meaning” of the social as it undergoes transition or disintegration.28 The magnitude of these old people’s lives in their waning days is painstakingly given (back) its experiential proximity, texture, and dignity. Thus, the xianchang realism of Old Men stands at the crossroad of the private and public, offering an unwittingly pioneering gesture by a novice, which intimated a more marked shift towards what Luke Robinson calls a xianchang of “metonymy and contingency” in independent documentary enabled by DV.29

Dancing from Heavenly Temple to Phoenix Hill While Old Men retains human traces of a largely vanished socialist capital city, Let’s Dance Together and Lao An track retirees using social dance in 27 Nichols, Representing Reality, p. 234. 28 Ibid. 29 Robinson, “From ‘Public’ to ‘Private’.”

118 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

public parks as a conduit for self-expression, desire, and mutual aid at a time when Beijing, on the eve of the 2008 Olympics, was hurtling into a global mega-city. Here, to continue exploring Yang’s attention toward the affective social life of public space and the construction of an embodied “cinematic cartography” embedded in everyday spatial practices,30 we will turn to Lao An. A few years into the new century, Yang was married, had a child, and was living in the Golden Fish Pond residential community 金鱼池小区 near Heavenly Temple 天坛 in southern Beijing. Curious as ever, she became mesmerized by the retirees who danced waltz, tango, and samba in the park that had been built on the ancient imperial ritual grounds. Like the old men who had claimed the sidewalk for their survival and social life, these social dance enthusiasts occupied the public space, turning it into a lived everyday realm for pursuing private desires and fostering alternative social ties. As a dancer professionally trained in “national dance” 民族舞 and a military service woman, she had not learned the steps of social dance, as it had been associated with bourgeois culture. Having never thought of participating in this plebeian dance activity, Yang admitted that she had looked down on it until she observed it more closely and joined the retirees. After two months of dancing into her new participant-observational fieldwork, as had happened with the making of Old Men, she brought her DV camera and began to shoot while dancing and chatting with her partners. This time, instead of sitting quietly on the sidewalk for days and weeks, she and her camera orbited around her subjects, or more precisely, her partners, at a faster tempo. Here, xianchang becomes a revolving arena and open stage for performance and witness, where the filmmaker’s dancing body and roving camera are constantly attuned to the rhythms of music and dance, and more importantly, to the feelings of fellow dancers within the circle, including those resting on the benches. [Fig. 3.2] Social dance, in the Cultural Revolution, was considered a form of decadent Western bourgeois culture. It reemerged as part of underground urban culture, along with Western music and literature in the late 1970s, and mushroomed in the reform era, as a type of exercise and recreation for retirees and laid-off workers.31 Unlike the state-orchestrated street 30 Hallam and Roberts, Locating the Moving Image, p. 9. 31 Since the 1990s, large-scale socio-economic restructuring, or zhuanxing 转型, resulted in massive layoffs of workers from state sectors, especially traditional industries. Many were let go before retirement age (fifty-five for women and sixty for men), as factories went bankrupt or were merged into joint ventures or private-owned enterprises.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

119

Fig. 3.2 Yang Lina filming in a park in Beijing, c. 2007. (Courtesy of Yang Lina)

performances of the past or the rigorously choreographed “plaza dance” 广场舞 organized and performed by mostly healthy working or newly retired women, social dance appeals to a broad range of age groups, both men and women. Most participants are in their late 50s to 70s, with some middle-aged people who have been laid off early or are on extended sick leave. Lao An (a former kmt general) and Xiao Wei (a retired worker) are in their late 80s and late 60s, respectively, and begin to form a romantic attachment by dancing together. The participants enter the dance arena almost daily for pleasure and companionship, just like the old men seeking sunshine and company on the sidewalk. The anthropologist Angela Zito writes about social gatherings of retirees engaged in various hobbies such as water calligraphy in Beijing’s parks as a form of “recurring sociality,” that is, “the ability of people to form assemblies that literally ‘come and go,’ while forging communities of personal significance under the stressful pressures of rapid change.”32 This resonates with Caroline Chen’s study of the yang’ge 秧歌 dancers’ “improvised”—and socially contentious—uses of space in Beijing parks and streets.33 Yet this social dance between men and women—alternately between neighbors, acquaintances, and strangers—engenders a more 32 Zito, “Writing in Water,” p. 13. 33 Chen, “Dancing in the Streets of Beijing,” pp. 21–35.

120 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 3.3 “Twilight Love”: Lao An and Xiao Wei in The Loves of Lao An (2008). (Courtesy of Yang Lina)

complex affective economy than the individual act of water calligraphy or the predominantly female and well-rehearsed collective yang’ge dancing inspired by the revolutionary legacy. Some would forge special partnerships and even romantic relationships, as in the case of Lao An and Xiao Wei, who are married to other people. [Fig. 3.3] The initial chemistry between dance partners and trust between friends with benefits—e.g., Lao An needs Xiao Wei’s help with hospital visits —would gradually evolve into a quite serious love relationship, or “twilight love” 黄昏恋. Though a common phenomenon, the outcome of Lao An’s and Xiao Wei’s partnership exceeded their own expectations, those of their families and friends, and indeed of the filmmaker. The jovial “recurring sociality” of the everyday hobby in this instance takes on a surprising melodramatic turn. As in Old Men, the shadow of death is palpable from the start as we see Lao An, though spirited in his advanced age, showing great concern about the condition of his health. Yang’s camera takes us into the hospital ward where Lao An has been hospitalized and Xiao Wei assists him in matters that normally only a spouse or child would. She brings him his favorite dishes and cheers him up with humor and laughter. As he recovers and teaches the nurses how to dance, Xiao Wei suddenly falls ill and dies of a massive brain hemorrhage. The people around Lao An, including the filmmaker, could not bear to break his heart with the sad news, out of concern for his health. In several post-screening discussions, Yang talked about her painful choice to continue filming at that juncture. The contingency of xianchang here reaches its dramatic limits and poses thorny ethical questions as well as practical challenges for the filmmaker. Lao An’s son-in-law eventually tells him the

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

121

truth over a formal meal at a restaurant in the presence of Yang and her camera. In one fleeting moment, we see the son-in-law knowingly winking at the camera, the viewers who would be in the know—one of the instances where the film breaks down the fourth wall and foregrounds the fluctuating intersubjective relations between the protagonists, diegetic witnesses, or mediators, the participant-observing filmmaker, and the audience. Such mediated affective practice is also aptly articulated in the most moving scene of “soul calling” 招魂 at the cemetery. At Lao An’s request, Yang, who often serves as the driver, takes him to visit Xiao Wei’s grave in Phoenix Hill 凤凰岭 in the western suburbs. Lao An lovingly touches the inscribed name on the tombstone and weeps profusely. As his frail body shakes and he bares his heart to Xiao Wei’s spirit, we are struck by how the serene cemetery landscape, so far removed from the urban bustle, intensifies the intimate nature of the moment. The spirit of Xiao Wei, invoked by Lao An’s soul-calling as the trembling camera looks on, appears re-vivified. The framing and point of view render it such that her invisible presence, through the camera’s eye, silently sees Lao An departing, recalling similar shots in Old Men. Yang has followed Xiao Wei with the camera from her previous stomping grounds in the park to the city’s “twilight zone” or “symbolic dusk”—to borrow eloquent descriptions of a number of independent videos on wasted youths in Beijing.34 A deep melancholy and unspeakable sense of loss pervade the sentient organs, corporeal or prosthetic (i.e., the camera), on and off the screen, connecting the souls of the two senior “twilight lovers” who will not be allowed to rest side by side in the world beyond. Shocking and profoundly sad as it was, the scene exudes a strange mixture of pathos and enchantment. The former is generated by the temporality of “too lateness” and the cognitive disparity that we often experience in melodrama; the latter can be seen in the light of the philosopher Jane Bennett’s remark: “Enchantment begins with the step-back immobilization of surprise but ends with a mobilizing rush as if an electric charge had coursed through space to you.”35 Whereas Bennett finds that in enchantment “a new circuit of intensity forms between material bodies” as an antidote to alienation,36 I would suggest that the continued “dance” between Lao An and Xiao Wei (he holds her tombstone tightly and addresses her passionately as if she were alive), and between Yang’s camera and the couple, ventures to bridge the corporeal and the spiritual, the present and the past. To apply Kirsten 34 Voci, “Blowing Up Beijing,” p. 99. 35 As quoted in Zito, “Writing in Water,” p. 14. 36 Ibid.

122 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Andres’s idea about the “performative construction” of the soul-calling ritual to the filmic context,37 the camera movement, and editing at the cemetery mediated by the agency or intention of Yang’s DV obtains a powerful sense of ritual efficacy. The sidewalk xianchang has now extended not just beyond city limits but also the boundary of the visible world.

Out of the Morning Sun Gate in the Spectral City Mortality and loneliness are indeed recurrent motifs in Yang’s work, as her subjects are mostly the neglected or abandoned. After witnessing several deaths in her documentaries, Yang began a soul-searching journey. She felt that in some ways she had “stolen” something from the people she filmed that unwittingly “adorned” her, and the sadness and stress from the unexpected deaths during filming weighed on her heavily.38 The experience of marriage and motherhood, followed by a difficult divorce, also made her pause and reflect while searching for new directions. Examining her own inner demons and looking forward to experimenting with fictional or hybrid forms, she began to conceive an ambitious “Women’s Trilogy” about three generations of women since the Cultural Revolution. Longing (the Chinese title literally means Spring Dream) is its first installment. [Fig. 3.4] The scale of the project also thematically and physically extends far beyond Beijing. Because the film has only appeared to a limited degree at international festivals and was never shown in China, I will discuss it in considerable detail. Starting in a high-end middle-class condominium in the fashionable quarters of Beijing (near Chaoyang Gate 朝阳门, Second Ring Road), [Fig. 3.5] the film ends as Fang Lei, the sexually repressed housewife haunted by a spectral lover, departs for a Buddhist temple in the remote northeast rural area (outside Changchun). [Fig. 3.5] The traumatized woman, abandoned by her unfeeling husband who hides their daughter from her, initially finds some solace in the temple but soon realizes that it is hardly a refuge from worldly desires and troubles. What confused the viewer who wrote the negative review mentioned earlier may have been Longing’s hard-to-categorize genre or form. A recent, more positive review on the same site sees this form as “a successful hybrid between erotic ghost story and social commentary,” and praises the female director’s point of view as a perspective of the city “I have not otherwise seen 37 Andres, “Engaging the Spirits of the Dead.” 38 Yang, “Wo pai Laotou,” p. 175.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

Fig. 3.4 Longing for the Rain, 2013. Poster designed by Wang Wo.

123

124 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 3.5 A repressed middle-class woman lost in her “spring dream” (Longing for the Rain, 2013). (Courtesy of Yang Lina)

portrayed.”39 The film opens with a series of interviews in a domestic service agency—shot frontally in the manner of a talking-head documentary—of prospective nannies by an interviewer, presumably a middle-class woman like Fang Lei. She remains invisible behind the camera, though the voice is unmistakably Yang’s for those who recognize it—like how she momentarily “enters” the intersubjective arena in her documentaries. When the last interviewee asks about the prospective employer’s profession, the latter replies, “no job, just staying at home.” This quasi-ethnographic opening, offering a glimpse into a new socio-economically stratified society, is wedged into the fictional life of Fang (played by Zhao Siyuan, a professional actress), wife of a ceo whose income enables her to be a stay-at-home mom—a new status symbol among the Chinese affluent class. Ultimately, she decides to hire no one, unwilling to entrust her daughter to a stranger. We then abruptly cut to a huge supermarket where Fang Lei shops for household items, while overhearing dour news from a TV set on display about a young girl run over by a car and no one coming to her aid. After picking up her daughter in their car, a haggard woman in a dirty military winter coat begs at the window with a child in tow. Fang tells her daughter that the child might have been kidnapped by a professional beggar’s ring—something commonly accepted as a social phenomenon in an economically polarized China. Only a few minutes into the film, a haunting air of everyday insecurity and class inequity pervades the streets and homes in this post-Olympic boomtown. The tranquility and contentment of Fang’s middle-class life quickly unravel. 39 Pattison, “Longing for the Rain [review],” Eye for Film.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

125

With a husband addicted to gaming on his iPad and oblivious to her frustration and ennui, Fang drifts into pornography, masturbation, and spectral romance. Fang’s desperate yearning for a soulmate and sexual fulfillment ignites an amorous force, invisible but tangible, with which she becomes obsessed. The optical reflections from the giant windows by which she masturbates, oblivious to the bustling city of power and wealth around her, become eerie mirrors or screens refracting desires and destinies from another time and place, superimposed upon the illusive present. 40 Fang is convinced of the authenticity of her daytime trysts with the ghost lover, confirmed by the visible evidence of their exchange of bodily fluids and love bites. The elaborate shifts in mise-en-scène (lighting, color, sound, clothing, acting, and cinematography) in these spectral scenes on the threshold of the visible/alienated and the haptic/orgasmic worlds weave a stylistic tapestry that seems light years away from the sidewalk xianchang aesthetic. Diverging from the “waiting for time to go by” or “distended temporality” of the xianchang aesthetic exemplified by Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Wu (1997), 41 Longing delves into the deep recesses of Beijing’s late-socialist “twilight zone” in ways more akin to the “contested realism” in experimental films such as Night Scene (2004) by Cui Zi’en and early video artworks by Zhao Liang with a surreal effect. 42 Longing confronts a time when not just the old are rendered irrelevant and invisible from the streets but also newly affluent middle-class women, who fall prey to a combination of neo-bourgeois and neo-Confucian family ideology sanctioned by the state. Because of her age and social standing, Fang cannot hang out on the sidewalk like the old men or mingle with the retirees dancing in the park. Her only escape and comfort are her own body and erotic daydreams. By borrowing the title of Huang Wenhai’s 2006 documentary Dream Walking, I have elsewhere discussed the motif of dream-walking in several DV documentaries, how it offers a critique of the everyday in the post-utopic wasteland of urban ruins and disposable lives as well as images. 43 In the wake of the “Chinese Dream” 中国梦, the mantra of 40 The ubiquitous use of windowpanes and shots of reflections/superimpositions in Longing are reminiscent of Edward Yang’s Taipei Story (1995), also about disconnection and alienation in a rapidly modernizing city. Liao Ching-song, a master editor who worked with many Taiwan New Cinema directors, including Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, helped complete the editing of Longing. 41 Berry, “Xiao Wu: Watching Time Go By,”. 42 Voci, “Blowing Up Beijing,” pp. 106–12. 43 Zhang, “Dream-Walking in Digital Wasteland.”

126 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

the post-reform nationalist ideology, dream-walking is both a symptom and resistance, articulated in new ways, to which spectral erotic escapades in Longing give new meaning. While the imaginary soul of ancient civilization is recalled for validating hyperbolic statistics boosting economic growth, massive concrete jungles, and the new “Great Wall” of the high-speed trains, the present is haunted ever more persistently by specters of the bygone past, collective as well as personal. Indeed, underneath or alongside the sleek, shining globalized cities, as Dudley Andrew has observed, mainly in reference to Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong, many “ghost towns” appeared in East Asian cinema around the new millennium. 44 Longing breaks sensitive spectral ground in China where ghost film was banned until very recently, and graphic sexual or erotic content and candid representation of religion remain taboo. The film’s aesthetic and generic orientation shifts abruptly midway. Emerging from the claustrophobic apartments of downtown high-rises and the fantastical staging of desire performed by professional actors, we are suddenly taken on a series of road trips, back into the world of minjian (民 间, literally, folk’s realm) that independent documentary tends to frequent: demolished neighborhoods, petitioners’ shantytowns, the cluttered homes of blind fortune-tellers, and makeshift ritual sites of shamans, among others. Hong, Fang’s close friend since childhood (played by non-professional actor Xue Hong), 45 worries about her health and takes her to see a Daoist priest. [Fig. 3.6] He condemns the ghost and her lust, performing a ritual of exorcism that seems to keep the ghost at bay. Nonetheless, Fang continues to indulge in masturbation and daydreams, neglecting her duties as a perfect stay-athome mom (e.g., no longer making wonton dumplings for her husband’s breakfast). Hong, depressed after being quickly dumped by her gym trainer boyfriend, takes her to seek solace with male escorts at a ktv (Karaoke bars with private rooms)—a social scene rarely exposed in media. Fang fails to show interest in the “boy toys” (or 小鲜肉, literally, young fresh meat, in contemporary slang) eager to sell fake passion. The Daoist condemnation of the spectral liaison and its harm to the patrilineal family structure indicates that minjian and the world of popular religion is a complicated place that does not necessarily deliver relief or support to suffering women. In contrast, the film’s feminist tenor derives from the close rapport and mutual support between women. Hong takes 44 Andrew, “Ghost Towns.” 45 Xue, Yang’s close friend in real life, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Horse Film Festival for her role.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

127

Fig. 3.6 A Daoist priest condemns the ghost. (Courtesy of Yang Lina)

Fig. 3.7 Praying with a sympathetic female spirit medium. (Courtesy of Yang Lina)

Fang to see a female Buddhist medium who shows a more empathic understanding of Fang’s condition. We are led down a long alley, where an unlikely temple—just a cramped room filled with Buddha statues, incense, candles, and other ritual objects such as a portrait of the late popular prime minister Zhou Enlai—is tucked far away from the bright and boisterous city. The friendly medium affirms Fang Lei’s special ability to connect with spirits and determines that the ghost is her destined lover from a former life now seeking reincarnation through their reunion. Chanting the “Great Compassion Mantra,” the medium relays the ghost’s feelings and comforts: “No matter what he wants from you, this is your karma,” “Our hearts are connected, no need to tell anyone else,” and, “We can’t see or touch him, but

128 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

he still exists.” [Fig. 3.7] This validation of the spectral lover as a legitimate existence in Buddhist terms brings great relief to Fang, who, moved and cleansed by the séance, happily dances on the rubble and debris outside the medium’s makeshift temple. Just when Fang feels emboldened to dream on, however, reality bites back. While she is immersed in spectral erotic bliss, her daughter almost dies from drowning. Her husband practically abandons her. Unable to find her daughter anywhere, Fang is devastated and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As if in answer to her despair, her aunt invites her to join a retreat at a temple in the frigid northeast, where busloads of women arrive to seek counsel and healing. The resident abbot provides service as a healer. Fang is at first quite shaken by what she sees—the temple is more like a mental hospital and its “inmates” are exclusively female. Some speak a certain “cosmic language” intelligible only to the abbot, others perform dances of disoriented leaps and contortions. The abbot also acknowledges the authenticity of Fang’s dream but highlights the risks of communion between ghosts and human souls. Resigned, she settles into the women’s ward and joins a candlelight party of energetic dancing and chanting. Sweaty and dizzy, at one point she leans against a cold windowpane and sees a handsome monk who resembles her spectral lover in the snow as if praying and waiting for her at the same time. Fang’s fingers touch his image, and her “longing for rain” surges again. 46 Is Longing a domestic melodrama turned ghost film? Certain aspects of Longing recall Stanley Kwan’s Rouge 胭脂扣 (1987), in which a courtesan who died in a double suicide attempt in 1930s Hong Kong returns to track down her lover, who failed to carry out the pact. Bliss Gua Lim discusses Rouge and other Asian ghost films as part of a fantastic mode of cinema, forging a temporal critique of modernity and its attendant universalizing (or national) code of homogeneity. She writes, “The fantastic unsettles the fantasy of a single calendrical present shared by all citizens through an occult splintering of the national meanwhile.”47 A ghost film like Rouge— straddling the boundary of the living and the spectral, the fantastic and the banal—makes visible and palpable the heterogeneity of urban space “crosshatched with various temporal rhythms,” re-enchanting forgotten or condemned temporalities, memories and fantasies. Lim coins the term “immiscible temporality”—meaning “incapable of mixing or attaining homogeneity” (e.g., oil and water) —to conceptualize anew the relationship 46 “Rain”(yu), as in “rain and cloud” (云雨) in the English film title, has obvious references to erotic longing and sexual union commonly used in traditional literary texts. 47 Lim, Translating Time, p. 39.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

129

between cinematic time, national time, and cultural difference. 48 The explicit Buddhist reference in Yang’s film also resonates with the “Buddhist sexual contemporaneity” linked to alternative desires and representational practices that Arnika Fuhrmann observes in contemporary “ghostly” Thai cinema. 49 While the ghost film and horror genres are also susceptible to industrial gentrification and commercial cannibalism (Hollywood remakes), alternative sourcing and creative appropriation of the uncanny and the fantastic could take us in refreshing and provocative directions. It makes sense then not to view Longing as a conventional ghost film. When asked about her interest in ghost films, Yang responds that she is not particularly taken by the few she has seen. She rather admires Pu Songling 蒲松齡(1640–1715) and his classic Tales of the Strange from Liaozhai Studio, the original source for all too many Chinese-language ghost films. Above all, though, it was her maternal grandmother who mesmerized her with many made-up magical stories that taught her “truth and beauty.” “If I had spent more time with her, I might have become a female [Gabriel Garcia] Márquez,” whose “magic realist” fiction enchanted an entire generation in the 1980s and served as a key stimulant for a similar literary and artistic movement in China. Another source of her constant inspiration is Luis Buñuel.50 Here, we may glimpse some roots of Longing’s hybrid form that freely blends sidewalk xianchang documentary aesthetic, fantastic tales, melodramatic realism, and surrealism, resulting in an unstable mixture that both gives shape to and critiques the mercurial, oppressive urban experience in the capital of a post-socialist China.

Digital Shadows as Talismanic Objects Longing’s unabashed mixing of the fictional and documentary modes that string together a heterotopic cluster of xianchang locations updates Lim’s “immiscible temporality” in a post-celluloid context. The film form is somewhat frayed at the seams and edges, unsettling viewers like the one cited earlier, especially the part in the temple (which is also the subject of Yang’s unfinished documentary, Temple). All the scenes in the temple were shot on location in a documentary fashion with the characters playing themselves, 48 Ibid., p. 32. 49 Fuhrmann, Ghostly Desires. 50 Yang Lina, personal communication on WeChat, summer 2015.

130 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

including the abbot and young monk in whose visage Fang sees her “ancient” lover. The lead actress Zhao Siyuan and the actress who plays the aunt were the only professional actors among them, and by then Zhao’s acting and body language seemed to have drifted into the documentary realm. Maybe equally instructive is that Yang, again a total novice in narrative film production, had only a barebone script before shooting started. She had two pages of outline and used improvisation as her primary method. A storyboard was eventually made for editing and re-editing, which resembled more the post-production of a documentary. This creative process illustrates what Bérénice Reynaud has noted as an intertwined desire and practice among the new Chinese digital indies for both a bodily archive and for cinema and montage. Reynaud writes on the aesthetic consequences of eradicating the boundaries between documentary and fiction—boundaries broken down through the fluid, easily accessible modes of production enabled by digital tools. She observes two tendencies in some recent Chinese independent films: In the first case, there is a tendency to ignore the formal properties of the new medium and shoot as one would on film—but more cheaply and without some of the censorship issues pertaining to film production. In the second case, the possibilities offered by the new toys are embraced with gusto, as producing better means of recording “reality.”51

The “moments of rupture” and “breaks in episteme” articulated by DV filmmaking, argues Reynaud, can be seen in many digital indie films. I would argue that no one has ventured to do so by re-embedding a DV xianchang sensibility within a transgressive zone of spectral eroticism as Yang has done in Longing. While Longing insists on the “immiscibility” of plural, asynchronous spatial-temporalities (mainstream and marginal, secular and religious, Beijing and China), it also freely, almost irrationally, utilizes the nonlinear nature of digital filming and editing. Though the phantom lover may be the illusive object of Fang’s longing, he also serves as a glue, or medium, that connects different modes of perception and representation. While on one level Longing offers a critique of the post-socialist Beijing with its inherent insecurity and loss of moral compass, it is above all an indictment of the revived patrilineal nuclear family structure sanctioned by the status quo that has now caught up with the Chinese upper classes. The search 51 Reynaud, “Chinese Digital Shadows,” p. 189.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

131

Fig. 3.8 “Talismanic Image”: A Miraculous Birth. (Courtesy of Yang Lina)

for alternative faiths in popular religion is daring but hardly idealistic. As someone who was raised in a devout Buddhist family, and who has spent substantial time learning and practicing it, Yang admits that her cinema is constantly filtered through a Buddhist lens, directly or indirectly. This was perhaps not readily apparent in her earlier documentaries, but as I have tried to suggest, her compassionate camera along with her gendered persona, even when filming bodily suffering and death, is the constant companion of her subjects. The “photographing” or “looking after” that she offers the elderly is akin to the photographic “miraculous image” 瑞像 that preserves Buddha’s shadows 佛影, used by Buddhists in modern times, as the cultural historian Francesca Tarocco has compellingly shown.52 The DV images, with their portability and accessibility, further “intensify the underlying Buddhist assumptions about the magic and talismanic nature of certain objects” and help those who believe in their power and efficacy to “confront a new and complex set of concepts about time, space, light, and mortality.”53 From documentary vivification of the departed souls and places to the spectral vivi-fiction of repressed desires, Yang’s cinema emits deep sorrow for the passing elders and suffering women who seem out of step with a time dictated by the state-designed “Chinese Dream.” Her films address the double disenchantment brought by globalization and patriarchy to the street and the domestic interior, which acquire more uncanny apparitions in a “post-spatial”, or post-socialist, Beijing under an authoritarian regime.54 Yet the underlying belief in the talismanic power of “miraculous images” 52 Tarocco, “The Wailing Arhats.” 53 Ibid., p. 113. 54 “Post-spatial” is Braester’s term in his Painting the City Red.

132 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

enabled by independent digital cinema, even when it remains largely unseen in China, continues to nurture daydreams like those in Longing. Its female protagonist can conjure up her phantom love again and again, until it is reincarnated or reborn as a new baby, presented literally as an embodied miraculous image towards the end of the film. [Fig. 3.8]

Coda After Longing for the Rain, disheartened by the mounting obstacles in dealing with censorship and reaching a wide audience beyond festivals abroad, Yang Lina turned to projects that resemble a kind of art-pop “woman’s film” akin to Sylvia Chang’s and that have the potential to break into the “mainstream,” i.e., obtaining the “dragon seal” for theatrical or online release. Describing herself and her work as a “clear stream” 清流,55 Yang continuing to develop the “Women’s Trilogy.” In 2021, the second film of the trilogy, Spring Tide 春潮, was released online in China when most cinemas were closed during the prolonged Covid-19 pandemic (more on this in the epilogue). In 2022, she completed the third film, Song of Spring 春歌 (Chinese title now changed to Mama! 妈妈！), about an elderly mother caring for her aging daughter with Alzheimer’s disease, and how both grapple with both domestic and national amnesia. It was released in theaters across China on the eve of the Autumn Moon Festival in September 2022 to critical and popular acclaim. Resilient and resourceful, Yang has actively contributed to carving out a space for a form of cine-feminism in the prc under the double forces of ideological control and commercial pressure.

Bibliography Andres, Kirsten W. “Engaging the Spirits of the Dead: Soul-Calling Rituals and the Performative Construction of Efficacy.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14.4 (2008): 755–73. Andrew, Dudley. “Ghost Towns.” In Yomi Braester and James Tweedie (eds.), Cinema at City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 37–47. Berry, Chris. “Xiao Wu: Watching Time Go By.” In Chris Berry (ed.), Chinese Films in Focus II. Basingstoke: British Film Institute/Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 250–57. 55 Personal communication on WeChat, June 24, 2022.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

133

Berry, Chris, and Lisa Rofel. “Alternative Archive: China’s Independent Documentary Culture.” In Chirs Berry et al. (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary: For the Public Record, Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 135–54. Berry, Chris, Xinyu Lu and Lisa Rofle (eds.). The New Chinese Documentary: For the Public Record, Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Braester, Yomi. “‘Excuse Me, Your Camera Is in My Face!’” In Chris Berry, Xinyu Lu, and Lisa Rofel (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 195–218. Braester, Yomi. Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Chen, Caroline. “Dancing in the Streets of Beijing: Improvised Uses within the Urban System.” In Jeffrey Hou (ed.), Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary City. New York: Routledge, 2010. 21–35. Cui, Shuqin. “Ning Ying’s Beijing Trilogy: Cinematic Configurations of Age, Class and Sexuality.” In Zhen Zhang (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 241–63. Fan, Victor. Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2015. Feeley, Jennifer. “The Art of Documenting China’s Most Vulnerable.” In Michelle Vosper (ed.), Creating across Cultures: Women in the Arts from China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Hong Kong: East Slope Publishing, 2017. 153–71. Fuhrmann, Arnika. Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Hallam, Julia, and Les Roberts. Locating the Moving Image: New Approaches to Film and Place. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. imdb member @jvH48, “First hour is promising, arousing our interest in a logical development and ending. Alas, nothing of the sort happens,” https://www. imdb.com/review/rw2790607/?ref_=tt_urv. Longing for the Rain, May 1, 2013. Lim, Bliss Cua. Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Pattison, Michael. “Longing for the Rain [review].” Eye for Film (June 11, 2013). http:// www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/longing-for-the-rain-2013-film-reviewby-michael-pattison. Pickowicz, Paul and Yingjin Zhang (eds.). Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First Century China. Lamham: Rowan and Littlefield, 2015. Reynaud, Bérénice. “Chinese Digital Shadows: Hybrid Forms, Bodily Archives, and Transnational Visions.” In Zhen Zhang and Angela Zito (eds.), DV-Made China:

134 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Digital Subjects and Social Transformations. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015. 187–214. Robinson, Luke. “From ‘Public’ to ‘Private’: Chinese Documentary and the Logic of Xianchang.” In Chris Berry et al. (eds), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 177–94. Tarocco, Francesca. “The Wailing Arhats: Buddhism, Photography and Resistance in Modern China.” In David Park and Kuenga Wangmo (eds), The Art of Merit: Studies in Buddhist Art and Its Conservation. London: Archetype Publications, 2013. 113–23. Voci, Paola. “Blowing Up Beijing: The City as a Twilight Zone.” In Chris Berry et al. (eds), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 99–115. Wang, Xiaolu 王小魯 and Yang Lina 杨荔纳. “Yang Lina: shi shenghuo rangwo biancheng le nüxingzhuyi zhe” (杨荔纳：是生活让我变成了女性主义者) [Yang Lina: Life Makes Me a Feminist]. Jintian (今天) [Today] No. 131 (2021): 110–27. Wang, Yiman. “The Amateur’s Lightning Rod: DV Documentary in Postsocialist China.” Film Quarterly 58.4 (2005): 16–26. Wu, Wenguang. “Just on the Road: A Description of Individual Way of Recording Images in the 1990s.” In Hung Wu et al. (eds), Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art, 1900-2000. Guangzhou: Guangdong Museum of Art, 2002. 132–38. Yang, Tianyi. “Wo pai Laotou [How I filmed Old Men]. In Wu, Weici 吴蔚慈, Jilu yu tansuo: Dalu jilupian de fazhan yu koushu jilu 1990-2000 (纪录与探索：大陆纪录 片的发展与口述纪录1990-2000) [Recording and Exploring: The Development and Oral History of Documentary in the Mainland 1990-2000]. Taipei: Taipei National Film Archive, 2001. Yu, Kiki Tianqi. “Toward a Communicative Practice: Female First-Person Documentary in Twenty-First Century.” In Keith Wagner et al. Eds., China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the Twenty-first Century. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 23–44. Zhang, Zhen (ed.). The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Zhang, Zhen. “Dream-Walking in Digital Wasteland: Observations on the Uses of Black and White in Independent Documentary.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6.3 (2012): 299–319. Zhang, Zhen. “Toward a Digital Political Mimesis: Aesthetic of Affect and Activist Video.” In Zhen Zhang and Angela Zito (eds.), DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent Film. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015. 316–346.

From Sidewalk Realism to Spec tr al Romance

135

Zhu, Rikun 朱日坤 and Wan Xiaogang 万小刚. Duli jilu: Duihua Zhongguo xinrui daoyan (独立记录：对话中国新锐导演) [Independent Record: Dialogues with Emerging Chinese Filmmakers]. Beijing: Zhongguo minzu sheying yishu chubanshe, 2005. Zito, Angela. “Writing in Water, or, Evanescence, Enchantment and Ethnography in a Chinese Park.” Visual Anthropology Review 30.1 (2014): 11–22.

4

Eggs, Stones, and Stretch Marks Haptic Visuality and Tactile Resistance in Huang Ji’s Personal Cinema “The human heart is sometimes very fragile, easily broken like an egg, but it can also be very strong, hard as stone.” —Huang Ji

Abstract Chapter 4 highlights the courageous and expressive personal cinema of Huang Ji, a forceful emerging filmmaker who, in collaboration with her Japanese filmmaker husband, made two powerful, award-winning, autographically inflected feature f ilms based on her experience as a sexually abused “left-behind” child in rural Hunan, as well as a home video style documentary about their trans-cultural nuclear family in a time of rising nationalism in China. Keywords: left-behind children, sexual abuse, trans-cultural cinema, tactile aesthetic, home video

On the muggy late afternoon of August 18, 2012, I was among some two hundred attendees anxiously awaiting the opening of the 9th Beijing Independent Film Festival in Songzhuang, in the city’s eastern exurb. The cinema-theater-style auditorium in Songzhuang Art Museum, where previous editions of the festival took place, was made off-limits by local authorities under tightened top-down ideological control nationwide.1 The new venue is a makeshift art exhibition space, not outfitted for regular 1 As Hu Jintao was reaching the end of his ten-year term of paramount leadership, power struggle intensif ied at the top. These transitional moments in the past had seen tightened political control. Xi Jinping became general secretary of the party in November 2012, and the president of the prc in March 2013. On March 11, 2018, an amendment in the constitution made

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_ch04

138 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

film viewing. The organizers set up a stage with a screen and put rows of folding chairs on the floor. Nonetheless, it was crowded with filmmakers from all over the country (with some hailing from Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere), cinephiles, critics, curators, volunteers, as well as members of the Songzhuang community. After the introductory remarks, the lights went off, and we became engrossed in the opening film, Egg and Stone 鸡蛋和石头 (2011), Huang Ji’s debut feature, despite the rudimentary projection condition. The film had won the Tiger Award for Best Feature Film at the Rotterdam International Film Festival earlier in the year and generated a lot of anticipation in Chinese independent film circles. Based largely on her own experience and shot entirely in her home village area in Anhua county, Hunan province 湖南 安化县, Huang Ji’s film is the first narrative film to address sexual abuse, trauma, and stunted development among the “left-behind” rural children during China’s rapid urbanization and economic globalization, when their parents have migrated to the cities for better-paying job opportunities. Only a few scenes into the film, projection abruptly stopped. We were told that it was a power outage at first. After a prolonged wait, it became apparent that it was a deliberate shutdown by an invisible hand. We exited into the outdoor space outside and lingered for a very long time while the organizers tried to negotiate the resumption of the screening. It turned out to be futile. The film was eventually screened in an alternative space during the remaining time of the festival that had to disperse into a cluster of private venues, mainly Li Xianting Film Fund’s courtyard (owned by Li) and local artists’ studios.2 Standing on the steps at the building entrance, Huang, who had left her newborn baby with her husband Ryuji Otsuka, also a partner in filmmaking, for the opening,3 was visibly shaken by the interruption. The incident uncannily echoed the metaphor of “egg versus stone” (or “egg hitting stone” 鸡蛋撞石头) running through the film. The thin white projection cloth for a minjian film festival without the authorities’ it possible to him to stay in power beyond the usual ten-year limit. He secured his third term in the fall of 2022. 2 For a comprehensive and insightful report on the festival, see Wang, “Closed and Open Screens.” On the festival in Songzhuang, especially the last edition before it was forced to close for good, see Wang Wo’s documentary A Filmless Festival (2015). 3 The couple met at Beijing Film Academy when Huang was studying in the literature department. Their collaborations resulted in several narrative shorts and the feature-length Egg and Stone (2012), The Foolish Bird (2017) and Stonewalling (2022), as well as two home-video style documentaries Trace (2013) and Beijing Ants (2014). Otsuka worked as a documentary filmmaker for Japanese television before moving to China in 2005.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

139

Fig. 4.1 Egg and Stone (2011) ©yellow- green PI

approval is like the delicate and fragile eggshell, prone to destruction by external forces with an iron fist. Egg and Stone is a dark tale of the coming of age of a left-behind girl in the long shadow of China’s meteoric rise as an economic giant in the new century. [Fig. 4.1] Honggui belongs to tens of millions of rural children and adolescents whose parents migrated to large cities and special economic zones for better-paying jobs and self-realization. Blending autobiographic and fictional elements, the script and the film’s visual style shift seamlessly between observational documentary and poetic realism of damaged girlhood and a regained sense of self. In the preceding chapter, I showed how Yang Lina’s compassionate camera created an alternative archive of urban life in northern China during the country’s tumultuous transition to a post-socialist market economy and its toll on the vulnerable elderly, children and women. Huang’s bold personal cinema takes us to rural Hunan in southern China (where Mao Zedong originally came from). Ably assisted by Otsuka in alternating roles as producer, co-writer and co-director, and especially with his evocative cinematography, Huang Ji has created a unique body of films that articulate intimate personal memories and sensitive social issues in a tactile, sensuous, and thought-provoking style. This style is manifest in the fictional works including the early short film The Warmth of the Orange Peel 橘子皮的温度 (2009), and the feature-length narrative Egg and Stone and The Foolish Bird 笨鸟 (2017), the f irst two

140 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

installments in a planned “Rural Trilogy,” now called the “Chinese Women’s Sexuality Trilogy” 中国女性性三部曲 as they began to develop Stonewalling 石门 (2022) set in a large provincial city. Toward the end of this chapter, I also discuss their documentary film, Trace 痕迹 (2013), which, shot in a home video and road movie style with a low-grade DV camera, places the intimate life of their nuclear family and the rural hometown within an agitated transnational geopolitical landscape. Despite the different modes of production and presentation, Huang and Otsuka’s fictional and non-fictional work engage tactile objects (e.g., eggs, stones, cellphones) and embodied experiences including menstruation, sex, pregnancy, and breastfeeding, creating an intimately personal cinema invested in what Laura Marks terms a “haptic visuality.” At the opening of her book, The Skin of the Film, Marks writes, “I want to emphasize the tactile quality and contagious quality of cinema as something we viewers brush up against like another body.” Characteristic of “feminist film and video, experimental film and video that deals with perception, and experimental sexual representation,” the haptic visuality, she underscores, is imbricated with a politics of the senses, especially the “‘unrepresentable’ senses, such as touch, smell and taste.”4 Later in the book when discussing the memory of touch, she further develops Luce Irigaray’s critique of Merleau-Ponty’s privileging of vision and affirms that “touch, as the first sense experienced by the fetus and by the infant, should be the model of mutually implicating relationship of self and world.” She elaborates, “[m]ore than any other sensory deprivation, the loss of the sense of touch creates a feeling of being an orphan in the world.”5 Huang’s works and her collaboration with Otsuka exemplify the “intercultural cinema” imbued in the senses, especially touch. Eggs and stones are central mimetic tokens of Huang’s and Otsuka’s tactile aesthetic that not only give Huang’s feature debut its forceful title, indicating the battle between the vulnerable and the powerful but also their mutually implicated relationship. They are part of an ecosystem of a wide range of tactile objects, materials, natural elements, surfaces, life forms, media, and related practices that inhabit Huang Ji’s cinema, such as hair, comb, skin, birthmarks or stretch marks, orange peels, water, blood, toilet paper, sutra script, moisture, breeze, clothing, cellphone, syringe, chickens, bird feather, fish bladder and so on. They surround and give shape and meaning to the convoluted experience of the left-behind girl’s coming of age in Huang’s cinematic world. 4 Marks, The Skin of the Film, pp. xi–xii, xvi. 5 Ibid., p. 149.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

141

With the exception of their documentary work, these films are extremely quiet, (naturally) darkly lit, and suffused with disjoined, partially framed, close-to-body, sometimes deliberately fuzzy images accompanied by evocative sounds of water or rain dripping. Huang’s cinema is not a socio-legal study obsessed with victimhood or simply names the culprit, be it a family member or a stranger who preys on the left-behind girls. Rather, its haptic, sensate approach to pain and healing is invested in revealing the growing inner strength and coming into being of a fledgling heroine with limited resources at her disposal, who fearlessly defends her sensory, bodily, and emotional integrity in a fragmented social world.

Left-Behind in Concealed Xianchang In an interview during the premiere of Egg and Stone in Rotterdam in February 2012, Huang Ji states frankly that Egg and Stone is based on her own experiences as a left-behind child who became a victim of family sexual abuse, a taboo subject in Chinese cinema and society. At that time, I lived in a village. As in the story, my parents migrated elsewhere to work and left me in the care of my uncle.6 In fact, I experienced the same thing as in the film, where the uncle intends to sexually abuse the main character. But in my situation, it was not the same uncle who lived with me, but another one I saw every day. I was around eight then. I was so young that the shadow of it still haunts me. Thus, as soon as I planned to make a feature-length film, the idea suddenly popped up in my mind, and I decided to write it and make it.7

Huang and her team forego a sociological exposé of the pervasive yet tightly covered up phenomenon in China (and “around the world”—as Huang underscores in the same interview), which would have involved the use of a neo-realist street-level documentary aesthetic favored by Urban Generation directors such as Zhang Yuan (Beijing Bastards, Seventeen Years), Wang Xiaoshuai (Days, So Close to Paradise), Jia Zhangke (Xiao Wu, Platform), and Ning Ying (For Fun, I Love Beijing) in their early fictional works.8 The 6 This uncle is the husband of Huang Ji’s maternal aunt. 7 Lee, “Cinema Talk: Conversation with Huang Ji, Director of Egg and Stone.” The piece was posted on the dGenerate Films website shortly after the “shut down” of the biff opening. 8 See my introduction, “Bearing Witness,” The Urban Generation.

142 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

characters that populate their f ilms are the motley of other “left-over” or marginalized subjects, including migrant workers, petty thieves, sex workers, taxi drivers, elders, and poor bohemian artists who are caught under the crushing wheels of globalization and urbanization. Rarely do we find children or adolescents as protagonists in that cinema, in contrast to New Wave cinemas elsewhere (e.g., France, Taiwan, Iran).9 Instead, Huang’s highlighting of children and adolescents thematically shares an affinity with independent documentary filmmakers such as Du Haibin (Along the Railroad, 2002), Chen Weijun (To Live is Better Than to Die, 2003; Please Vote for Me, 2007), Yang Lina (Wild Grass, 2009), Cui Zi’en (Who are the…of the Communism…2012), Ai Xiaoming (Our Children, 2005), Xu Xin (Kelamayi, 2010), and, more closely concerning left-behind children, Fan Linxin’s Last Train Home (2009). These social documentaries approach the homeless or tragically victimized children largely from a sympathetic outsider’s point of view, using an observational or investigative method focusing on the collective fate of this group of children. Huang Ji’s films are both highly personal and deliberately subtle while exuding a headstrong force in confronting hard social realities. The broken-up, “puzzle-like” narration and the haptic style excavate and reconstruct a concealed, often unrepresentable, xianchang (present scene of happening—see Chapter 3) of trauma and alienation, shedding light on the protagonist’s recalcitrant spirit and resilience as she tries to carve out a “room of her own” in the bleak world around the isolated rural girls. Huang and Otsuka made Foolish Bird while raising Chihiro in an alternative co-op school in the western hills outside Beijing. Honggui’s struggle for survival and freedom continues in this sequel, in which both Lin Sen (Lynne in English subtitles, played by the same actress, more grown-up now) and her best high school friend Maizi go through terrible ordeals. In scenes reminiscent of Huang Yu-shan’s Spring Cactus (see Chapter 2), the two girls seek adventure outside the oppressive school and home environment in Anhua, a county seat beset by chaotic development, pollution, consumerism, 9 Wang Xiaoshuai’s Shanghai Dreams青红 (2005) is centered on an adolescent girl in rural Guizhou, but it was set in the 1980s. Zhang also made Little Red Flowers 看上去很美 (2006), about a full-board kindergarten in the early socialist period. Jia Zhangke’s Unknown Pleasures 逍遥游 (2002), featuring two small-town teenage boys’ futile attempt to break out of a life of material and spiritual impoverishment, has a certain resonance with Huang Ji’s work. Recently, young women directors Wang Lina, Han Shuai and Bai Xue have also made films centered on children and adolescents, A First Farewell 第一次的离别 (2018), The Crossing 过春天 (2018), and Summer Blur 汉南夏日(2020). The latter two are both about young girls dealing with fragmented family life and a harsh world, demonstrating a strong affinity to Huang’s films.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

143

Fig. 4.2 A twenty-four-hour internet café as refuge (Foolish Bird, 2017) ©yellow- green PI

crime, and corruption. Maizi, adopted by a couple to marry their only son, who has cerebral palsy, is lured and raped by a sleazy hairstylist. Thereafter she disappears and eventually commits suicide by jumping from an ancient pagoda in the town’s center. The two have bonded over a scheme to steal and sell classmates’ cellphones, which have allowed them to have a hairstyle make-over and spend extended time at internet cafés that serve as their refuges. [Fig. 4.2] Maizi’s death leaves Lynne in shock and feeling guilt and intensified loneliness. She goes back to the Baidu Beauty Salon,10 confronting the rapist and striking one of his cellphones on the ground. After a humiliating sexual relationship with a teenage boy whose father is the local police chief, Lynn is in utter despair. Wandering the town aimlessly, she stops her bike by the canal and throws her last cellphone into the dirty water. Huang and Otsuka have collaboratively developed a film form organically woven into such an experience of concealment and breaking out, pain and self-knowledge. Both Egg and Stone and The Foolish Bird treat the thorny subject of sexual abuse and the ensuing confusion and trauma among adolescent girls that prc cinema had never touched upon before. Made five years apart and starring the same local non-professional actor Yao Honggui, who plays the twelve-year-old Honggui (same given name as the actor), and the seventeen-year-old Lynne, the films are shot entirely on location in Huang Ji’s hometown area where Huang grew up and attended schools. As Honggui grows into a teenager and roams around the county 10 Baidu 百度 is also the name for the notorious Chinese search engine. A fourth- or fifth-tier city such as Anhua, like a lot of similar places in China, is inundated by the monopoly IT economy.

144 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

seat more freely on her little bike than she did back in the isolated mountain village, the sense of confinement and suffocation so palpably felt in Egg and Stone seems to have only been exacerbated by an alienating urban environment. Before delving into the films, Egg and Stone in particular, some explanations of the phenomenon of “left-behind children” 留守儿童 are in order. Since the early 1990s, China’s massive transformation in social and economic structure, centered on urbanization and manufacturing for export in tandem with global neoliberal capitalism, has created a huge army of migrant workers. As able-bodied young and middle-aged adults with prime earning capacity move to the metropolises and provincial capitals, countless children are left behind in villages and small towns in remote rural areas. Social scientists have conducted extensive, mostly quantitative and macroscopic, research on the social and cultural consequences of the left-behind children phenomenon. Early studies focused on impoverished or underdeveloped northern and western provinces.11 Pain of the Century, the title of Chinese scholar Ruan Mei’s 2008 study, aptly captures the psychological toll rapid urbanization and globalization have taken on Chinese rural families and their children.12 By the time Eggs and Stones was made at the cusp of the second decade of the new millennium, China had more than 30% of rural children whose parents worked and lived in the cities. A 2014 study cites the number at fifty-eight million. Two years later, the number reached sixty-one million children “who rely on their kin for living.”13 These studies, while providing broad surveys, useful statistics, and general observations, have very little to say about the lived experiences of the left-behind children, nor do they offer in-depth case studies, let alone on sensitive areas concerning sexuality and sexual abuse.14 In this regard, Egg and Stone and The Foolish Bird serve as ground-up, sensuous auto-ethnographic studies on left-behind children, especially adolescent girls’ struggles. Veering away from verbose narration and compilation of facts, the films weave double-edged tales of sexual awakening and 11 Ye and Murray et al. (eds.), Guanzhu liushou ertong — Zhongguo zhongxibu nongcun diqu laodongli waichuwugong dui liushou ertong de yingxiang (Left-behind Children in Rural China). This volume consists of regionally and locally specif ic surveys, with many brief summaries of cases or examples attending to issues concerning education, custody, and emotional and psychological development of the children. 12 Ruan, Shiji zhi tong: Zhongguo nongcun liushou ertong diaocha (Pain of the Century, Surveying Left-behind Children in Rural China). 13 Pissin, “The Global Left Behind Children in China,” p. 102. 14 See, for instance, Chen et al. (eds.), Child and Youth Well-being in China.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

145

abuse through a tapestry of tactile images and sounds (or silence), keeping verbal and optical representation to a minimum. Egg and Stone begins in an extremely close shot of a girl’s hands fidgeting, trembling, touching what appears to be her naked legs. The point of view seems to belong to the girl, so close that one cannot see the whole body and the space around her. A single key hangs around her neck, resting on her white sweater. Some red spots on the skin look like blood drops but turn out to be birthmarks. [Fig. 4.3] In dim yet warm orange light, the next shot reveals a window opposite the bed completely sealed with cardboard. The girl wraps a bed sheet around her head like a cocoon ensnared in silk threads, breathing heavily. Is she trying to suffocate herself in an attempted suicide? Or is this a self-protective gesture against seeing something uncouth and disturbing? Dizzy from spinning while blindfolded, she falls on the bed; someone knocks on the door hard and insistently, and the film title “Egg and Stone” pops on the dark screen with a dire sense of admonition. The knock suggests an uninvited visit, an intrusion. Who is it trying to enter Honggui’s tightly concealed personal space in the middle of the night? We never get a visible clue or clear answer throughout the film, but in all probability, it is someone living in the same house, most likely the uncle who, along with his wife, functions as Honggui’s custodian when her parents left for the “South” (i.e., the Pearl Delta region with legions of factories and processing plants, and the brand-new Special Economy Zone of Shenzhen bordering Hong Kong). In a later scene, the uncle urges Honggui to sleep in his bed, “C’mon, be a good girl!”—in a manner suggesting this seems to have happened more than once. The careless Auntie, engrossed in mahjong play with friends, urges her to comply so she can get rid of Honghui’s annoying presence. Honggui defiantly leaves the house, trying to seek refuge in Uncle’s car but finds it locked. This is the moment when the opening scene that ends with the rude knocking triggers a flashback in the viewer’s mind. Honggui’s refusal of Uncle’s inappropriate invitation, while we are not directly told why, arouses our suspicion that the concealed room, Honggui’s sanctuary, is also likely a xianchang, or scene of a crime, of unwanted sexual intimacy. The feeling of impasse, isolation, and confinement of the left-behind girl, whose neglected life is made more injurious by gender discrimination and family sexual abuse, permeates the film. Honggui’s insecurity and guardedness keep her veiled behind her thick long hair most of the time. She barely talks and avoids eye contact with people. The camera framing or position often captures part of her body, or from the side or back, leaving her face barely visible if not entirely missing. Her demure posture and nervously fidgeting hands give away her turbulent emotions lacking

146 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 4.3 The concealed xianchang: Honggui’s secret (Egg and Stone, 2011)©yellow- green PI

expressive channels. Thirsty for maternal love and guidance, she musters up her courage to call her mother only to feel more rejected. Mother is either too busy working or caring for her little brother Longlong (Dragon), who is luckily living with their parents. Mother is mentioned in conversations and appears in a couple of old photographs of Honggui’s parents on her desk under the boarded-up window, but otherwise she never shows up in Egg and Stone. When she briefly returns to the village in The Foolish Bird (five years later),15 it is only to borrow more money from relatives for her risky real estate development deal in the “South” and then leave abruptly again.

Tactile Resistance Rural Chinese families’ preference for boys is paradoxically one of the reasons Honggui (literally, Red Precious) bonds with Baiyu (literally, White Jade), her best and only friend in school. Baiyu is an aspiring artist passionate about drawing and wants to prove to her parents, who intend to adopt a boy to carry on the (paternal) family line, that having a girl is good enough. Resolved in winning an award for her art, she asks Honggui to be her model and to have Honggui’s boyfriend, Ah Jiu, who works in a quarry as a miner with a talent for stone engraving, make a nice name chop to press on the 15 Stonewalling, a third film in the trilogy, starring the same non-professional actress from the area, was completed in 2022 and theatrically released in March 2023 in New York. The project received a haf Post-Production Award at the Asian Film Finance Forum in Hong Kong, March 2018.

147

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

Fig. 4.4 Honggui sits for a portrait: art-making as healing and bonding ©️yellow- green PI

work as a signature. Honggui trades a bag of eggs for the chop, and the equally taciturn Ah Jiu readily complies with the exchange. This is one of the moments when the objects listed in the otherwise matter-of-fact film title are animated into affective tokens of exchange, connecting the three lonely teenagers in Hibiscus Village through artmaking. The two girls meet in a small, cramped storage room at Baiyu’s home. Baiyu is ecstatic when she receives and tries out the chop on a piece of paper. The shabby yet sun-filled room turns into an intimate space of female bonding and art creation when Honggui ties up her always veil-like hair into a ponytail and sits by the window. [Fig. 4.4] The light softens her countenance, while Baiyu, in her thick local accent, urges her to keep smiling, using proverbial revolutionary rhetoric: “victory comes with perseverance!” 坚持到底, 就是胜利! But what victory, and by what means? Baiyu uses the clichéd saying in an offhanded way, perhaps completely unaware of its origins.16 More 16 The original saying, slightly different in wording, is attributed to Li Dazhao, late Qing and early Republican intellectual and co-founder of the ccp. Mao allegedly appropriated it as a slogan during the eight-year Sino-Japanese War.

148 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

immediately, it is about the patience and concentration required of sitting for a portrait, which also draws them closer. The encouraging phrase flows out of Baiyu’s optimism, creativity, and friendship, all of which mean the world to Honggui and her own struggles. Though Baiyu makes only a few appearances in the film, Honggui seems to have absorbed the energy from the inscribed chop and their creative collaboration in the makeshift studio into her own protracted war of resistance. She is determined to survive and find a way out of the abusive situation. There are two interconnected facets of Honggui’s quiet resistance. One is an inward, self-defensive move by concealing her room, face, and body, like a fetus enclosed by a womb or a cocoon spinning a protective shield. The sunless room may have been a xianchang of intrusion and violation, but she has also made it a fortress of sorts by sealing the window and locking the door. The latchkey around her neck is both an indication of her left-behind status and her attempt to guard her private space, including her body.17 The other form of her resistance is an outward connection she makes with the few people who, though equally lonely and vulnerable, care about her. [Fig. 4.5] Their intimate interactions are subtly articulated through the affectionate exchange of eggs, stones, and portraits (more on this below). They are bound together by tacit mutual understandings of their shared ways of being in and knowing the world—a world of sensuous mimesis and “tactile epistemology,”18 in contrast to the abstraction and alienation of social relations in terms of money and debts that people around them are obsessed with and quibble about constantly.19 In light of Miriam Hansen’s interpretation of the concept of “aura” in Benjamin’s famous, though often misread, “Art Work” essay,20 Laura Marks reiterates, “aura entails a relationship of contact, or a tactile relationship.”21 17 Huang Ji told me that the actress always wore the key during their first meetings. “For a left-behind child like her, there are often no adults around to care for them, so the house key is very important and cannot be lost.” “The key is like her life. She may seem in control of it, but it suggests her being neglected.” Personal Wechat communication, September 26, 2020. 18 Marks, The Skin of the Film, p. 138. 19 Huang’s f irst documentary, Underground 地下 (2005), made while a student at Beijing Film Academy, depicts the villagers, including a blind man, completely absorbed by a pyramid lottery, essentially a gambling scheme imported from Hong Kong that made inroads into the vast Chinese countryside as well as mass media. While unpolished as a film, the documentary delivers a not-so-subtle critical commentary on the moral and f inancial bankruptcy of the villagers under the sway of money and profit-oriented “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” advocated by Deng Xiaoping and his followers. 20 Hansen, “Benjamin, Cinema and Experience.” 21 Marks, The Skin of the Film, p. 140.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

149

Fig. 4.5 Honghui and Ah Jiu (Egg and Stone, 2011) ©️yellow- green PI

Benjamin finds this relationship exemplified in children’s play with toys, the exemplary mimetic objects, which thrive on a “sensuous similarity” between one’s body and the world, nature, and perception.22 Eggs and stones hold sensuous proximity to Honggui and her friends as toys do to children. Eggs are cheap protein for sustaining life, especially in underdeveloped rural areas, whereas stones are the raw material for buildings or other utilities. In the contemporary new realist philosopher Maurizio Ferraris’s terms, such natural objects which, when entering into contact with human bodies and affective exchanges between them, become social objects in the form of “inscribed acts.”23 Like children’s playful use of toys, the eggs and stones here take on auratic and mimetic qualities; their fragility and toughness reflect similar attributes of the people who handle them with care. Such a process of inscription takes place, for instance, in the scene when Baiyu happily stamps the chop on paper before she draws Honggui’s portrait, and when Ah Jiu and Honggui meet on the village’s stone bridge, silently exchanging a bag of eggs and another inscribed stone (this time for Honggui).24 The young couple barely utter a word to each other, but the warm touch they leave on the objects transmits strong, if still inchoate, emotions. 22 Ibid. 23 Maurizio Ferraris, Manifesto of New Realism, p. 55. 24 Ah Jiu also leaves a 100 Yuan note under the chop. Could it be a gesture of help toward an abortion? When Honggui finds that she is pregnant, it is unclear by whom—Ah Jiu or the uncle. In the film, we never see Honggui and Ah Jiu engage in any form of physical intimacy. In fact, they are never seen together alone in an intimate interior space.

150 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Besides Baiyu and Ah Jiu, Grandma and a blind old man also belong to this small tribe marked by a “tactile relationship” with their environment and each other. In addition to eggs and stones that sustain and enliven their existence, portraits, either hand-drawn or photographic, also bind them together. Massive rural-urban migration has left countless children behind, as well as the elderly and disabled. Grandma, a widow and devout Buddhist living alone on the hillside of the village, is, in terms of child developmental psychology, Honggui’s real “attachment figure.” She becomes Honggui’s surrogate mother after the girl finally moves out of the concealed room in Uncle’s house. The elders and young ones are mutually dependent, bound together by unspoken affections and tactile objects that help maintain a semblance of kinship and a mutual aid network for survival. Grandma and the blind man have an unspoken affectionate friendship, expressing care and gratitude with eggs and portraits in much the same way as the three teenagers do. Honggui and Ah Jiu help deliver their memorial portraits— taken well in advance by the left-behind elders in preparation for their eventual, possibly sudden demise and funeral. The blind old man examines the framed portrait by touching it all over the front and the back, while asking the children about how he is portrayed in the photograph. In another rare light-hearted moment in the film, Ah Jiu naughtily hangs the portrait upside down on the wall, causing Honggui to burst into hearty laughter. Photographic realism hardly matters here, as the old man’s relationship to the portrait is haptic rather than optic. The elders’ equanimity toward death moves Honggui and her spirit is lifted. She begins to open herself up, agreeing to sit for a portait by Baiyu. Photographs are indeed ambivalent mimetic objects in Egg and Stone, especially for those who possess vision. The memorial portraits of the elderly intimate death and the demise of kinship and tradition, while retaining their spirit and imprints on the living. Other photographs that appear in the film convey unspeakable pain and betrayal. Honggui’s loneliness is accentuated by a couple of small photos of her youthful parents on her desk in the concealed room. Rather than serving as mementos of love, they remind her of their distance and disregard for her existence. There is a curious flashback scene (the only one in the film) in which Uncle and a younger Honggui pose for a portrait in a makeshift “studio” (in an abandoned disco dance hall). Against an artificial backdrop with a springtime theme, Uncle is relaxedly seated with one leg crossed on top of the other. He is dressed in a suit while Honggui stands behind him in a feminine red checker-patterned dress matching Uncle’s tie. The young photographer asks them to get closer and look happy, “just like father and daughter.” Honggui forces a smile.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

151

Fig. 4.6 Flashback trauma: reenacting the “scene of crime” ©️yellow- green PI

Her hands are unnaturally placed on Uncle’s shoulder, with the right one tightly held by Uncle, creating an uneasy, disguised intimacy. [Fig. 4.6] The painted window open to a green and sunny exterior on the backdrop is in stark contrast to her concealed bedroom. The film immediately cuts back to the present, in a disjoined shot, in which Honghui stands alone, dejected and silent, in the dingy and dimly lit room. This “studio” photo with Honggui’s forced smile and awkward posture functions almost like a reenactment of a “crime scene” that peels off the veneer of kin adoptive care covering up the abuse. Escaping from the suffocation in Uncle’s house perched on a precarious site in the village center by a brook, Honggui finds a healing space at Grandma’s old house on the hillside. In an earlier visit to Grandma, the camera tracks Honggui ascending a winding path on a balmy day. Unlike the gloomy rain-drenched scenes in the village proper in the valley, the hill is covered with thick bamboo grooves swaying gently. Chickens freely spring about in Grandma’s front yard while a few hens lay eggs in various hideouts. As Honggui enters a storage room upstairs, she pauses under a line of laundry items and relishes the bright light and breeze filling in the space. Facing the verdant landscape afar, she takes a long deep breath, looking refreshed and uplifted. Later, following a traumatic abortion procedure, she returns here to make a room of her own to recuperate. Like the make-shift studio where Baiyu sketches Honggui’s portrait, it is filled with ease, light, and laughter.

152 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Menstruation Narration The puzzling non-linear narration of Egg and Stone is, in fact, structured around menstruation, the onset, disruption, and eventual resumption of which generate the dramatic tension behind a teenage girl’s violent introduction to sexuality and womanhood. Huang Ji’s script and mise-en-scène, enhanced by Otsuka’s understated yet luminous cinematography, eschews conventional three-act realism characterized by an omnipresent perspective. The narration is episodic and cyclic,25 punctuated by events associated with Honggui’s menstrual period, unplanned pregnancy and ensuing worries, abortion, and recovery. Grandma takes Honggui under her wings, like a hen protecting a young chick, and passes on her ancient knowledge about female sexuality and womanhood. Their cross-generational bond cemented through folk religion gives the adage “blood is thicker than water” a renewed, anachronistic meaning under the rapid erosion of tradition and rural social fabric. Right after the haunting opening in the concealed room, the scene continues with Honggui grappling with the onset of her first period by clumsily making a sanitation pad with toilet paper (the cheap and rough kind widely used in rural China). Without the intimate coaching a girl usually receives from her mother, Honggui enters womanhood with trepidation and discomfort. The blood-drenched makeshift pad slips out of her pants during physical education in the schoolyard, causing ridicule and humiliation from her peers, girls and boys alike.26 Her lack of proper sanitary pads and biological knowledge about the female body exposes the absence of her mother and the neglect of her aunt, making her feel shameful and ostracized. The old knowledge Grandma transmits to her, on the other hand, initiates her into the premodern realm of superstition and rituals, at once frightful and strangely comforting as it allows Honggui to have a sense of affinity to a deeper source of womanhood, despite its history of suffering in misogynistic traditions. [Fig. 4.7] 25 Ma, “Interview with Huang Ji.” 26 The mass-produced sanitary pad made of synthetic material was introduced into China from developed places (including Hong Kong, Japan, Europe and the United States) in the late 1980s. Prior to that, Chinese women and girls (including myself) all resorted to homemade cloth pads with slots holding toilet paper; in extremely impoverished circumstances, just any old fabric served the “unspeakable” purpose. Honggui’s generation had access to the mass-produced product. But it is costly for low-income households, and in the case of left-behind girls like her, lacking sex education and guidance from female caretakers, especially the mother, the onset of menstruation can feel terrifying and shameful.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

153

The main “textbook” of this vernacular sex education is Blood Bowl Sutra 血盆经 (or 目连正教血盆经), a Buddhist text allegedly originating in twelfth-century China (rather than India and Tibet, as with other classical scriptures). It relates the tale of Maudgalyayana, a disciple of the Buddha with supernatural power, who tries to save his mother in hell and finds women tortured and forced to drink their menstrual blood as punishment for the pollution it causes in the ground and rivers. Grandma prays for Honggui’s college prospect at the ancestral altar but teaches her Blood Bowl Sutra in an effort to warn her about women’s suffering tied to the taboo of the reproductive organ. Women who have frequent pregnancies and births causing blood loss are deemed highly unclean and often ostracized; periodic “furloughing” and devoted recital of Blood Bowl Sutra supposedly helps alleviate the sin and restore the body’s vitality and fertility. The film does not show Honggui telling Grandma her anxiety about menstruation and sexual intercourse. Yet, Honggui’s recital of the sutra under Grandma’s supervision in the dimly lit bedroom enacts a scene of transmission of the ritual practice, which women for generations have performed to minimize pain and cleanse their bodies. Honghui carefully reads each calligraphic character in the sutra while struggling to understand the quaint archaic language and meaning of the scenes depicted in it: …The monk Mokuren [Maudgalyayana] traveled to Yang County, and saw a hell made of a pool of blood, a vast hell, 840,000 feet across. Hair hanging down, women were suffering, lots of metal rods, stocks and chains, women in pain yearning for help. Mokuren cried, why do they suffer so. Women’s blood spills onto ground. Their bloodstained clothes are washed in the river…

“What does it all mean?” Honggui asks, befuddled. Grandma replies, …[A]ll the blood in a woman’s life from childbirth, miscarriages, menstruation is collected by Yama, the master of the underworld. If we don’t recite the verse and appease him, when we die and join him, he will hold our heads and make us drink away our own blood, and be tortured, unless we recite the verse to relieve us from our sins.

Honggui pauses, pondering Grandma’s utterances, the loose pages of the sutra flutter in her hands. The insertion of popular religion, especially in reference to female bodily pain associated with menstruation and reproduction, as well as women’s

154 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 4.7 Blood Bowel Sutra ©️yellow- green PI

mutual aid, echoes similar motifs in Yang Lina’s Longing for the Rain discussed in the previous chapter. But instead of institutionalization in a giant temple ruled by repressed monks in symbiosis with a post-socialist market economy, Honggui f inds solace in Grandma’s compassionate voice and her bedchamber, a sanctuary. The private ritual they perform together momentarily calls forth a sacred space—a realm where the abject is returned their power.27 Honghui’s coming of age, or individuation as a sexual subject, is violently disrupted by forced sexual “intimacy.” What she has experienced is unspeakable, incomprehensible—something that cannot be represented discursively. Georges Bataille sees the essence and practice of religion as the search for a lost intimacy with a spiritual world in which humanity, animality, heavenly bodies, earthly plants and objects are not separated by hierarchies and objectif ication—“the positing of the world of things and of the body as a thing.”28 The existence of Honggui and her marginal tribe are immanently closer to the animals, eggs, stones, f ire, water, and bamboos in their environment. Objects and tools, even money, in their hands are re-endowed with a mimetic tactility and value. The point is not to dwell in the abject underworld in Blood Bowl Sutra. Rather, Honggui feels empowered knowing the deep source of her suffering and how to deploy the “medium” of expiation and protection through reciting the verses women have used to support each other for centuries. 27 Kristeva, Powers of Horror. 28 Bataille, Theory of Religion, p. 37. See also Chapter 3.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

155

The sutra with the horrific imagery of blood and torture has a powerful impact on Honggui. Back in her concealed room, she uses the sutra leaflets as sanitary pads, perhaps hoping it would keep her safe and away from hell. Uncle, who is a local doctor (without a certificate), tries to induce a miscarriage by giving her an herbal drink.29 Honggui howls in excruciating pain, gets off the bed, and relieves herself over a blue plastic basin. Moments later, Aunt goes in to check on her and is shocked to find the basin full of blood with amorphous clumps in the middle. Honggui is promptly taken to the township hospital where she undergoes the “cleaning up” of her uterus to make sure the abortion is thorough. A long take from Honggui’s perspective (like in the opening scene of the concealed room) painstakingly documents the entire process of the doctor’s and nurse’s mechanic movements. Complete with their clinically indifferent expressions, cold clanking sounds of metal instruments, Honggui’s moaning, and the container with blood and the fetus parts, the scene starkly presents a “torture” scene in the sutra. But the operation has saved her life. Resting in a clean and comfortable hospital room, Honggui convalesces in soft sunlight and gentle breeze from outside the window through which we glimpse some greet trees—this time, unlike the ones in the painted studio photo backdrop mentioned earlier, they are real. Her key is still around her neck. Uncle comes in and tries to touch her, asking: “Does your body feel clean now?” Honggui strikes back at him fiercely. As he awkwardly exits the room, she opens her fist and reveals her instrument of self-defense and protest: the stone inscribed with her name and face. Her body has been violated and hurt, the precious tactile object indexing her identity made by someone who cares for her has safeguarded her through the ordeal. A left-behind girl, Honggui has unwittingly completed her fast-track initiation into womanhood. The cycle of trauma and restoration comes to a full circle when she has nestled into Grandma’s old house, which is without any modern fixtures, but with loving care, wholesome food, and an airy room of her own with a view. The hens lay eggs, Honggui places them carefully in a basket, and Grandma cooks them in a big iron wok hanging over an open fire. The film ends with Honggui taking a hot bath in a wooden tub in the steamy bathroom, water drips from her hair, bare shoulders, and all over her body as though she is undergoing a purifying 29 Uncle and his wife had a discussion prior to this. Honggui’s aunt, allegedly infertile, assumes that the baby’s father is Ah Jiu and wants to keep it for the couple’s adoption. Uncle’s rejection of the proposal is an indirect admission of his own possible fatherhood and hence the threat of incest taboo.

156 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

ritual. She has lost an unwanted child from coerced incestuous sex and gained a new life herself. Honggui touches her private part and feels the smooth trickle of her menstrual blood, no longer afraid. All is quiet except the dripping of water around her. She is alone as at the start of the film, but no longer in utter loneliness and fearful concealment. At ease with her touch, her body, and sexuality, she embraces an emerging sense of self as a young woman in a changing world. Honggui’s regaining of her sense of touch, wrestled from its abuse,30 attests to the experiential and historical force of embodied perception in processing and rechanneling various blockages, including “feminine embodiment as confinement, rape trauma” and other forms of suppression.31 The circuitous journey of Honggui’s convoluted initiation into sexuality illustrates the troubling convergence of extremely private experiences, religious and secular discourses and practices governing female bodies, and the indirect but palpably felt post-socialist biopolitical power that regulates female reproductive capacity but falls far short in protecting women, especially the left-behind girls. Her self-defense and tactile resistance against abuse and alienation, energized by the strength and resources in herself, her small “tribe,” and their living environment, ultimately outlines her struggle as an “entry of life into history.”32

The Gift of Trace On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in 2012, not long after the interrupted opening of Egg and Stone at biff, Huang Ji left Beijing for her hometown, together with Otsuka and their baby daughter Chihiro, for a family reunion and to obtain Chihiro’s Chinese identity papers. They began a unique film project on the road. The finished film, shot with a portable DV camera, does not have the kind of poetic montage and exquisite miseen-scène of Egg and Stone. Yet its haptic visuality is palpably delivered by many scenes and shots pivoting around the sense of touch and a number of tactile objects (in particular, a body baby carrier), which serves not only to forge intimate relations among themselves, family and kind strangers 30 After Honghui fails to reach her mother on the phone, a close shot showing Uncle’s dirty fingernails peeling a boiled egg is followed by a shot, outside of the window, of Honggui sitting in shadows on a rainy night. Later, when Uncle sends his wife to deliver “medicine” to Honggui, he sits by the dining table and clips his unclean nails. 31 Marks, The Skin of the Film, p. 152. 32 Foucault’s formulation in History of Sexualities, cited and discussed by Rey Chow in her article, “All Chinese Families Are Alike,” p. 127.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

157

(mostly women), but also helps to fight through a labyrinth of provincial bureaucracy and national xenophobia. This small trans-Asian family must solve a big problem after Chihiro was born. Huang, a Chinese citizen, is a migrant artist who does not have Beijing household registration status.33 In order for Chihiro to travel with them to Japan and elsewhere outside China, they must first register her as a member of Huang’s maiden family in Hunan. Their story illustrates the “reconstruction of intimate and public spheres” in Asian societies under compounded forces of “first modernity” (nation-state and industrialization) and “second modernity” (i.e., late capitalism and individualization), especially when cross-border marriage and migration have rapidly increased.34 In contrast to the quiet storytelling and confined geographic locations in their narrative films discussed above, Trace takes us on a journey across a large swath of China—from the filmmakers’ rental apartment in the Beijing suburbs to Huang Ji’s hometown in Hunan, and back to the capital. At the outset, the filmmakers ask the viewers to bear with the “crude audiovisual quality” of a small video camera. Opening and ending in the most private space of the couple’s bed where the baby and Otsuka are shown asleep, Trace has an obvious home video look involving a baby and a mobile, improvisational camera. Although Huang is the principal narrator and cinematographer, Otsuka also operates the camera when Huang’s hands are busy. [Fig. 4.8] They film each other with the baby in the intimate scenes of sleeping, breastfeeding, showering, diaper changing, and so on, as well as the events occurring on their quest for the baby’s ID papers. The quest takes them to an array of public spaces, revealing a great deal about the intricate workings of micro-level socio-political culture and nationalism in contemporary China. The film title, Trace, has multiple meanings. On a literal level, it refers to the stretch marks on Huang’s belly during pregnancy. At the opening of the film, Huang looks into the mirror with one hand holding the camera and the fingers of her other hand tracing the marks with joyful expectation. The reference to pregnancy echoes the story in Egg and Stone, yet Huang Ji is now a proud expectant mother. In full possession of her sexual and reproductive power, Huang has grown into a mature woman and an 33 Hukou is a remnant feature from the socialist period that controls urban population and its movement. Rural migrants, despite their long-term residence in the cities since the 1990s, do not enjoy all of city dwellers’ benefits including access to quality public education. Their hometown bureaucracy still issues and administers the “natives’” identity papers including passports, even though they may have long settled elsewhere. 34 Emiko Ochiai, “Introduction,” p. 1.

158 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig.4.8 A home video on the road: Huang Ji breastfeeds Chihiro on the train ©️yellow- green PI

accomplished filmmaker despite troubled adolescence. If Egg and Stone is her “brainchild” that allows her to put her trauma as a sexually abused left-behind girl behind, now she is more than ready to welcome the arrival of her own child into her little Sino-Japanese family. “Stretch marks” or “traces” quickly take on new meanings as the family embarks on a protracted journey for Hunan. Right after the title sequence, the family is in a sleeper compartment on the train bound for Changsha, the provincial capital. A montage of fast-moving and shifting train tracks vaguely resembling Huang’s stretch marks accompanies her voice-over, announcing that it is the first time she is taking her daughter to her hometown. The tracks now replace the “stretch marks,” indices of the biological mother-child rapport, and symbolize the imposition of the obligation on the family to “register” their child into the biopolitical infrastructure of the nation-state. Hunan is Mao Zedong’s native province, one of the strongholds of nationalism and the so-called “red legacies,”35 particularly fervent at that time when China and Japan were (again) embroiled in an intense territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands 钓鱼岛. Crazed patriots vandalized 35 “Red legacies” refers generally to the nostalgia of popular culture and industry centered on the Mao legacy and the socialist period up to the Cultural Revolution. See Li and Enhua Zhang, (eds.), Red Legacies in China.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

159

Fig. 4.9 Otsuka with Chihiro in a baby carrier at a local police station ©️yellow- green PI

Japanese cars and hung up huge banners with anti-Japanese slogans—in the film we see one of them even calling consumers to “Boycott Japanese AV [adult video]!” Huang’s relatives are worried about them, asking them to stay low-key and careful. As the cross-cultural family deals with various public functionaries and government agencies to obtain signatures or stamps for Chihiro’s household registration and passport applications, their camera, a non-human actor, serves as a constant witness to the penetration of the public and the official world into their private life. [Fig. 4.9] They explain to the officials that the video-in-progress will be a souvenir for the baby. What they do not tell them (but do tell the viewer at the end of the film) is that Chihiro could use the video to help herself decide on her citizenship when she becomes twenty-two, as required by Japanese law. What has started as a family affair recorded on home video turns into a transnational road movie exploring the micro-level machinations of the nation-state, as they navigate the muddy boundaries of cultural belonging and make some tough choices regarding the baby’s national identity. As we travel with the family from Changsha to the county seat and township and wander with them through the streets and marketplaces, we also glean different levels and styles of government operation and public reactions to Sino-Japanese relations. The first “official” procedure turns out to be rather casual. The village party secretary who has known Huang

160 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

since her childhood signs a hand-written confirmation letter on a store counter, agreeing to allow Chihiro to establish household registration in the village. This grassroots-level party secretary is apparently inexperienced with transnational marriage; he is somewhat conservative and ignorant yet flexible. He asks Huang, “What’s your ‘boss’s’ 老板 name?”— referring to the male head of the household; and, “what’s your child’s name in Chinese?” (Luckily the Japanese name of the child has Chinese characters that could be used in Chinese documents.) In the police station’s household registration office, they are forced to pick the “Han nationality” (as opposed to ethnic minorities in China) for Chihiro even though she is half-Chinese. When they finally reach the “Exit-Entry Administrative Service Hall” to apply for Chihiro’s passport, a male clerk asks why they do not register the child in Japan (suggesting Japan is a more affluent and hence “desirable” country for raising the child). Huang responds jokingly but not without irony, “Because of patriotism… Mainly because we want to live in China, so it’s more convenient.” A female clerk chimes in, “Japanese goods are the best, and the price is good, too.” These petty officers are not just indifferent screws in the state machinery. Their personal views and mixed feelings about Japan, captured in this unique home movie-style documentary, contrast with the ultra-nationalist anti-Japanese propaganda rhetoric displayed in public spaces from modern shopping malls to ancient city walls, revealing the complexity of popular sentiments in the national culture. The third critical dimension of “stretch marks” extends into Huang’s kinship ties, serving as a mediating intersection of the intimate and the public, the transnational nuclear family, and the Chinese nation-state. These ties not only provide anchoring points and emotional support but also allow Huang and her daughter to connect with their roots while welcoming Otsuka into the extended family in a stressful time for him as a Japanese person living in China. Their hometown visit takes place right before the Moon Festival, the second most important lunar holiday, when Chinese families reunite. Their trip is thus not entirely consumed by bureaucratic procedures. As soon as they arrive at Huang’s home with moon cakes in hand, Huang’s father eagerly takes Chihiro into his arms and presents her to the ancestral altar (on top of the refrigerator),36 bowing together as though asking for ancestors’ recognition (or an unofficial household 36 A common phenomenon in China, the refrigerator is considered a precious electronic appliance, and often takes an important space in the living or dining area, especially if the kitchen is too small. (Another reason could be the fresh food stored in it, which is good company, or an indirect offering, for the ancestors.)

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

161

“registration”) of this new family member despite her bi-cultural origin. Huang’s mother has a condition affecting her arms and she has to sit down first in order to hold the baby briefly. It is the first time that she meets Chihiro. Over dinner, she admits how she cried over her inability to go to Beijing and look after Huang and the baby during the critical first post-natal month 坐月子. Huang comforts her, “But he [Otsuka] took care of me, and then Dad and his [Otsuka’s] mother came to help out, too.” She shows her mother photos of that period, which greatly delights the mother. In China and Japan, two countries with tenacious patriarchal traditions, Huang’s and Otsuka’s families are unusually open-minded and supportive of their marriage and the couple’s choice of residing in China during a turbulent time in Sino-Japanese relations. The families on both sides weave a kinship safety net for the fledgling new family, defying rigid national boundaries and toxic xenophobia. This safety net extends to the communities around them, in the town market where they hang out for local food and relaxation. One scene where they interact with a group of local women is both heart-warming and thought-provoking regarding cross-cultural gender dynamics. While the couple enjoys some dumplings over spicy Hunan-style sauce, the woman who owns the eatery fondly cuddles the baby. A few curious female passersby stop to admire Chihiro and praise Otsuka’s diaper-change skill. One of them notices the baby carrier, commenting that she has made many of this kind in her factory. The soft baby carrier that Otsuka wears is a constant attraction. It is not widely used in China, let alone worn by a man (and a Japanese man for that matter) in public. It softens and humanizes Otsuka’s image (this loving daddy cannot possibly be a “little Japanese devil” trying to occupy the Senkaku Islands, right?) while challenging stereotypical male chauvinism in rural China. He is not a “boss” of the family, but a loving partner and caretaker. In fact, in “registering” Chihiro into Huang’s family genealogy in her native Hunan, and with Huang taking the lead in the quest for Chihiro’s ID papers and the filming, she appears more as the head of this transnational household. The film ends where it starts, in the bedroom of their home in Beijing. The passport finally arrives one morning when Otsuka and Chihiro are still asleep. [Fig. 4.10] Huang, with one hand holding the camera and another holding an ems [express mail service] package, walks into the bedroom. Otsuka wakes up in his tattered T-shirt pajama and places the passport by the sleeping baby’s little face and hands, muttering in Chinese, “She can take a look at it when she wakes up.” Of course, the true meaning of her citizenship and cultural belonging would take a lifetime for her to process,

162 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 4.10 “Who cares about the Senkaku Islands?!” ©️yellow- green PI

even after her own decision in twenty years. Trace, despite its forays into a wide range of public spaces, institutions, and official and popular discourses on national and gender identity, remains intensely intimate and private toward the end. The directors declare, “Who cares about [the] Senkaku Islands?! The most important thing for us is our baby’s future. After 20 years, when our daughter watches this film, we hope that she agrees such a period marks a very funny ‘trace’ of life.”37 Of course, what seems “funny” at times reveals incongruities and absurdities inherent in nationalism and the bureaucracy that alternately lubricates or contradicts it. The film is ultimately a gift for Chihiro’s future self, to assist her in tracing her origins and deciding on her directions when the time comes. No one in China or Japan can take it away from her.

Coda In a 2017 interview, Huang Ji expresses her strong feelings about the impact of urbanization and globalization on her hometown: “… [r]ural China is not only our emotional home but the part of China most affected by the nation’s modernization process. For us, going home to the realities of desertification, 37 Huang and Ryoji Otsuka, “Directors’ statement.” Undated typescript.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

163

depopulation, and the disappearance of village culture is just devastating.”38 Huang is not simply speaking of the devastation of the physical landscape of rural China, but the ruination of a whole way of life, a structure of feeling, and an entire generation of left-behind children exposed to abuse and exploitation. Huang’s personal cinema has inadvertently become a harbinger of the campaign against sexual abuse of children and the Chinese #MeToo movement. The infamous 2013 Hainan incident in which a primary school principal and his businessman friend took six schoolgirls to a hotel overnight spurred public outrage and activist intervention. It also inspired, among other things, Nanfu Wang’s Oscar-nominated documentary, Hooligan Sparrow 流氓燕 (2016) and Vivien Qu’s narrative feature, Angels Wear White 嘉年华 (2017). Huang’s haptic approach differs from Wang’s activist cinema verité documentary and Qu’s liberal fictionalization of the Hainan incident in a detached realist style. Rather, her method is akin to the medical anthropologist Thomas Ots’s “experiencing participation”—“an approach in Leib [life] research where one goes beyond participant observation”—which he practiced in researching the “existential connection between depression and expansion” in qigong healing in China in the early 1980s.39 More so than an anthropologist from another culture, Huang Ji’s autobiographically inflected semi-fictional work generates a method of “re-experiencing” as rewriting and resistance. Together with Otsuka, her partner in life and work, they have crafted a unique independent Sinophone cinema. Their films flow from the deep wells of intimate feelings, embodied experiences, and memories in their life world. Egg and Stone obliquely reenacts the “crime scene” of intrusion and injury while reenergizing the healing power of tactile objects and other natural resources. Trace, on the other hand, avails the “crude” portable nature of digital home video conducive to a haptic aesthetic, refashioning the road movie as a vehicle for processing the complex relationship between the intimate home and public world along the parallel tracks of nationalism and globalization. Their transnational marriage and collaboration, and the progressive gender relations embodied by the baby carrier tethered to Otsuka’s body as they navigate the labyrinth of state bureaucracy, also put Chinese patriarchal nationalism and the state’s biopolitical regulation on trial. Flaunting their bi-cultural child in every scene in domestic and public spaces alike, the quest for her identity papers unveils the artificiality of national or racial identity, as well as the “transformation of intimacy” under globalization.40 38 Ma, “Interview with Huang Ji.” 39 Ots, “The Silenced Body—the Expressive Leib,” p. 134. 40 Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy.

164 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Much has changed in their lives in the last few years. Chihiro spent her happy early childhood in a carefree co-op daycare on a hill in western Beijing and considerable time in Huang Ji’s hometown in Hunan, while her parents continued to work on their film projects. When she reached school age, the couple made a difficult decision to send her to Japan, accompanied by Otsuka. Huang visited them frequently until the pandemic broke out, forcing her into virtual parenting. Needless to say, it has been painfully challenging. Regardless, Huang has stayed busy with her freelance work, conducting filmmaking workshops for youth on- and offline, training children to make films as part of rural reconstruction projects, serving on juries at film festivals, and speaking on panels, while pressing forward the post-production of Stonewalling, the final installment of the trilogy.41 The only Chinese-language film at the Venice International Film Festival in 2022, Stonewalling was in the 19th Giornate degli Autori competition program. It then traveled to the Toronto International Film Festival and New the York Film Festival. The family was on a journey together again, this time across the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, riding the waves of a post-pandemic world cinema revival.

Bibliography Bataille, Georges. Theory of Religion. Trans. Robert Hurley. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books (French edition 1973), 1992. Chen, Lijun et al. (ed.). Child and Youth Well-being in China. London: Routledge, 2019. Chow, Rey. “All Chinese Families Are Alike: Biopolitics in Eat a Bowl of Tea and the Wedding Banquet.” In Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations: Contemporary Chinese Films. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 123–44. Ferraris, Maurizio. Manifesto of New Realism. Trans. Sarah De Sanctis. suny Press, 2012. Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Love, Sexuality and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. Hansen, Miriam. “Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: ‘The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology.” New German Critique No. 40 (1987): 179–224. Ji, Huang, and Ryoji Otsuka. “Directors’ statement.” Undated typescript. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. Columbia University Press (French edition 1980), 1982. 41 During this period, Huang also made an award-winning infomercial on breast cancer. In the late spring of 2022, Huang was f inally able to reunite with her husband and daughter in Japan as travel restrictions due to the pandemic eased.

Eggs, Stones, and Stre tch Mark s

165

Lee, Kevin B. “Cinema Talk: Conversation with Huang Ji, Director of Egg and Stone.” Trans. Heran Hao. August 24, 2012. https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/ post/cinematalk-conversation-with-huang-ji-director-of-i-egg-and-stone--i. Li, Jie, and Enhua Zhang (eds.). Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Ma, Karen. “Interview with Huang Ji.” Vcinema: Asian Film, Media, and Culture (online journal) February 10, 2017, http://www.vcinemashow.com/ interview-with-huang-ji/. Marks, Laura. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Ochiai, Emiko. “Introduction: Reconstruction of Intimate and Public Spheres in Asian Modernity.” In Emiko Ochiai and Hosoya Leo Aoi (eds.), Transformation of the Intimate and the Public in Asian Modernity. London: Brill, 2014. 1–36. Ots, Thomas. “The Silenced Body—the Expressive Leib: on the Dialectic of Mind and life in Chinese Cathartic Healing.” In Thomas J. Csordas (ed.), Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 116–36. Pissin, Annika. “The Global Left Behind Children in China: ‘Unintended Consequences’ in Capitalism.” Working Paper No. 39, Center for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden, 2014. Ruan, Mei 阮梅. Shiji zhi tong: zhongguo nongcun liushou ertong diaocha (世纪 之痛：中国农村留守儿童调查) [Pain of the Century: A Survey of Left-Behind Children in China’s Rural Areas]. Beijing: Renmin, 2008. Wang, Qi. “Closed and Open Screens: The 9th Beijing Independent Film Festival.” Film Criticism. 37.1 (Fall 2012): 62–69. Wu, Guanglun Michael, and Yang Hu. Living with Vulnerabilities and Opportunities in a Migration Context: Floating Children and Left-Behind Children in China. Rotterdam/Boston/Taipei: Sense Publishers, 2016. Ye, Jinzhong and James Murray et al. (eds.). Guanzhu liushou ertong – Zhongguo zhongxibu nongcun diqu laodongli waichu wugong dui liushou ertong de yingxiang (关注留守儿童—中国中西部农村地区劳动力外出务工对留守儿童的影响) [Left-behind Children in Rural China]. Beijing Kexue wenxian chubanshe (北 京：社会科学文献出版社) [Beijing: Social Science Political Press], 2005. Zhang, Zhen. “Introduction: Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation’ (Zhuanxing).” In Zhen Zhang (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 1–45.

5

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History Wen Hui’s Documentary Dance with Third Grandmother “The Body is that threshold we must cross in pursuit of the memories within.” “Our memories are experiences of the body. How can these experiences transform society as well as history?” —Wen Hui

Abstract Chapter 5 centers on dancer, choreographer, and multi-media artist Wen Hui’s two experimental films made with her “forgotten” Third Grandmother. Their intimate-public camera constructs female kinship outside the patriarchal family tree and re-writes women’s history through oral storytelling and choreography of the everyday. Keywords: documentary theater, body and memory, intimate-public camera, oral history, choreography of the everyday

On May 26, 2021, Germany’s Goethe Institute announced that the choreographer, dancer, and artist Wen Hui 文慧 (b. 1960), was one of the three recipients, “communicators who go beyond borders,” of the Goethe Medal for the year. The jury states: “Wen Hui stands for the independent and highly creative independent art scene in China, embodying cultural diversity and the broad spectrum of everyday stories beyond official narratives.”1 This chapter is centered on a pair of innovative non-fictional films, which exemplify the dynamic fusion between “elements of documentary film and themes from everyday life” observed by the jury. They were made by Wen

1 The other two are the Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa and art and social activist Princess Marilyn Douala Manga Bell of Cameroon.

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_ch05

168 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Hui with a long-forgotten elderly female kin living in a mountain village in Yunnan in southwest China. Flashback to February 2011, Wen Hui left Beijing for her hometown Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southwest China. She went there to spend the Spring Festival with her family and start researching a new project. This homeward journey resulted in a remarkable film, Listening to Third Grandmother's Stories (2012, 听三奶奶讲过去的故事 hereafter Listening), exploring the complicated connections between kinship, women’s life-writing, and generational bonds across the span of nearly a century of modern China. After Third Grandmother (unrelated by blood) passed away, a short sequel, Dancing with the Third Grandmother (和三奶奶跳舞 hereafter Dancing), was completed in 2015 and exhibited as a video installation at a multimedia exhibition at the Venice Biennale’s China Pavilion in 2016. While the two films may belong to a burgeoning first-person documentary practice in China since the DV-turn around 2000,2 they depart from preceding works through an improvisational, choreographed documentary theater mode and the subsequent inter-media reproduction and exhibition. This is in part attributable to Wen Hui’s background as a pioneer in modern dance and avant-garde theater in China. Even though she did not know the technical term “documentary theater” until much later, she began using “documentary” 纪录 as a general method that involves the act of documenting in multiple, interrelated media forms—interviews using audio devices (a Walkman in the early days), oral history, dance, live performance, print or online “documents,” and filming instinctively in the early 1990s.3 Chiayi Seetoo’s term “documentary in motion” in her study of Wen Hui’s dance works as a form of documentary theater deploying “a dramaturgy of the corporeal” aptly captures Wen Hui’s approach to documentary as an inter-medial mode. 4 As a dancer and choreographer, the physical body for her is a natural documentary medium, registering emotions, sensations, and memories. Chinese theater critic Wang Yinjie sees Wen Hui and her body of work in light of the idea and practice of parrhēsia (παραρσία), in Chinese translation, “theater of candid speech” 直言剧场, traced back to ancient Greece and reenergized by Michel Foucault in modern times. She was trained as a choreographer at Beijing Dance Academy but went on 2 See Yu, “Toward a Communicative Practice”; Yu, First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualizing China. 3 Yu, “A Conversation with Wen Hui,” p. 22. An earlier version of this chapter was published in the same special issue on First-Person Documentary in East and Southeast Asia, edited by Yu and Lisa Lebow. 4 Seetoo, “Documentary in Motion.”

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

169

Fig. 5.1 Skirt (1996) (Photo by Jeff Day, courtesy of Wen Hui)

Fig. 5.2 Memory (2008), a “documentary theater” work (courtesy of Wen Hui)

to become a versatile cross-media artist dedicated to combining dance, theater, and documentary for socially engaged art-making. [Figs. 5.1–2] Wen Hui’s “candid speech” is articulated through the choreography of lived experiences and contemporary reality for both stage and screen. Risk-taking, truth-seeking, embodied, and dialogically conceived and realized, her work, Wang argues, has consistently sought to engage and transform the audience members into publics 公众 through “immediacy and embodiment” 切身

170 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 5.3 The open stage: shooting Dancing with the Third Grandmother. (Courtesy of Wen Hui)

性—“compelling each of them to answer moral questioning.”5 Her film work, always involving dance and other theatric elements, is an integral part of this “theater of candid speech” with the potential to reach a far wider public with speedier and far less costly means of projected “performance.” Several first-person documentary works studied by Kiki Tianqi Yu resort largely to the home video format, with an improvised and sometimes confrontational approach in probing ambivalent or traumatic relationships between the filmmakers and their immediate family members. Wen places the intimate camera in wider and layered contact zones of the private and the public, past and present experiences. Premised on literal and symbolic “journeys of the self” commonly seen in a certain subset of firstperson documentaries,6 this pair of films put new touches on first-person documentary with an auto-ethnographic approach and experimental impulse. I argue that Wen’s films have enriched the lexicon of both firstperson documentary and documentary theater. Wen transposes her idea and practice of dajian 搭建—setting-up/building/constructing through 5 Wang, “Suanfa shidai de ‘zhiyan juchang’–lun Wen Hui shenghuo wudao gongzuoshi zuopin” (Parrhesia Theater in Algorithmic Era—On Wen Hui and Her Living Dance Studio). 6 Russell, Experimental Ethnography.

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

171

human and human-non-human connection—in her work as a dancer and multimedia artist onto filmmaking. The film practice thus becomes a choreographic experiment of installing an open stage, or a mise-en-scène in the original French sense, through gestural interaction, and performing embodied memory in front of the camera with her third grandmother, creatively synthesizing techniques from different media for articulating a distinctive documentary language. [Fig. 5.3] More importantly, she explores ways of going beyond these art forms and their varying spectatorial address in search of a women-centered expressive dimension as both a bodily archive and an intimate-public theater.

First-Person Documentary and the Intimate-Public Camera Public space has been at the focal point of studies of Chinese independent cinema, particularly documentary. Xianchang (again, literally, present scene of happening) as a constructive social and symbolic space as well as a critical concept has been widely discussed as a chief characteristic of a new type of unofficial or semi-independent documentary that emerged in the post-1989 socio-political context.7 Book titles such as For the Public Record and From the Studio to the Street speak volumes about this conceptual investment in the “public.”8 These socially concerned documentaries are frequently made “on the scene” of a rapidly transforming society, exploring a wide range of public and urban spaces, i.e., street, square, park, neighborhood committee, demolition/construction sites, school, hospital, railway, police station, dance halls, gay bars, and so on, through the individual documentary lens. More importantly, they focus on ordinary people, especially marginalized subjects such as laid-off and migrant workers, petitioners, sex workers, street urchins, and elderly people. Luke Robinson observes a shift away from “pubic topics” connected to issues of nation, history, ethnicity, or the functioning of the state to the “private” 私人 documentary around the year 2000. Thus, “[t]his form concerns itself with topics quite distinct from those of the ‘public’ documentary, focusing on the individual, sometimes domestic spaces, as opposed to external public ones.”9 Robinson cites films such as Home Video 家庭录 7 See Zhang, “Introduction: Bearing Witness”; Robinson, “From ‘Public’ to ‘Private’.” 8 Berry et al. (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary Movement; Robinson, Independent Chinese Documentary; Edwards, Independent Chinese Documentary. 9 Robinson, Independent Chinese Documentary, p. 177.

172 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

像 (2001) by Yang Lina, Unhappiness Does Not Stop at One 不快乐的不只 一个 (2001) by Wang Fen 王芬, and Losing 失散 (2005) by Zuo Yixiao 左益 虓, which generally involve family conflict, especially divorce. Robinson observes that the turn to the private and a whole-hearted embrace of the “unexpected or contingent event” therein also occasioned a shift “from a metonymic or metaphorical mode to one of the particular” and a “decisive break with socialist realism.”10 This is a bold assertion. His discussion of the emergence of the private documentary, however, does not go into the diverse forms and the attendant gendered politics of representing the personal.11 Yu’s work on first-person documentary and its imbrication in a socially transformed, “individualizing China” has advanced the research on Chinese “private” documentary. Her article, “Toward a Communicative Practice: Female First-Person Documentary in the Twenty-First Century,” analyzes a number of first-person documentaries by women, particularly Home Video and They Are Not the Only Unhappy Couple within a history of women’s “privacy literature” and “individualized writing” as well as the changing family structure during urban migration and socio-economic transformation.12 Yu identifies a particular kind of “communicative practice” in female first-person documentaries and docudramatic narratives (e.g., Liu Jiayin’s 刘家茵 Oxhide 牛皮 and Song Fang’s 宋方 Memories Look at Me 记忆望着我). The filmmaking process reconnects the daughters (filmmakers) and parents, unearthing buried family secrets and arriving at new knowledge about the self and the family. The “authorial voice” in these films, while coming across as rebellious and assertive, nonetheless nourishes a “relational self.” Yu argues, “Even though both Yang and Wang take on a transgressive role in their films, challenging the traditional image of the daughter, their authorial voices do not just speak for themselves, but for the sake of their family as a larger collective.”13 Inspired by Harriet Evans’s engagement with Habermas’s concept of communicative action in her study of changing family relations in contemporary China, Yu focuses on women’s subjectivity formation through first-person 10 Ibid., p. 180. 11 Robinson mainly focuses on Zuo Yixiao’s Losing, which documents the events on the day when the director and his wife undergo divorce and their ensuing emotional upheaval. 12 Yu, “Toward a Communicative Practice,” pp. 27–29. Yu mentions Tang Danhong’s Nightingale, Not the Only Voice, which is less about the filmmaker’s family than about her personal and artistic identity, in her book. On early new documentary films by women including Tang, Yang, and Wang, see also my article, “Dai shexiangji de nüren: dangdai Zhongguo nüxing jilupian yilan” (Woman with a Video Camera – A Glimpse of the Contemporary Chinese Women Documentary Production). 13 Yu, “Toward a Communicative Practice,” pp. 30, 34.

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

173

documentary. The related concept of the public sphere, especially Habermas’s idealized vision of equal communication among modern individuals, has been challenged by Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial critics for its lack of consideration of class, gender, race, and specific historical and cultural contexts. Feminist scholars in literary, cultural, and film studies have advanced modifying concepts or counter-discourses. Miriam Hansen, for example, developed the concept of “alternative public sphere” from Alexander Kluge’s “proletarian public sphere,” for re-conceptualizing the emergence of a multiracial and gendered early film spectatorship in America.14 Hansen’s feminist historical reformation of Habermas’s masculine public sphere anticipated a bolder conceptual move in Lauren Berlant’s concept of “the intimate public sphere” articulating the mutual imbrication of sex and citizenship in her work on literature, mass culture, and women in twentieth-century America.15 Lauren Berlant has theorized it in relation to the mass production of a prevalent “national sentimentality” in American culture. Scholars of modern China have been reluctant to apply Habermas’s theory to China on the grounds that modern China, especially after 1949, has not had a comparable form of bourgeois individualism and socio-political infrastructures (e.g., free press, parliamentary democracy) to facilitate rational public dialogue, reflections on social issues, and the aesthetic expression of subjectivity. However, the feminist investment in an alternative or intimate public sphere can be productively extended to grassroots movements in China such as independent documentary, feminist and queer cinema, and media activism. These activities experiment with various modes of production and “communicative practices” through exhibition and discussion, opening new avenues and spaces for socially disenfranchised persons or groups and diverse political agendas. About a decade after Yang Lina and Wang Fen’s pioneering works,16 Wen Hui’s film practice constructs a “relational self” quite differently. Presenting the self directly on-camera is no longer a novelty in first-person documentary in general, or Chinese first-person documentary in particular. For example, Tang Danhong 唐丹鸿, Shu Haolun 舒浩伦 and Wu Haohao 吴昊 昊, discussed at length in Yu’s book, all appear on-camera as both directors and subjects, in dialogue with their subjects and the audience. Likewise, 14 Hansen, Babel and Babylon, esp. Chapter 3. 15 Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; The Female Complaint. 16 In Home Video and Unhappiness Does Not Stop at One, the filmmakers do not appear in front of the cameras, though their voices indicate their overlapping role as interviewer, cinematographer and family member implicated in the unfolding domestic conflict.

174 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Wen frequently places herself in front of the camera, unabashedly mixing or shuttling between her double roles as author/director and subject/actor. What makes Wen’s film stand out from these other first-person films is the manner of her self-presentation and her unique interactions together with Third Grandmother pictured in the center of the frame, embodying the self in plural and intersubjective forms, as the two forms an atypical kinship bond. The family member in question here is not an immediate member of Wen’s family, but a distant female relative, whose memories illuminate untold, gendered family histories of a much wider, convoluted patrilineal family tree. Wen’s intimate-public camera moves outside the walls of the urban family as well as her own “chosen family” at the time—Caochangdi Work Station 草场地工作站, an art collective she co-founded and ran with her ex-partner Wu Wenguang between 2004 and 2014.17 Her film work with Third Grandmother as a situated documentary theater resonates with Berlant’s eloquent characterization of the intimate public, “[It] legitimates qualities, ways of being, and entire lives that have otherwise been deemed puny or discarded. It creates situations where those qualities can appear luminous.”18

“Spicy-Painful” Stories from a “Strange Hometown” Who is this mysterious Third Grandmother? Why was Wen Hui so fascinated by her? At the start of Dancing, through text on black screen Wen Hui relays the background of their encounter: Third Grandma is my father’s aunt. Her name is Su Meiling. Until 2011, I didn’t know that there was this “third grandma” in my family. Even up to his death, my father never mentioned her. She was already eighty-four years old. It was like she has been sitting there on that mountain for me to come. Waiting for fifty years. She recounted to me her precious collection of our family’s history and stories.19 17 The live-in collective housed the Living Dance Studio and Wu Documentary Workshop in Caochangdi on the eastern outskirts of Beijing. While Wu was in charge of the documentary studio, Wen oversaw the dance studio and a Young Choreographers’ Program. The couple worked together closely and obviously inspired each other. However, most scholarly writings tend to regard Wu as the sole “household head” of Caochangdi Workstation and its creative output. Wu himself contributed to this perception both in China and abroad, directly or indirectly. 18 Berlant, The Female Complaint, p. 3. 19 This information was not explicitly given in Listening. The fact that Third Grandmother died between the two films endows the inscription on the black screen with the quality of a memorial tablet.

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

175

This overdue, fateful encounter took place after Wen first visited Yimen 易 门, her recently deceased father’s hometown north of Kunming. According to the agenda of the “Folk Memory Project” at Caochangdi Work Station at the time, its members had to return to their home village to collect and record “oral history” from elders about the Great Famine during the Great Leap Forward (1959–1962). After the Spring Festival, they would return to Beijing to engage in group discussions and edit their individual documentaries.20 “Where is my village?” Wen pondered, especially now that her father was gone. In Yimen, Wen Hui learned about Su, ex-wife of her third granduncle, for the first time, and also heard that she was alive and well, living in a distant village called Dahebian 大河边.21 Wen was astonished: why did her father and others in the family never mention her? “Why was she forgotten?” She felt an urge to meet her as soon as possible. Wen and Su quickly bonded through storytelling, filming and dancing together. The emotionally charged encounter and a subsequent visit led to a multimedia performance and two films. Wen recalls later, “In this strange ‘hometown,’ Third Grandma and I awaken[ed] our memory of our family and history.”22 Listening continues Wen’s exploration of “body as an archive of memory” that she started in multimedia dance works developed at her Living Dance Studio since its founding in 1994. These include 100 Verbs (1994), Skirt 裙子 (1996), Birth Report 生育报告 (1999), Body Report 身体报告 (2003), and the documentary theater work Memory 回忆 (2008) and Memory on the Road 记忆在路上 (2011) from the Caochangdi period.23 But this time the work is carried out on an intimate scale with only a three-woman cast and crew and two DV cameras.24 The previous works were often based on extensive 20 The project also resulted in audio recordings, photographs, and group blogs, now deposited at the library of Duke University, as well as theater performances. For more detailed background on the project see Zhuang, “Remembering and Reenacting Hunger”; Pernin, “Performance, Documentary, and the Transmission of Memories of the Great Leap Famine in the Folk Memory Project.” 21 Su moved to Dahebian after marrying her second husband, who passed away in the 1980s. She lived with her younger son there till her death. Wen met Su’s granddaughter from her first marriage in Yimen and was shocked to learn that Su had coincidentally also named her “Wen Hui.” (June 11, 2018, personal communication). 22 Wen Hui, “Artist’s statement for Venice Biennale.” Typescript, n. p. 23 Wen, “Female Memory Begins with the Body.” For a complete list of her works as a choreographer, performer, and documentary filmmaker up to 2016, see Vosper, “Wen Hui: Releasing the Past for a Boundless Future,” p. 327. For a recent detailed study of Wen’s several seminal dance works, especially Report on Body, Memory, and Red in relation to documentary theater, see Seetoo, “Documentary in Motion.” 24 Li Xinmin, formerly a domestic worker in the household of Wen Hui’s mother and late also a member of the Caochangdi Station and a filmmaker in her own right, assisted Wen Hui’s filming project with the Third Grandmother from time to time.

176 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

research and interviews with women in the cities to create a richly nuanced portrayal of women’s embodied experience in contemporary China.25 Listening departs visibly from the standard “assignment” work of the Folk Memory Project, specifically the bulk of films by several college-educated young members of the collective.26 They mostly adopt a combination of observational shots of the village environments, interviews of villagers, the elderly in particular, and varying styles of cinéma vérité improvisations. The overarching objective is to obtain painful testimonies about the events during the disaster years when many people starved to death or were driven to resort to extreme means to stay alive. Zou Xueping’s 邹 雪平 The Starving Village (2010) and Satiated Village (2011) and Luo Bing’s 罗兵 Luojia Village: Ren Dingqi and I (2011) exemplify this approach. Even when these films have a central character such as the self-appointed village chronicler Ren Dingqi, the totality of the village is the unit that these films try to encompass.27 For this project, the more empirical the evidence and oral histories collected, the better. The f ilmmakers’ double identity as children of the villages, now returning as educated urban youth to harvest memories from the elders, gives the films a touch of nostalgia in a form of “post-socialist homecoming.”28 Their natal or paternal villages provide them with a sense of belonging and serve as a convenient site for their “fieldwork,” or in Angela Zito’s words, a kind of “filial quest… to uncover the truth of a buried collective history.”29 Their family members and fellow villagers are now effective informants and actors in their quasi-auto-ethnographic documentaries, contributing to the retrieval and archiving of collective memory during the most impoverished period of the Mao era. Wen Hui’s approach does not quite fit in this collective anthology of “historical documentary” or “participatory video” curated by Wu Wenguang,

25 Vosper, “Wen Hui: Releasing the Past for a Boundless Future,” p. 316. 26 The core members of this group are Zou Xueping, Luo Bing, Zhang Mengqi, Shu Qiao, Li Xinmin, Wang Hai’an and Guo Rui; all are college graduates except for Li. After the breakup of Wu and Wen, and the end of the lease at Caochangdi in summer 2014, most have dispersed and embarked on new careers. Zhang Mengqi, who cultivated an intimate relationship with Wu at Caochangdi behind Wen’s back, is Wu’s current partner. 27 This is similar to the films by members of the previous Villager Video Project (2006–2010), documenting village election as the main “assignment.” Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First Century China, edited by Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang, is a volume dedicated mostly to Caochangdi and Wu, but surprisingly it barely mentions Wen Hui’s work and her significant role. 28 Pickowicz, “Zou Xueping’s Post-socialist Homecoming.” 29 Zito, “The Act of Remembering, The Xianchang of Recording,” p. 24.

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

177

the alleged “godfather” of the “new documentary” and de facto patriarch figure at Caochangdi.30 Rather than staying put in her paternal village to carry out the “assignment” and reconnect with her paternal roots, she chose to forge a new, outside bloodline kinship with Third Grandmother. Her filming style is distinctively intimate, haptic, and experimental, using mostly static straight-on tableaux shots and extreme close-ups. Listening does not present the size or shape of the village quantitatively; no other villagers appear other than a passerby. After the initial shots of Wen family’s dust-covered old house in Yimen where Third Grandmother was married, the film abruptly cuts to a boisterously laughing Third Grandmother and then remains fixed on her and her small house in Dahebian throughout, focusing on her face, body, voice, gestures, along with the stories and everyday objects in and around her home. Through a palpable presence of the filmmaker and the camera, immersed in “experiencing participation,”31 Wen’s film achieves a vivid, compelling portrait of a strong rural woman whose personal life complicates standard modern Chinese historiography. Su, a child bride and an illiterate woman, survived against all odds under patriarchal oppression from within and outside the family and stayed irrepressibly vivacious. Her resolve to unbind herself from an arranged marriage and an unfaithful husband, her resilience, and above all her big heart, hearty laughter, and indomitable spirit deeply impressed Wen. At a time when Wen was mourning the passing of her father and the unraveling of her three-decade-long partnership with Wu Wenguang, whom she felt betrayed and hurt her deeply, the mutual recognition between the two women as kindred spirits gave Wen Hui a renewed understanding of home, family and, above all, women’s experience and connection, expressive power and agency. In candidly showing her co-presence with Third Grandmother while filming as part of everyday routines during their time together, Listening is unequivocally transindividual or “first-person plural.”32 [Fig. 5.4] The film cements their bonding, sometimes literally, as when their respective long black and white hair are tied together. The stories Third Grandmother tells are decidedly singular and reach back into the past. One word Third Grandmother frequently uses in her thick Yunnan dialect when invoking traumatic memories is 辣疼 or “spicy-painful” 30 Pernin, “Performance,” p. 18. Recent new discoveries have challenged Wu’s Bumming in Beijing as the first work of the independent documentary. 31 Ots, “The Silenced Body,” p. 134. I also used this term in discussing Huang Ji’s method in Chapter 4. 32 “First-person plural” is a key idea in Lebow, The Cinema of Me.

178 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig.5.4 First-personal plural: Wen Hui and Third Grandmother bond through storytelling, dancing and filming. (Courtesy of Wen Hui)

Fig. 5.5 Third Grandmother’s “spicy-painful” stories

[Fig. 5.5], a unique regional expression for trauma and pain. Its orality and sensorial evocation encapsulate the visceral quality of her storytelling, with numerous mentions of female sexuality—menstruation, sex, birthing labor, but also references to the torment caused by her husband’s infidelity and

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

179

the physical and psychic pain of torture and persecution during various political campaigns “after the [Communist] Liberation” (in 1949). Rather than pressing for testimonies about the Great Famine, Wen Hui follows Grandmother’s train of thought from her childhood and her meandering remembrance of her body and the abuse and violence she suffered. Wen Hui is shocked to learn that Third Grandmother was married off when she was only twelve.33 Too short to serve the drinks to wedding guests, she could only gingerly carry the trays while the 18-year-old bridegroom placed the cups onto tables. On the wedding night, she sat on a little stool all night, fearful of the stranger in the room. A couple of years later she got her first period and became pregnant. Only when she felt an excruciating pain in her abdomen did she realize that she had gone into labor. Her husband placed her on a stool, likely the same one from the wedding night, and called for help. The baby was stillborn. She recovered and eventually had a son later. “Was it around the ‘Liberation’ time?” She murmurs to herself uncertainly. Third Grandmother’s sense of time and history is not informed by a clear linear line dictated by the grand national narratives, but pivots around the “spicy-painful” events etched into her body and mind. Feudal patriarchy forced her to become a child bride and instrument of procreation; the “Liberation” 解放 (or the founding of the prc) and the ensuing land reform (accompanied by violent class struggle) did not liberate her but deprived her family of not just land, wealth, and daily necessities but also of human dignity. After her father-in-law was executed following a “class struggle” session, her mother-in-law (Wen’s great grandmother) was ruthlessly tortured. Her own mother was hunted down and driven to suicide. She herself was also publicly humiliated while her son was bullied at school due to their “bad” class background as landholders. Out of despair she also attempted to hang herself. This distinctly gendered oral “history of pain” differs from the kind of national traumas represented in canonical literary and filmic works by male authors such as Ye Zhaoyan, Wang Xiaobo, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Lou Ye examined in Michael Berry’s study,34 as well as the mainstay of the “folk memory project” curated by Wu with an eye for anthologization or a kind of collectivization of memory. Third Grandmother’s stories are embedded in her wrinkles, woven into her long grey hair, and infused into 33 Born in 1928, Su Meiling was married c. 1940. While child brides were common in feudal China, even in post-dynastic Republican China, the child bride was usually first used as a maid or nurse for the younger husband and the two would consummate the marriage when the boy came of age. 34 Berry, A History of Pain.

180 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

her vivid idiolect, laughter, and gestures that give her “female complaint”—to borrow the title of Berlant’s book in a different but comparable context—a glint of introspection and transcendence.

Choreographing the Everyday, Enacting a Women’s World Listening and Dancing achieve double storytelling—Third Grandmother’s oral autobiography and the two women’s shared effort in re-telling the “spicy-painful” stories through collaborative choreography of the everyday in women’s life world with their intimate-public camera. Third Grandmother’s storytelling is bound to domestic objects and memories about them, including the stool for resisting unwanted sex on the wedding night and for delivering the stillborn. The cultural anthropologist Janet Hoskins has written on “biographical objects” that tell stories, arguing that “stories generated around objects provide a distanced form of introspection, a way of discussing loaded sexual politics in an ironic mode, and a form of reflection on the meaning of one’s own life.”35 Although some of the original objects mentioned in Third Grandmother’s stories are long gone, the ones that organize her current daily life, such as combs, stools, wash basins and cooking pots, coal stoves, and hanging laundry, are foregrounded in the scenes where the two women interact or perform before the camera. Their performance, when they are not engaged in verbally remembering and recording “spicy-painful” stories in straight-on takes, especially in Dancing, takes the form of slow-paced, meditative posing, as though they are conversing through re-awakened body memories or newly learned gestures and expressions. When Third Grandmother becomes aware of the presence of the camera, she first reacts to it with child-like curiosity but quickly accepts its presence in her daily rituals, just like the stool or washing basin in the yard. These colorful takes of the two eating, napping, combing, washing faces, and slowly dancing together pivot on Wen Hui “following” 跟著 Third Grandmother’s gestures and movements, while they exchange affectionate smiles and glances. Wen Hui is like a baby learning a language from a maternal figure through “lessons” in discovering the power of the senses alongside oral storytelling. [Fig. 5.6] At the same time, as a filmmaker and artist, she is re-inscribing Third Grandmother’s life into both family and public history. Performing and f ilming these daily rituals as a way of “inviting a memory” is integral to the films’ embodied gender politics and aesthetic 35 Hoskins, Biographic Objects, p. 2.

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

181

Fig. 5.6 “Listening” to Third Grandmother’s stories through gestures and movements. (Courtesy of Wen Hui)

of documentary theater.36 The style is quite simple at the outset, yet elegant and stirring. The seventy-five-minute-long Listening has only forty-two shots predominantly in the exterior, culminating in a 160-second-long coda in the dark interior on a black-out night. It does not resort to any archival material (not even a photograph) or enactment, but alternates between shades of black-white and color, without mechanically pinning down the boundary between the past and the present. The color shifts in and out of the monochrome as smoothly as Third Grandmother’s voice effortlessly sutures layers of temporalities. The main body of the film is primarily made up of frontal long takes combined with close-ups of Third Grandmother telling stories and looking directly into the camera and Wen’s eyes right above and behind it, so close that we can see the depth of her wrinkles, missing teeth, and elusive emotions and the momentary welling up of tears. The close-up framing also renders the otherwise small, frail Third Grandmother larger than life, her facial features more animated and heart-rending. Framing her vibrant image in front of the worship altar presents her as an iconic ancestral figure, which has literally turned into a cinematic memorial portrait after Third Grandmother passed away in 2013. The scenes of the two women’s interactive movements in the intervals of storytelling do not simply provide relief from the “spicy-painful” past but rather, in Wang Yinjie’s words, “constructs/dajian a female historical 36 Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, p. 193, quoted in Leary (2003).

182 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

xianchang.”37 This historically specific and highly personal “present scene” in Third Grandmother’s front yard extends far beyond the body workshop 身体工作坊 that Wen conducted daily with the resident young artists in Caochangdi’s black box theater. Dajian refers to the act of setting up a stage or a simple structure that emphasizes the process and connections between different parts and materials. Falling in between physical exercise and improvised dance, the body workshop emphasizes sensory awakening and interaction between participants, often using limbs (and sometimes voices) to build or assemble connections, physically as well as affectively. But here Wen’s and Third Grandmother’s dajian in front of the DV camera is of a very intimate nature in a remote corner of southwest rural China, where the two women’s lives intertwine. On the one hand, the bodily movements reinforce and contextualize Third Grandmother’s verbal recollections, demonstrating the capaciousness of her body as a memory bank or “granary” (a real one is shown in Dancing). On the other hand, the transmission and reinterpretation of Third Grandmother’s memories and stories from one generation to another, mediated through storytelling, dancing, and digital recording, “invents a here and now 此间.” Wen Hui has unequivocally compared choreography with (film) editing: “[p]erformers are also creators, they are not just bodily tools. I, as a choreographer, think about how to connect their stories together; in a way, how to ‘edit’ their performance on stage.” Likewise, editing on a computer is hardly flat or lineal—“putting images together is like choreography, it is also three-dimensional, spatial” when one works with visual, audio, and other tracks synchronously.38 Listening has a palpably somatic rhythm absent in many other works of Folk Memory Project. It was made with the filmmaker in front of the camera for most of the time. Sometimes it is out of focus because there is no one operating the camera. Wen Hui and Third Grandmother moved their bodies intuitively to get into focus range as if dancing or playing hide and seek with the recording device as a playmate. The composition and editing of the exterior scenes of movements are dynamic and colorful. Unlike the close-ups of Third Grandmother’s storytelling, these are mostly medium shots and occasionally long shots with varying camera setups that present (and preserve) her full frame, highlighting other details of her well-tempered body, particularly her strong large hands with protruding knuckles, her flowing silver hair when 37 Wang, “Cong koushu lishi dao nüxing lishi xianchang” (From Oral History to Feminist Historical Xianchang). 38 Yu, “A Conversation with Wen Hui,” p. 28.

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

183

Fig. 5.7 “I’m following you”

Fig. 5.8 “The Third Eye/I”

not tucked up in a knit hat, her colorful jackets and cotton shoes, and the rudimentary domestic milieu and ordinary objects that are part of her little universe. An overhead shot shows the two women lying on a pile of drying collard greens; Third Grandmother’s head resting on a stool while their arms move in midair, like two childhood friends playing a game together. [Fig. 5.7] Another far long shot toward the end of the film shows the entirety of Third Grandmother’s house, as small, simple yet dignified as its owner, sitting on her stool by the threshold. Sunshine generously pours on the roof and the front yard, and on the green hills in the background, exuding warmth and a sense of contentment and completeness. This “female historical xianchang” they have constructed together, one story, one shot, one memory, and one movement at a time, is a living archive of Third

184 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Grandmother’s “spicy-painful stories,” a monument to an ordinary Chinese woman forgotten by history, and to Wen’s new-found hometown in Third Grandmother’s house and memory. As mentioned above, Listening ends with a 160-second-long take in the dark interior. This coda reaffirms, quite literally, the “first-person plural” perspective of both Wen and Third Grandmother in the film and foregrounds the presence of the DV camera as a “third eye/I,” a shared vision between the two, and also that of the audience. They directly look into the camera while searching for each other as though they are playing hide-and-seek in a dark cave. They keep asking each other, “Can you see me?” “Where are you?” “Yes, I can see you. Can you see me?” [Fig. 5.8] (Wen Hui says they were looking at the viewfinder and asking if they could see each other on the little screen.) The camera goes in and out of focus as they move closer to or away from it, animatedly and actively facilitating the staging of their interaction and bonding. Even as Third Grandmother’s wrinkled hands cover Wen’s eyes, the latter aff irms seeing Third Grandmother (in her mind’s eye) just as we see her through the camera eye. As with Huang Ji’s haptic cinema, Wen and Third Grandmother underscore that vision alone is not sufficient for knowing, and it is through hearing, touching and to some degree also tasting and smelling—(more of these are presented in Dancing)—that they have found a kindred spirit in each other. By directly facing and addressing the camera together, they invite the public to enter the intimate space of their encounter and participate in the dajian of a women’s world of experience, memory, and world-making, through gestures, words, memories, and filming.

Goodbye, Caochangdi Although Wen Hui’s films made with the Third Grandmother were stamped as part of Caochangdi’s Folk Memory Project, their uniqueness intimated Wen Hui’s distance and eventual disassociation from the project and the collective. In subject matter and style, Listening is a unique documentary that demonstrates the power of an intimate-public camera for negotiating multipronged relationships between the self and a fellow woman, generations, and family and nation. Formally, Listening’s experimental style accomplishes a first-person plural documentary portraiture of Third Grandmother through jump cuts, long takes and performative tableaux, restoring the forgotten woman’s place in family genealogy while giving her a public face on screen. Dancing was completed at the tail end of Wen’s relationship with Caochangdi

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

185

Fig. 5.9 “When one is pained by heartache, dance will help.” (Dancing with Third Grandma, 2016). (Courtesy of Wen Hui)

and Wu Wenguang.39 At only fifteen minutes and all in color, it is far less verbal and focused exclusively on the two women’s playful movements at the present moment. Its form and spectatorial address straddle video art and documentary, spiced up by poignant audio-visual montage (e.g., Third Grandmother mimicking piglets howling when trampled by a male foot in a dusty black leather shoe) absent in Listening. Here, in addition to the refrain of “Do you see me? Yes I see you,” Wen Hui says to Third Grandmother repeatedly, “When one is pained by heartache, dance will help.” Returning to the Third Grandmother and dancing with her has become a healing process for Wen Hui herself. [Fig. 5.9] The haptic camera and improvised, pensive performance in both f ilms align them with the “embodied visions” of queer experimental documentaries by Shi Tou 石头 and Cui Zi’en 崔子恩. 40 While home and 39 After the old collective’s dissolution, Wu, his new partner Zhang Mengqi, and a few new members have continued activities under the label of Caochangdi. Wen now runs the Living Dance Studio independently. 40 See Wang, “Embodied Visions.” See also Shiyan Chao’s chapter on Shitou’s documentaries in The New Chinese Documentary. (Shi Tou is in the group photo at the start of the introduction, Fig. 0.1.)

186 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

domestic space are the focal points, Wen Hui’s interactive f ilm practice presents a new type of family in the making: Wen Hui and Third Grandmother form an unconventional kinship bond outside the patrilineal family tree, completing a critical transmission of memory and history before the elderly woman’s passing. Wen sees their fateful encounter as “two spirits standing in a tunnel.” “Her spirit gives me energy as we try our own methods to move closer to each other.”41 Rescuing Third Grandmother from oblivion is also rescuing history from the nation and its grand narratives, especially when her “spicy-painful” stories are accorded historical legitimacy and contemporary signif icance. The process also helped Wen Hui to heal her own emotional wounds and explore new avenues for her creative life. After leaving Caochangdi, Wen performed the stage version of Listening with her mother and two former Caochangdi members (Li Xinmin and Zou Xueping), incorporating documentary footage, research, choreography, and dramaturgy, around the world—going as far as Mexico and Brazil. The two f ilms are integral to this expanded documentary theater of memory, which Wen initiated at Caochangdi and has been practicing over several decades, keeping Third Grandmother’s vibrant image and voice alive. They together provide an imaginative, multilayered landscape of women’s lived experience and affective life-writing. Four generations of women articulate a yearning for an intimate-public commons, by outlining the changing mores of love and marriage, sexuality, female bonding, and, above all, women’s agency over their own bodies and destinies. The moving images Wen made with Third Grandmother have been exhibited in various forms and places in China and elsewhere, including the 56th Venice Biennale, the Beijing Independent Film festival, China’s Women Film Festival, Taiwan’s Women Make Waves Film Festival,42 and other venues including university campuses, museums, and art galleries and festivals. In 2016, Wen Hui and her team completed an ambitious documentary theater work, Hong (Red), examining the politics and aesthetics of body and gender in the famous Cultural Revolution “model ballet” Red Detachment of Women. It has been performed in China and many other countries. These ambulant performances have allowed Wen Hui and the films to encounter and dialogue with a diverse body of audiences, sometimes accompanied by a warming up body workshop as she did back in Caochangdi for a decade, 41 Wen, Living Dance Studio: Listening to Third Grandmother’s Stories (2014), http://www. kampnagel.de/en/program/listening-to-third-grandmothers-stories-memory-ii-hunger/. 42 It was part of the series, “Light in the Shadows,” at wmwiff in 2015.

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

187

anchoring the films within the “communicative practices” of an evolving, multifaceted intimate-public commons across various communities and platforms in many parts of the world. During the pandemic, Wen Hui took up an artist residency in Paris in spring 2021 and began to develop a solo, “first-person” work, Wo 60 (I am 60). 43 Dealing with her “coming of ‘old’ age” at the critical age of 60, it reflects on her life in relation to several generations of women including Third Grandmother and her mother over a century of modern Chinese history and women’s striving for autonomy, equality, justice, and a better world. The multimedia work uses montage of early Shanghai films and new documentary footage shot in Beijing and Kunming inter-acting with Wen Hui’s on stage movements and other materials. Unable to find any rehearsal space and art institutions to prepare and showcase the project due to either commercial or political concerns in China, the work was eventually premiered in Weimar, where she received the Goethe Medal, in August 2021, and went on a critically acclaimed tour in Paris, Prague, Munich, the Ruhrtrienale Festival of Art, and the Frankfurt Dance Festival over the following year. Due to the fluctuating surges of the pandemic, Wen Hui has not been able to return to China so far (as of this writing, March 2023), becoming one of the so-called Covid-19 exilic subjects.

Bibliography Berlant, Lauren. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1997. Berlant, Lauren. The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Berry, Chris, Xinyu Lu, Lisa Rofel. (eds.). The New Chinese Documentary Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Berry, Michael. A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Deutsche Welle. “2021 Goethe Medals Honors Communicators Who Go beyond Borders.” August 28, 2021. https://www.dw.com/en/2021-goethe-medals-honorscommunicators-who-go-beyond-borders/a-58930723. 43 At the same time, she and the New York-based Japanese dancer and artist Eiko Otake tried to complete a home-video style documentary, No Rule Is Our Rule (2022), about their initial collaboration in China right before the outbreak of the pandemic, and their subsequent separation and the effort to edit the film through working together virtually.

188 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Edwards, Dan. Independent Chinese Documentary: Alternative Visions, Alternative Publics. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Hoskins, Janet. Biographic Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People’s Lives. New York: Routledge, 1998. Leary, Charles. “Performing Documentary or Making It to the Other Bank.” Senses of Cinema, 2003. Lebow, Alisa. The Cinema of Me: The Self and Subjectivity in First Person Documentary. New York: Wallflower, 2012. Ots, Thomas. “The Silenced Body—the Expressive Leib: on the Dialectic of Mind and life in Chinese Cathartic Healing.” In Thomas J. Csordas (ed.), Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 116–36. Pernin, Judith. “Performance, Documentary, and the Transmission of Memories of the Great Leap Famine in the Folk Memory Project.” China Perspectives 4 (2014): 17–26. Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Pickowicz, Paul. “Zou Xueping’s Post-socialist Home-coming.” In Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang (eds.), Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First Century China. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2015. 69–83. Robinson, Luke. “From ‘Public’ to ‘Private’: Chinese Documentary and the Logic of Xianchang.” In Chris Berry et al. (eds), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 177–94. Robinson, Luke. Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Russell, Christine. Experimental Ethnography. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. Seetoo, Chiayi. “Documentary in Motion: Dramaturgy of the Corporeal in Chinese Dance Artist Wen Hui’s Works.” Asian Theater Journal, 38.1 (2021): 275–305. Vosper, Michelle. “Wen Hui: Releasing the Past for a Boundless Future.” In Michelle Vosper (ed.), Creating across Cultures: Women in the Arts from China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Hong Kong: East Slope Publishing, 2017. 308–327. Wang, Qi. “Embodied Visions: Chinese Queer Experimental Documentaries by Shi Tou and Cui Zi’en.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, 21.3 (2013): 659–81. Wang, Yinjie 王音洁. “Cong koushu lishi dao nüxing lishi xianchang” (从口述历 史到女性历史现场) [From Oral History to Feminist Historical Xianchang].

“Spicy-Painful” Theater of History

189

Special issue edited by Zhen Zhang. Zhongguo duli yingxiang (中国独立影 像) [Chinese Independent Cinema] No. 12. Beijing: Li Xianting Film Fund, 2013. Wang, Yinjie 王音洁. “Suanfa shidai de ‘zhiyan juchang’ – lun Wen Hui shenghuo wudao gongzuoshi zuopin” (算法时代的“直言剧场”—论文慧生活舞蹈工作 室作品) [On Parrhesia Theater in an Algorithmic Era—On Wen Hui and Her Living Dance Studio]. Juchang (剧场) [Drama], Journal of Central Academy of Drama, No.4 (2021): 77–89. Wen, Hui. “Female Memory Begins with the Body.” In Jörg Huber and Zhao Chuan (eds.), The Body at Stake: Experiments in Chinese Contemporary Art and Theater. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2013. 131–34. Wen, Hui. “Living Dance Studio: Listening to Third Grandmother’s Stories” (2014), http://www.kampnagel.de/en/program/listening-to-third-grandmothers-storiesmemory-ii-hunger/. Wen, Hui. Artist’s statement for Venice Biennale (2015), typescript, n. p. Yu, Kiki Tianqi. “Toward a Communicative Practice: Female First-Person Documentary in Twenty-First Century.” In Keith Wagner et al. (eds.), China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the Twenty-first Century. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 23–44. Yu, Kiki Tianqi. “My” Self on Camera: First Person Documentary Practice in an Individualizing China. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Yu, Kiki Tianqi. “A Conversation with Wen Hui.” Studies in Documentary Film 14.1 (2020): 21–29. Zhang, Zhen 张真. “Dai shexiangjide nüren– dangdai Zhongguo nüxing jilupian yilan” (带摄像机的女人：当代中国女性纪录片一览) [Woman with a Video Camera – A Glimpse of the Contemporary Chinese Women Documentary Production]. (另眼观看: 海外学者评当代中国纪录片) [Reel China: A New Look at Contemporary Chinese Documentary]. Shanghai: Wenhui, 2006. Zhang, Zhen (ed.). “Introduction: Bearing Witness: Chinese Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation’ (zhuanxing).” In Zhen Zhang (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 1–45. Zhuang, Jiayun. “Remembering and Reenacting Hunger: Caochangdi Workstation’s Minjian Memory Project,” TDR: The Drama Review 58.1 (Spring 2014): 118–40 Zito, Angela. “The Act of Remembering, The Xianchang of Recording: The Folk/ Minjian Memory Project in China.” Film Quarterly 69.1 (Fall 2015): 20–35.

6

In Praise of Trans-Asian Sisterhood Labor, Love, and Homecoming in Jasmine Ching-hui Lee’s Money and Honey “Money and Honey is a song of work by Asian Mothers.”1 “Mother Theresa said she is a revolutionary and the one thing she advocates for is Love. Love is also the motivation and strength in my films.”2 —Jasmine Chin-hui Lee

Abstract Chapter 6 discusses Jasmine Ching-hui Lee’s critically and popularly acclaimed documentary Money and Honey about her friendship and filmmaking praxis with several female Philippine workers in a Taipei nursing home and their homeland. A culmination of her extended “women and homeland” documentary series, the decade-long trans-Asian project harnesses the melodramatic power for changing public attitudes and influencing government policies on immigrant labor. Keywords: epic documentary melodrama, care workers, sentimentalism, “women and homeland” series, trans-Asian sisterhood, religion and feminism

Seconds into my first viewing of Jasmine Ching-hui Lee’s 李靖惠 widely acclaimed documentary Money and Honey 麵包情人 (2012/2015),3 about several female Filipina care workers, or Feima 菲媽 (Filipina mom), in a 1 Lee, Li Jinghui mianbao aiqing chuangzuo baogao 李靖惠《麵包愛情》創作報告 (Report on the creation of Money and Honey), Chapter 1. Typescript. 2 Jasmine Ching-hui Lee, opening remarks for the screening of Money and Honey at Department of Cinema Studies, New York University, February 9, 2018. 3 The film has two versions—the 2012 dcp made for film festivals and theatrical release and the updated version for dvd in 2015. It was selected by more than 50 film festivals and won more

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_ch06

192 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

nursing home in Taipei, memories of my experience in a similar setting in Stockholm in the 1980s rushed back. For a new immigrant to the Nordic welfare state, the job was among the easiest to find without a college degree and prior work experience in a post-industrial affluent country with an exponentially increasing aging population. The first thing I noticed was that there were many immigrants like me of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds working as nursing home assistants, often on late evening or night shifts, shunned by local Swedes. Seeing how “Baby”, Lolita, Marilyn, Arlene, Onie and other women care workers in Money and Honey help the Taiwanese elderly to bathe and eat, 4 I recalled the short intensive training we had and similar tasks we performed, including changing diapers and beddings, lifting the patients from beds to wheelchairs or walkers, and so on. The work was demanding but the emotional rapport with some of the elderly people and co-workers was heartwarming. I wept a lot watching the film. More than my identification with them as nursing home workers, the heartache of homesickness struck a chord in me. One precious thing that sustained them, which I sorely lacked, is the sisterly bond among them and with the filmmaker, whose grandparents lived and died in the nursing home where they worked for many years. The latest film in Lee’s “Women and Homeland Series” 家國女性系列 consisting of six films of varying length,5 Money and Honey encapsulates Lee’s persistent concerns about women’s place in the family and society, aging and care for the elderly, migration and diaspora, and the role of memory, love, and religious faith in women’s solidarity. Akin to Yang Lina’s compassionate engagement with the elderly in Old Men and Loves of Lao An (Chapter 3) and Wen Hui’s collaborative work with, and loving tribute to, her Third Grandmother (Chapter 5), Lee’s documentary films are devoted to the interrelated issues of aging, family, affective labor of care, and the than 20 awards. In addition to a successful domestic theatrical release, it has been distributed to approximately two hundred countries worldwide through Taiwan Cultural Bureau. 4 Unlike where I worked, the care workers in Taiwan—in private homes and nursing homes alike—are exclusively women, in fact young or middle-aged mothers, mostly from the Philippines, followed by Indonesia and Vietnam. 5 The early films in the series include: Where Is My Home? (1999, Outstanding Local Culture Documentary Video Award and Excellent Video of the Golden Harvest Awards); The Ballads of Grandmothers (2003, First Prize in Women Film Festival in Seoul, Best Individual Achievement at Taipei Film Festival and the Golden Harvest Award for Excellent Video); City of Memories (2007, Best Documentary at the South Taiwan Film Festival); My Dear Love (2008); and Flying in Darkness (2011). Lee is now completing Come Home, My Child! about maternal love and Chinese immigrants serving long prison terms in New York, which has inadvertently become a new addition to the series.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

193

“resilient yet affectionate female strength.”6 Conscious of the transnational nature of these issues in a globalized Taiwan, Lee has further broadened her perspective to include Southeast Asian migrant women care workers, who have become an integral part of post-martial law neoliberal Taiwan, one of the “Tiger” economies or “newly industrializing countries” (nics) in East Asia.7 Yet, quite unlike other Taiwan observational or activist documentaries about migrant workers, “you don’t see anger nor naked complaint” in Money and Honey, comments critic Liao Chin-kui. “On the contrary, [the] story itself and the unique charisma of the characters and the tribulations of their fates fill this documentary with dramatic tension and imbue it with a deep literary quality.”8 The period when Lee made this series paralleled major life events in her family and her own growth as a filmmaker and educator. She fully embraced independent documentary filmmaking in 1996, when her maternal grandmother became very fragile and subsequently moved into a nursing home in Taipei. Lee had been working in media companies as a program host and documentary producer after her undergraduate studies in literature.9 The changing family dynamic and the challenges of caring for her beloved grandparents, who helped raise her and her sister back in their hometown in Nantou, prompted her to document the daily experience and emotional turmoil of everyone involved in the process. Working alongside the caregivers, her initial home-video style filming inevitably included their presence and labor. Having given up a chance to study film in New York to be close to her grandparents, Lee decided to obtain formal training in documentary making by enrolling in the Master’s program at Tainan National University of the Arts (tnnua) in 1997.10 She commuted between Tainan and Taipei weekly to care for her grandparents, filming their remaining days and her deepened relationships with other elderly patients and the care workers. 6 Money and Honey official blog: https://moneyandhoney.pixnet.net/blog/post/2862856. 7 Tang, “East Asian Newly Industrializing Countries: Economic Growth and Quality of Life,” pp. 69–96. Tang argues that beneath the high growth indices, problems of poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation persist. 8 Liao, “Mianbao qingren shisan nian de jilu dengdai: daizhe mengxiang qicheng de yazhou muqin” (Thirteen years of documenting and waiting of Money and Honey: Mothers who set sail with dreams), pp. 106–9. 9 Lee’s extensive work experience before and while pursuing documentary f ilmmaking includes a one-year stint at a public relations company (1993–1994); planning officer and director in Image Communication Co. and Communication Department, Bread of Life Christian Church in Taipei (1994–1997); host at Good News Radio Station (1995–1999). 10 Huang Yu-shan (see Chapter 2) was among her mentors and served as an executive producer for Money and Honey.

194 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

The more than a decade-long “Women and Homeland” series began during those three years of constant shuttling between the south and the north of Taiwan, between the university and the nursing home, and was carried out in the subsequent years after she assumed a full-time lecturer’s position teaching visual communication arts at Da Yeh University, located near the city of Taichung, in 2004.11 While completing other films of varying scales and length in the series about her grandparents and other elderly patients largely within the space of the particular nursing home, Money and Honey, pivoting around Feima workers, took the longest time (resulting in some six hundred hours of footage) and covered an expansive and complex geo-cultural landscape across the two island nations. The durational and transnational dimensions endow the film with an epic scale and quality, carried out through an affective and dialogic mode of co-creation. An exemplary “trans-Asian project” (non-academic, in this case), as envisioned by Yiu Fai Chow and Jeroen de Kloet, Money and Honey is passionately invested in “transforming, which is about time.”12 A wideranging documentary melodrama of migrant labor and love, it gives voice to a constellation of ordinary historical actors and makes sense of their interconnected life trajectories in a rapidly globalized world. [Fig. 6.1] The film exemplifies the productive collusion in what Peter Brooks describes as the symbiosis between “document and vision” at the core of the melodramatic imagination.13 Money and Honey’s central premise is built on the female characters’ difficult choices over going overseas to work to support the family financially or staying home to care for their loved ones—a familiar tale of modernity about maternal sacrifice and misrecognized virtue. “Melodrama starts from and expresses the anxiety brought by a frightening new world in which the traditional patterns of moral order no longer provide the social glue.”14 What Brooks and other melodrama scholars observed in eighteenth-century “illegitimate” popular theater, nineteenth-century modern novels, and then the nascent medium of cinema still resonates in 11 During her tenure at Da Yeh, Lee used weekends, holidays, winter-summer breaks, and savings from her salaries to work on her own films. She served as the director of the program 2017–2019, before taking a leave of absence, and more recently resigned, to focus on completing Come Back, My Child, largely shot in New York, and now in f inal stage of post-production in Taiwan. 12 Chow and de Kloet, “What Is the ‘Trans’ in Trans-Asia?,” p. 50. They argue that critical “trans-Asian” projects challenge the often continued, spatial (or territorial) geopolitical model carried over from the fixed, “frontier-making” nation- or region-centered area studies approaches (p. 48). 13 Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, p. 9. 14 Ibid., p. 20.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

195

Fig. 6.1 Money and Honey poster: An epic documentary melodrama of migrant labor and love. (Courtesy of Jasmine Ching-hui Lee)

the late twentieth century, but has no doubt been complicated by neoliberal capitalism’s pervasive penetration into the Global South. Stock imageries of victim, virtue, villainy, and dramatic revelation of the “moral occult” in post-sacred or post-Enlightenment melodrama from stage and page to screen as a kind of global vernacular have taken on a wide array of permutations arising from distinctive historical and cultural environments. In the following I trace and analyze the creative process and choices, from production to distribution, that have contributed to the film’s popular appeal, critical acclaim, and social significance, in relation to Lee’s other works in the “homeland” series. An exemplary work of the “New Taiwanese Documentary” (ntd) invested in social justice and rewriting history, as Taiwan transformed into a democratic society since the early 1990s, Lee’s films share with many documentary works by her predecessors and contemporaries not just in themes and approaches, but above all a zeitgeist arising from the profound socio-political transformations.15 This wide array of works attends to marginal or disadvantaged groups, the shifting boundaries between private and public spheres, the past and the present, the local and the transnational. 15 I use the term following Robert Chi, who was among the scholars who first introduced it into English-language scholarship. Chi, “The New Taiwanese Documentary.”

196 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Many works are marked by an acute sensitivity to women’s voices and the ethics of intersubjectivity; their approaches range from ethnographic fieldwork, oral history, performativity, and melodramatic sentimentalism.16 Lee’s work breaks new ground by bringing urgent public attention to the intertwined social issues of aging and migrant care workers’ condition, pain, and agency through a self-reflexive, longitudinal documentary project. Before her work, there was no sustained documentary film that had taken more than a decade to complete in Taiwan.17 This yielded a heartrending documentary epic that has moved audiences in Taiwan and wherever the film traveled. The power of the film and its reception has facilitated visible changes in government policies and public perceptions of migrant care workers in Taiwan through public outreach and innovative exhibition strategies. I propose that this social impact owes much to its compelling mixed mode as an ethnographic documentary melodrama, mediated by Lee’s feminist commitment and religious faith.

Inside Out of Sentimentalism Critics have frequently used the term sentimentalism to describe an emotion-charged strand of ntd with popular appeal, but they diverge in their understandings of the term. Money and Honey, which enjoyed a successful theatrical release and exposure on a large number of platforms, belongs to this “sentimental” tradition by virtue of its emotional intensity and its capacity to move audiences from all age groups and walks of life. Yet, the filmmaker consciously applies the methods of participant observation and reflexivity over the span of thirteen years, aligning the project with committed activist documentary practice. At the same time, its formal strategies, especially in the post-production stage, go far beyond the traditional or poststructuralist ethnographic film by incorporating an array of affective media including video letter, animation, poetry, and original music 16 For a fairly comprehensive review and important studies of seminal films, see Lin and Sang (eds.), Documenting Taiwan on Film; and the sections on Taiwan in Zhang and Kui-feng Chiu, New Chinese-Language Documentaries. 17 In the mainland, the longitudinal approach was employed by independent documentary filmmakers during approximately the same period. Zhao Liang spent more than a decade in filming and completing Petition (2009), about petitioners coming to Beijing to air grievances and seek redress for what they perceive to be wrong verdicts and local officials’ abuse of power. Ma Li also spent six years filming Born in Beijing (2011), focusing on a group of homeless women petitioners. Her film was also shown at the 9th biff and won a documentary award in 2012.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

197

composed by a Filipina woman singer and musician. While these features enhance sentimental feelings of longing and sadness, ultimately, they serve as dynamic building blocks for a documentary maternal melodrama of home and migration. Sentimentalism, often associated with melodrama’s emotional aesthetic, has endured a largely pejorative legacy in literary and film studies. In vernacular and journalistic discourse, the term is a ready label for maudlin poetry or music, romance pulp fiction, tear-jerking melodrama and “soap opera” on big and small screens, in short, a middlebrow emotional aesthetic reserved for the masses, especially women. Sylvia Chang’s “woman’s film,” which I discussed in Chapter 1, falls within this transnational repertoire while recalibrating some of Chinese wenyipian’s attributes. Interventions from feminist scholars since the late 1980s have significantly rehabilitated the term across several fields, notably in cultural anthropology, literary and film studies. As mentioned earlier in the book, Lauren Berlant’s work unveiled the intricate workings of “national sentimentality” within the interpenetrated space between the American political realm and a commodified “women’s culture.” In other words, the sentimentalism of mass culture products does not simply market intimate feelings to women, but in fact conditions a public affective identification undergirding a multivalent sense of national belonging. The Taiwanese scholar Kuo Li-hsin’s critique of a certain sentimental tendency in “mainstream” Taiwanese documentary around the turn of the twentieth century points out the limits of the “collective looking inward” for social and political imagination.18 Kuo laments the lost opportunities for social-political engagement caused by the disconnect between the personal and the political in a number of popular documentary films, even though the “mainstream ecology of film and television production” developed favorably for documentary in Taiwan at the start of the new century. By “mainstream documentary,” Kuo refers to those that have either garnered major festival awards or enjoyed the increased possibility of theatrical release and TV broadcasting, or in some instances, both, most notably, Burning Dreams 歌 舞中國 (Wayne Peng 彭文淳, 2003), Vival Tonal—The Dance Age 跳舞時代 (Chien Wei-ssu 簡偉斯 & Kuo Chen-ti 郭珍弟, 2003), and Gift of Life 生命 (Wu Yi-feng 吳乙峰, 2003). Kuo categorizes them into either “depoliticized humanitarian” and “stand-up-and-cheer” films with considerable production value or films about “inward-looking personal matters.” In his view, these heartwarming films are “charged with sentimental or sentimentalized 18 Kuo, “Sentimentalism and the Phenomenon of ‘Looking Inward’.”

198 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

messages or take private materials as a sole concern.” As a result, they “efface the sociopolitical context of much more complicated layers of realities.”19 Kuo’s scathing commentary is incisive to the extent that it reveals the larger cultural and political factors shaping this “navel-gazing” mentality in postmartial law Taiwan engulfed by global forces, including a rising prc on the world stage. While Kuo has reason to worry about the potential apolitical effect of a certain sentimentality stemming from conservative patriarchal values, a blanket dismissive verdict on sentimentalism associated with ntd risks overgeneralization, unwittingly toeing the lines of a masculinist modernist critique of the cultural industry. Tzu-hui Celina Hung regards Kuo’s concern over the “mainstreaming” or “sappy cultural politics” of the ntd as part of local critics’ general (over)reaction that “fixes documentary’s diverse social roles on an impossibly high moral ground.”20 Money and Honey, like several “new immigrant documentaries” (Hung’s subject matter) made over the decade when the phenomenon of sentimental documentaries proliferated, complicates Kuo’s and other similar categorical critiques. Much of the film offers intimate documentation inside a nursing home, consisting of the nitty-gritty everyday life revolving around the most basic human needs there, and of the care worker’s own domestic and emotional life. The sentimental quality of this “looking inward,” however, is inseparable from the constant looking outward—to the city outside of the confined space of the nursing home (most visibly the towering 101 skyscraper standing in for Taiwan’s economic boom), the homeland and the loved ones afar, and the world at large. Feng-mei Heberer’s study of Lesbian Factory (Susan Chen, 2010), another contemporary Taiwan documentary film about Filipina migrant workers and their strivings between “money and honey,” coins the term, “activist sentimentalism,” putting a productive spin on the political valence of sentimentalism. 21 Cognizant of the appropriation of an arthouse narrative cinema (by mostly male directors from the Global South) on the precarious existence of the migrant worker by the neoliberal politics of both nation-states and the transnational cultural market, Heberer proposes to look at the “lesser-known documentary work of women’s and women-dominated migrant labor activism in East Asia,” for answering these pressing questions: 19 Ibid., p. 186. 20 Hung, “Documenting ’Immigrant Brides’ in Multicultural Taiwan,” p. 159. 21 Heberer, “Sentimental Activism as Queer-Feminist Documentary Practice.” Lesbian Factory took five years to complete (2004–2009).

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

199

[H]ow do f ilmmakers respond to the appropriation of liberal values, especially when they are committed to advancing social justice and prompting concrete change? What strategies do they use to remain morally and aesthetically legible to majoritarian decision-makers and a wider public while insisting on the need for structural transformation? (My emphasis)

The film opens in a protest against a sudden dismissal of 120 migrant workers by Fastfame, a computer manufacturing company that decides to move its operation to the prc, availing of cheaper labor there. But it “accidentally developed into a love story” pivoting around the ups and downs in the relationships of seven couples.22 Heberer’s contextualized reading of Lesbian Factory, anchored in filmmakers’ long-term work at Taiwan’s International Workers Association (tiwa), which produces the film, yields fascinating insights into the potential of activist sentimentalism in documentary practice. She finds in the film’s sentimental narratives centered on queer, female migrant workers’ love and suffering “an inspirational source for a radical aesthetics.”23 These insights also shed light on Money and Honey, which began its production several years earlier and was released just one year later.24 While Lee’s largely personal mode of production and her Christian faith are markedly different from the overtly activist agenda behind Lesbian Factory, the two films have a lot in common in their commitment to the social and aesthetic power of sentimentalism in forging trans-Asian solidarity, generating public sympathy, and propelling social change. They also echo the kind of melodramatic impulse underlying the “digital political mimesis” in Ai Xiaoming’s and Zeng Jinyan’s activist documentaries (see Chapter 8), despite the starkly contrastive contexts in the authoritarian post-socialist prc and a newly liberal democratic Taiwan, respectively. Their compassionate regard for the “underbelly” of global capitalism embodied by the migrant women is far from the navel-gazing of the filmmaker; instead, having won the full trust of their subjects and inclusion into the community, the filmmakers bear witness to the migrant workers’ visceral human experience, aid in their struggles (Chen serves as a translator for the workers, for instance), and extends a helping hand (Lee records and delivers video letters for her 22 Ibid., p. 46. 23 Ibid., p. 43. 24 Both Lesbian Factory and Money and Honey were featured in a special non-competition program at the 9th Beijing Independent Film Festival in Songzhuang, where the opening film, Egg and Stone, was forcefully stopped by the authorities (see Chapter 4).

200 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

subjects). Highly influential, both films have contributed to the social awareness of the maltreatment of migrant workers and ensuing concrete changes in law and government policies. While sentimentalism in both films responds to the conflicting emotions and realities the migrant women workers must negotiate in their daily life, Money and Honey’s focus on the Feima’s motherhood and their ambivalent relationship to home/land over an extended temporal arc and spatial reach allow for a more sustained imbrication of the melodramatic and the documentary modes. Juxtaposing British wartime frontline documentary-realist “home front film” and costume melodrama, Christine Gledhill sees a kinship rather than opposition between them, arguing that, “documentary is not immune to the investment of melodramatic meaning.”25 Personal desire channeled through melodrama and communal rhetoric for nationalizing the idea of home provided by the documentary connects the domestic and the public, “releasing a stream of images which in the context of war become deeply invested with communal and patriotic meaning and emotions.” While Gledhill’s observations concern two seemingly unrelated women’s genres in war-time Britain, in Money and Honey, the intra-textual symbiosis between documentary and melodrama yields a boundary form that articulates a dispersed sense of the national and homeland in an era defined by uneven transnational capitalism and mass migration. Unlike the lesbian lovers who are mostly young and single when they arrive in Taiwan, the subjects of Money and Honey are five mothers, with young children left behind in the Philippines, who spend years overseas with no home visit vacations—indeed, a tale of maternal sacrifice in epic proportions. Their decision to take up care worker jobs in Taiwan is largely motivated by the desire for their children to receive proper education, even though the nation’s faltering economy and reliance on labor export can hardly provide them any meaningful employment prospects, just as what happened to the older generations. This amounts to a kind of going to the front, for the sake of the family and, indirectly, the nation, which heavily relies on migrant workers’ remittances. Their maternal domestic labor is transferred into another kind of home—private and nursing homes—in a foreign country. The transnational affective exchanges and circuitous trajectories expose the porous borders of the home and the world, domestic life, and national culture, giving rise to a documentary sentimentalism that not just looks inward and outward simultaneously, but also reflects on the interdependent

25 Gledhill, “An Abundance of Understatement,” p. 214.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

201

relationships between the filmmaker and her subjects, Taiwan and its “South.”

River of Time, Flow of Tears The Taiwanese f ilm critic Lan Tzu-wei attributes the power of Money and Honey to its more-than-decade-long engagement with the subject of migrant workers and elderly care, which endows the main characters with a “flowing atmosphere of life’s long river,” and the “energy of a tumbling qi and blood” in the film as a whole.26 The thirteen years that went into the less-than-two-hour-long documentary melodrama form a river of time with many twists and turns, ups and downs, all the while flowing on the bedrock of the women’s hard work and sacrifice. Filmed by Lee alongside her subjects as their friendship grew over time, the film is deeply embedded in the intimate texture of the everyday, alternately mundane and dramatic. Instead of the direct cinema method and linear unfolding of the activist cause and concomitant development of the love stories in Lesbian Factory, Money and Honey is largely (re)structured as a melodramatic cinéma vérité in post-production. Lee’s elaborate editing script contains twenty sequences and one hundred and nine scenes.27 Its dramatic appeal and effect are achieved by the condensed collage of detail- and -emotion-filled footage of labor, travel, and domestic life, enhanced by a trans-media multi-track synthesis of animation, letters, maps, poetry, and music. In contrast to the organized collective protest on the street that sets the activist tone at the start of Lesbian Factory, Money and Honey opens in the peculiar “private” space of the women’s living quarters inside the nursing home. Baby and Lolita pack big cardboard boxes full of presents for their families in preparation for the return to the Philippines after completing their contract. They take turns standing or kneeling on top to squeeze in the overflowing items so that the boxes can be sealed for check-in at the airport. “Your weight can seal the box,” Lolita says to Baby jokingly. Asked how she feels about going home, Baby is at once joyful and tearful, “I look [at] my two sons, and I talk to them: ‘What’s your feeling now that I come back?’” On the other hand, Lolita laments, “I look at 101, very pretty, very tall, we just look, we no go. What I feel now is like, I live here, and then I will go 26 Lan, “Shijian de changhe” (Long River of Time), Lan se dianying meng wangzhan (Blue Cinema Dream website), http://4bluestones.biz/mtblog/2012/10/post-2536.html. 27 Lee, Production report on Money and Honey, Chapter 3. Typescript.

202 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

to another country.” The first of the three theme songs in Tagalog is heard on the soundtrack, while the film title appears on a blue sky dotted with white clouds, visible from the perspective of the workers and the filmmaker inside an airplane cabin traveling to Taipei: In the river of hope I bathe Believing that a pot of gold Waits for me at the rainbow’s end Soon, soon, I will meet the bend [of fate]

This prologue, shot in late 2002 and emblematic of Feima’s labor and love, is one of the several key points of departures, or “bends of fate,” setting the film’s undulating rhythm and sentimental tone. After the title, the film cuts back to November 1998, when Lee first met Baby, Lolita, Marilyn, and Arlene in recruitment agencies for migrant workers in the Philippines and then accompanied them on their first trip to Taiwan.28 [Fig. 6.2] Having spent considerable time documenting the working conditions of the Filipina workers after her grandmother was admitted into the nursing home, Lee decided to travel with the owner to the Philippines to gain a better understanding of the process of recruitment, as well as cultural and economic factors behind the burgeoning business of elderly care that is heavily reliant on Southeast Asian migrant women workers. What she sees and hears is both heartrending and troubling. The four women whom the owner decides to hire all turn out to be mothers of varying ages and educational and work backgrounds: “Baby” Salvation Monteagudo, 37 year old, mother of two boys,29 college dropout, who previously worked as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia and Egypt; Marilyn T. Lanza, 25, mother of three young children, college graduate (computer programming); Arlene B. Sanchano, 35, mother of two boys, college graduate, who previously worked as a tutor and a secretary and was unemployed for some time; Lolita M. Lumabas, 40, mother of one boy and three daughters, high school, housewife. They are eager to be hired even 28 Due to the rapid growth of an aging population and lack of inadequate public care homes for senior citizens, private nursing homes flourished to meet the demands in the 1990s. To keep the cost low, owners largely turned to recruiting Southeast Asian migrant workers, who are entering other sectors in Taiwan as well. 29 “Baby” gives birth to another son after completing her second three-year contract and returns home to the Philippines. Another protagonist, Onie, the oldest among them, is a mother of five children, who joined her sister-in-law Lolita during the latter’s second contract, became a grandmother while in Taiwan, and worked in the same nursing home for nine years (2003–2012) in total.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

203

Fig. 6.2 Lolita (first left) and Arlene (front right) at a recruitment agency in Manila in 1998.

when warned about the long shifts (twelve hours!), the challenging nature of the work, and the commitment to a multi-year contract with no vacation and home visits. The owner’s questions are clinically straightforward: Q: Won’t you feel disgusted in a nursing home? The phlegm? Excrement? Bodily waste? Lolita: I can handle [it]. Q: Will [you] be homesick? Lolita: No. (scoffs, awkwardly)

The bittersweet temporality of migrant labor is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the multi-year contract with no home visits is plainly cruel and heartbreaking for the workers and their loved ones, especially the children. The busy work routines with little respite and long shifts, on the other hand, push time forward at a relentless pace, witnessing the depletion of the workers’ energy and their aging before the camera. Shortly upon arrival, they are thrown into orientation, rudimentary training, and a grueling work schedule, with no holiday for sightseeing in the city and around Taiwan during their entire contract period. Their only diversion, also part of work, is a short trip to a food bank to collect free bakery items—hence “bread” in the film’s Chinese title, which stands for money—for nursing home elderly residents, and they are allowed to have a few as a treat. As the main “breadwinners” but absent mothers, the women become Feima to the Taiwanese elderly in order to provide for their children’s education

204 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

back home. Instead of caring for their own children and elderly, they wash the bodies of the debilitated nursing home inmates, change their nappies, feed them, and entertain them through singing and joking in their broken Chinese. A family member expresses her gratitude to the care workers’ hard work and comments, “my daughter will never do it even if you’d kill her.”30 Even the calculating owner acknowledges, “We are very strict on their duties… They all do well. Really working their fingers to the bone (真 是做牛做马啦, literally, toiling like ox and horse).” The women, aware of their subhuman working condition, nonetheless chalk tears into laughter, pain into humor as a way of survival. Arlene jokingly says, “when we came, straight back and head up, when we go home…”, she completes the sentence by bending forward, imitating an old lady with a compromised spine and posture. Contractual time in “liquid modernity,” marked by constant mobility, is not on their side.31 Despite their best effort to stay happy and healthy in order to complete the contracts, homesickness and unexpected tragic events take a toll on their emotional and mental health. For those who stay and work longer, there is a growing feeling of alienation and guilt of missing out too much on their children’s development, spousal love, and filial responsibility toward their aging parents. Baby, whose strong physique allows her to capably hold and lift the bedridden patients and whose lovely singing voice brings a lot of comfort and affection to the patients and her co-workers, is also vulnerable and afflicted with homesickness. During her second three-year tour, her mother suddenly passes away. Unable to go home for her funeral or mourn properly while working continuously, Baby is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her mother had advised her to stay, for the sake of her children and marriage. But the dream of paying off their small new house and providing for her sons’ education led her to return to Taipei. Lee asks the owner to give Baby one day off so that she can travel with her to Nantou, Lee’s hometown, for a retreat. Tears flowing uncontrollably, Baby confides in Lee her regret and heartache: “She [Mother] says if you leave again, you may not see me anymore… Only eight months later, she passed away. But I cannot do anything because I signed the contract. My boss would not grant me a leave to go. I can just cry and cry.” In 2005, when Baby eventually returns home, she rushes to 30 On the commodification of care and transfer of filial duties to migrant workers, see Lan, “Subcontracting Filial Piety.” Lan’s study and argument apply, to some extent, to households and nursing homes in Taiwan as well. 31 Bauman, Liquid Modernity.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

205

Figs. 6.3–4 Suspended mourning, belated homecoming

the cemetery to speak to her deceased mother, crying a river for her belated arrival. [Figs. 6.3–4] These are but two of the many instances in the film when the pendulum between “money” and “honey” swings drastically, breaking down the monotonous time bound to the contract. Baby’s tears and the pathos it arouses in the audience are caused by the blockages in communication and understanding between her and her family members. Her sacrif ice for the family and devoted care to the Taiwanese elderly inadvertently result in her inability to return in time to serve and bid a f inal farewell to her mother, while also undermining her marriage due to the long distance and erosion of intimate trust. The “foreshortening of lived time in favor of intensity” and the “rhetoric of too late” in melodramatic narrative reveal the disproportionate relationship between cause and effect, and the futility of the characters’ struggle against tyranny of linear time and other adverse forces.32 The sense of the “irreversibility” of time makes Baby pause and question if it is all worth it—trading precious life and love for money. Here the film is at its most melodramatic and reflective in shoring up a temporal critique. Lee’s intervention as friend and f ilmmaker literally removes Baby, albeit temporarily, from the conf ining space of the nursing home in the city and the contractual time. In Nantou’s tranquil mountainous setting, which reminds of her mother’s home village, Baby can sort out her tangled thoughts and express her emotions freely. Moments like these allow us to glimpse the growing self-awareness of the women workers and the possible futures beyond the irreversible past. Indeed, the f ilm inserts multiple “pauses”—affectively and stylistically—to intensify and justify suppressed emotions and seek answers to moral dilemmas caused by forces beyond the workers’ 32 Elsaesser, “Tales of Sounds and Fury,” p. 2.

206 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Figs. 6.5–6 Animated poem, “The Clock,” in Money and Honey

control. A notable instance is the use of animation to illustrate a poem emphatically about time. The clock is ticking, tick-tock, tick-tock Night falls, the sun rises, as it slowly turns The ticking of the clock, when will it stop? When will it go back to the past we left behind? When will I hear, the delightful sound? Now I’m like a clock Ticking endlessly

On the visual track, the film cuts from Baby asleep and then floating into space in 2D black and white animated charcoal drawings, as she gets up to go to work. Thus, the animated poem “allows the audience to enter the workers’ body.”33 She joins a multitude of migrant women workers, all looking identical (other than hair length), and equally tired and disenchanted. Eventually, all of them are contained in an hourglass, falling into the urban space… presumably reporting to their work posts in factories, department stores, and family or nursing homes. [Figs. 6.5–6] Scattered across the f ilm, distilled from thirteen years of f ilming, the extra-diegetic animation, poetry, and songs serve as “bends” in a river where the f low of time slows down, allowing the narrative and the characters to rest, ref lect, and recharge. Andrei Tarkovsky and Shinsuke Ogawa are two f ilmmakers Lee admires deeply for their consummate commitment to the temporal art and power of cinema. Lee cites Tarkovsky’s autobiography, Sculpting Time, and Ogawa’s durational and collaborative activist documentary method as main sources of 33 Lee, Production report on Money and Honey, Chapter 3. Typescript.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

207

Fig. 6.7 “Sowing and Irrigating over Time”: Lolita and her children and grandchild by the river in their hometown in 2011.

inspiration.34 Similarly, she tries to “sculpt” her characters and their worlds in “a bundle of time” (Tarkovsky) of labor and love across oceans and islands. During Lee’s last visit to see her Filipina friends in 2011, Lolita, who returned home in 2005 and resolved not to work overseas again, takes her children and grandchild for a picnic by a bend of the river near her hometown Cabiao. She and her husband, who had his share of years working abroad, stand on a bridge hand in hand, appreciating the orange-colored sunset behind the tall cone-shaped blue mountain, which Lolita missed and compared to the amount of laundry back in the nursing home. The family members sit on the green grass by the tranquil water, bathed in soft sunlight, feeling the joy of togetherness and rootedness. [Fig. 6.7] Lolita tells Lee, looking into the camera with a smile, “I’m poor in money but I’m rich in love.” The ease and well-being of Lolita, her children, and grandchild, like the healthy crops behind them, are palpably felt in this family portrait against the backdrop of a living, nourishing landscape. Lee’s longitudinal f ilming of Lolita and her family, emulating Ogawa’s method that she describes as “sowing and irrigating” over time,35 has now come to fruition. The f ilm has also arrived at the season of its own harvest.

34 Lee, Production report on Money and Honey, Chapter 1. Typescript. 35 Ibid.

208 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Sounding Love and Faith The film’s “sentimental fabulations”36 on the cost of sacrifice, endurance, and compromise are richly demonstrated in trans-medial intertextuality, the protean ground for the melodramatic mode. The epistolary and poetic discourses, along with animation and original music by Filipina composer and singer Nityalila Saulo, weave an elaborate multi-track audiovisual tapestry of migrant women’s labor, sacrifice, solidarity, and growing agency. While Money and Honey is suffused with visual expressions of what the art critic T. J. Demos terms the “migrant image”—airports (Baby’s home is located next to one!), luggage, scenes of separation, foreign cityscape, and so on,37 the film belongs emphatically to “accented cinema” in terms of its mosaic, diasporic linguistic and auditory articulations.38 Money and Honey, especially through strategies in post-production, endeavors to have the workers’ voices heard, in the spirit of the migrant workers’ poetry used as a structuring tone and flow. Cristine Artugue, also a migrant worker and writer,39 recites the eight poems drawn from Taipei, Listen to Me Again! in Tagalog (the film’s dcp and dvd contain Chinese or English subtitles, depending on exhibition contexts.) Lee and master editor Chen Po-wen, who is known for his work with Taiwan’s leading filmmakers, including Edward Yang, Cho-ji Chang and Te-sheng Wei, contributed to a rhythmical documentary melodrama that ebbs and flows, moves and provokes. The carefully selected and non-linearly placed visual footage, punctuated or embellished by formal elements culled from sister media, especially poetry and music, crystallizes and melodramatizes, rather than simply observes and chronicles, the women’s experiences and emotions. Escaping the dreadful ticking of the clock—a reminder of long shifts and painful waiting for the contract to end, they take refuge in joking, singing, and dancing, which relieve stress and pain while forging bonds among themselves and with the elderly. Throughout the film, other than working their shifts in the nursing home and fetching bread from the food bank, the activity that fills pockets of time and touches the deepest feelings of love and longing is letter writing and 36 Chow, Sentimental Fabulations. 37 Demos, The Migrant Image, p. 7. 38 Naficy, An Accented Cinema. It is worth noting that the film contains about ten spoken, written languages and lyrics in Tagalog (plus several Philippine dialects), including Mandarin, Taiwanese, English, Vietnamese, Bahasa Indonesia, and Thai. 39 At the time, Artugue was the chairwoman of the Taiwan Chapter of the Samahang Makata International. The members are all migrant workers who engage in creative writing.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

209

reading. The editing effectively incorporates their voice-over, in a manner recalling Max Ophüls’s Letter from an Unknown Woman (1946). In Ophüls’s film, the posthumous epistolary mise-en-scène of melodramatic pathos accentuates failed class mobility and recognition of devotion involving a lower-middle-class woman’s unrequited love for a womanizing pianist of high society. In Money and Honey, love or “honey” has a far wider definition than romantic love in Ophüls’s bourgeois melodrama, encompassing love for children, spouses, parents, and other members of the extended family, as well as the homeland and hometowns. The letters cement the ties that bind, through the tactile art of handwriting and affectionate language. Lolita does not bring any family photos with her during her first trip to Taipei, for fear of unbearable homesickness. Barely settled into her single bed in the dormitory on the fifth floor of the nursing home, she starts to write a letter home reporting her safe arrival: Dearest Love … I promised … 10 am arriving at airport, workplace about 3 pm. The building where we’re working has five floors … I took a rest for 30 min then started my orientation. I want to help you, so I choose to be away from home. Just pray that we’ll be able to pay off our debts before I go home.

The editing accomplishes a condensed audiovisual montage by inserting shots of her unopened luggage, a rather shabby interior of the building (probably very different from what they expected in modern Taipei), and her adding a pillow under a patient’s head. All the while Lolita’s voice-over reading her letter delivers her intimate feelings amidst a culture shock compounded by a challenging working milieu. In another scene later, Baby and Lolita are both shown writing letters while humming the film’s titular ditty, “no money, no honey,” “you have much money, you have many many [sic] honey…” The film cuts to an exterior shot of the nursing home building. It is late at night, and the city is asleep but the light inside the building is on, like a ship sailing in a dark sea. Mail to and from home comes in different forms and brings joy and tears. Arlene receives a cassette with her sons’ recorded voice. They wish her a happy birthday, and “want to sing a nice song” for her. The youngest boy, “the naughty one,” is heard saying, “I miss you, why you leave me?” and we see tears welling up in Arlene’s eyes. The special letters are videos that Lee films and delivers when she travels to the Philippines and back to Taiwan. During her first trip, Lee visits Lolita’s family and delivers a video letter to Arturo, Lolita’s husband. She then offers to make a video to bring

210 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

back to Lolita. Cut back to Taipei, Lolita watches the video showing Arturo working in the kitchen of a local bar, cutting a giant watermelon while speaking to her humorously. The distance across the oceans suddenly closes. A few years later, Lee brings back another video with Arturo speaking to his sister Onie, who has stayed after Lolita went home. Lee’s camera sits on Onie’s bed, connected to a TV set nearby. Arturo is seen joking with her: “Good evening, my sister. You have lovely eyes like mine! No gift, no sister … You are coming home soon, bring me NT [Taiwan’s currency]!” He calls her husband and children into the room to be included in the video. Onie’s daughter-in-law expresses their gratitude, “Thank you for providing for us. [You] even buy the diapers for your grandson.” The smiling Onie is tearful hearing and seeing her folks all safe and sound. The exchange and intimate-public “exhibition” of (parts) of the letters and videos, for which Lee and her camera serve as an intermediary, enabling not just communication between the separated family members, but direct, timely, recognition of the migrant women workers’ sacrifice and contribution to both the family’s well-being and the national economy. The extra-diegetic “cine-poetry” 影像詩 recital in Tagalog (mixed with some English and Mandarin) and ample musical expressions through the “no money, no honey” ditty, “Happy Birthday” chorus on many occasions, and other songs in multiple languages are integral to the affective articulation of the film’s melodramatic discourse on displacement and longing, misrecognition, and reward. These interludes or “pauses” from the back-breaking work and boredom of life confined within the walls of the nursing home allow the workers to “feel aloud” their yearnings and frustrations, allowing their emotions to take wings and soar into the sky as the real or animated migratory birds appearing frequently in the film. Baby is particularly popular among the elders with her outgoing personality, big heart, loud laughter, and linguistic and musical gifts. She learns a lot of Chinese in a short time and knows many songs by Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng 鄧麗君 (1953–1995). Teng was an iconic trans-Asian singer, or the “Diva of Asia,”40 whose legendary life across several countries and whose sentimental songs touched millions of hearts during the 1970s and 1980s, breaking barriers in language, culture, and Cold War ideologies. 41 Baby sings “The Moon Represents My Heart” 月亮代表我的心 to the elderly while dancing to the rhythm. Her rendering of the song expresses both 40 Gordon, “Prodigy of Taiwan, Diva of Asia: Teresa Teng.” 41 Teng’s music serves as a catalyst in the famous Hong Kong melodrama f ilm, Comrades, almost a Love Story (1996), directed by Peter Chan.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

211

her and the elderly’s loneliness and homesickness, which connect them as an ad hoc family. Meanwhile, Lolita waters and sings to the dying plants, creating a mini oasis in the barred balcony on the third floor. “Maybe they like me because I sing to them,” she says. The plants are miraculously revived, happily extending green foliage and offering blooms. She also sings the ditty, “My love,” while folding a huge pile of laundry, imagining it to be the mountain in the home village. During Lee’s reunion with the five friends in the Philippines, the women sing to their hearts’ content at a karaoke bar—a convivial leisure activity out of reach for them in Taiwan. These diegetic singing moments are further layered upon a moving original score and three theme songs (“When,” “Money and Honey,” “Nipa Hut”) composed and sung in Tagalog by Nityalia Saulo. 42 The vernacular musical discourse on love and longing here is resonant with Lee’s earlier film, The Ballads of Grandmothers (2003), about an old lady (Mrs. Hsu) who stayed and eventually passed away in the same nursing home. Though having lost much of her speech capacity, Grandma Hsu sings many “seven-word verses” 七言詞, Taiwanese love ballads filled with both anguish and acceptance, which are passed down through and foster bonds across generations of women. These women’s sentimental songs, a kind of expressive repertoire of the “female complaint,” are akin to Third Grandmother’s storytelling and dancing (Chapter 6). They serve a similar function of what Ira Bhaskar has called “exteriorizing and foregrounding of the felt interiority” in the use of song and music in Indian cinema as the “language of the ineffable.”43 Revealingly, Bhaskar associates this stylized musical aesthetic to “capture the nuances of human emotions (bhava)” with the persistence of the sacred (or the Beloved) in Indian melodrama during India’s tortuous transition to post-colonial modernity. Unlike the “moral occult” waiting to be uncovered in post-sacred capitalist modern societies, as theorized by Peter Brooks, Thomas Elsaesser, and Thomas Schatz, among others, in an earlier wave of melodrama studies centered on the West (primarily France, Britain, and United States), Bhaskar’s discussion of the persistence of the sacred in music, song, gesture, and dance in Indian melodrama is instructive for understanding the aural expressions of human emotions and religious feelings in Lee’s sentimental documentaries. In Money and Honey, the “sacred” is a composite of Feima’s religious faith, steadfast love, and sacrifice for the family, and sisterhood 42 Lee met Saulo during the latter’s performance at a music festival in Taiwan in 2009. Saulo joined the premiere promotion tour when the film opened in Taiwan. 43 Bhaskar, “Expressionist Aurality,” p. 262.

212 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

forged in migration and documentary making, articulated through the epistolary voices, songs, dances, and other affective registers, intra- or extra-diegetically. Lee’s intimate connection with her subjects owes to her commitment to her self-reflexive, sensuous ethnographic approach as well as her Christian faith, which she grew up with since her childhood living with her beloved grandparents. She finds affinity in the Philippine women’s devotion to Catholicism and their loved ones. As a socially engaged feminist with faith, her work is motivated by a passionate search for moral meanings, spiritual transcendence, and social change in secular capitalist modernity saturated with money and commodity worship, which has deeply penetrated non-Western, post-colonial societies like Taiwan and the Philippines. 44 Her films, Money and Honey specifically, resonate with postwar Italian cinema, also marked by a persistent presence of the sacred and infused with sentimentality, lyricism, action, populism and faith in forming what Louis Bayman finds to be at the heart of its “melodrama, realism, and poplar authenticity.”45 In these empathic dramatizations of the divine in everyday existence, the poor and the weak with a strong will (Bicycle Thief, Rome, An Open City, for example) are ennobled and their sacrifices are granted a moral significance mediated by Christian pathos. Marilyn, the youngest among the five Feima, has less screen time due to her relatively short stay in Taiwan and subsequent migration to Israel, but offers Lee a precious opportunity to explore Feima’s religious and social community outside the confines of their workplace. Despite her college degree in computer science, Marilyn was unable to find suitable employment. In the footsteps of her grandmother and mother, she leaves her young children behind and ventures overseas as a breadwinner. She adapts quickly and her youthful energy pleases the boss and cheers the elderly. But soon, a disaster strikes: a severely depressed female patient commits suicide by jumping out of the window one night while Marilyn is on duty but is too exhausted to stay constantly alert. The owner blames Marilyn, cuts her salary to pay the lawyer’s fees, and asks her to leave after the two-year probation. Marilyn is devastated, both by guilt and loss of job contract. Lee accompanies her to seek advice from a nun who offers legal advice to foreign members of the church and to a Sunday service at the local Catholic church which 44 Lee, Production report on Money and Honey, Chapter 2. In 1974 Ferdinand Marcos’s regime began to promulgate a labor export policy. In 1982, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (poea) systematically adopted labor export as a bloodline of the national economy. 45 Bayman, “The Sorrow and the Piety.”

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

213

Feima visits regularly. Sister Lin is angry that care workers must work continuously without any regular breaks, “Even machines need breaks!” She comforts Marilyn that she is just a witness who will testify and is not responsible for the accident and the legal fees. (Marilyn was deemed innocent at court later.) The scene in the church has a certain self-contained quality to it, venturing into a location beyond the predominantly secular work and home spaces. Lee’s camera first gives a wide view of the church showing Marilyn and Lolita among a large congregation. When it is her turn, in a medium shot, Marilyn reverently receives holy communion from a Taiwanese priest and makes the sign of the cross in front of her chest with intense piety, before a long shot once again shows the large church interior, teeming with motion and emotion. It then cuts closer to them praying while kneeling in front of the amen corner seats on the first row. In the next close-up, we see her sobbing, tears flowing down her cheeks. Her gaze directs the viewer to Christ on the cross. On the soundtrack, her voice-over “confession” to Lee’s camera (recorded separately) that she cannot tell her family back home, especially her mother, about the incident and her pain. “I don’t want them to worry. I can solve this problem. If I cannot bear it, I can just cry and pray. I pray to God for giving me more strength to stay on course…” [Fig. 6.8] The camera pans left to show the congregation singing hymns and then tilts up, revealing the bright sunshine filtered through the stained-glass windows. Here Marilyn’s kneeling and tears, like Baby mourning her deceased mother at the cemetery, embody the cult of suffering motherhood in domestic melodrama worldwide but with a more poignant religious iconicity in Catholic cultures including the Philippines. Lee is not a Catholic but her faith aligns her closely with Feima, strengthened by their sisterly friendship. They have become part of each other’s lives; the making of the documentary as an act or extension of their faiths has also cemented their bond. When the departure time comes, Marilyn weeps while kissing Lee’s grandmother farewell. Lee expresses her deep gratitude and sends her and Arlene off to the airport. At the security check entrance, she says to them, “May God bless you and take good care;” her voice trembling as though bidding farewell to the loved ones embarking on a long journey of no foreseeable return. 46

46 Marilyn, the youngest among the five Feima, is also younger than Lee. Lee says that she regards her as a little sister, and they have kept in touch over Skype. Marilyn sends birthday wishes to Lee each year. Lee, Report on the creation of Money and Honey, Chapter 5.

214 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 6.8 The place of faith in Money and Honey: Marilyn prays at the church

Trans-Asian Homecomings Money and Honey is structured around the protagonists’ and Lee’s travels to and from the Philippines, thereby connecting the “domestic” melodrama in the cramped space of a Taipei nursing home to Feima’s trans-Asian life worlds buoyed by labor and love under liquid capitalism. These circular journeys explore the rich yet volatile meaning of home and family in an unevenly globalized world. In 2002, Lee accompanied Baby going home after her first three-year tour. She witnesses Baby’s happy reunion with her family and their move into the little new house bought with Baby’s earnings. Three years later, Lee travels home again with Lolita and Baby after they completed their second three-year tour. She meets Lolita’s extended family, including the two daughters whose college education was paid for by their mother’s overseas labor and joins the joyful reunion celebration with music and food. Then they visit Baby’s birthplace Isabela, where her mother is buried. Back in Cavite where Baby lives, she finds her husband and two sons estranged after a long absence. The money and goods that she has brought home seem to have only elongated the distance among them. While Baby is still blinded by the power of money for solving family economic problems and is planning to go to Australia for the boys’ education expenses, Lolita has new realizations that her sacrifice has been taken for granted and not always translated into a healthy family relationship. She resolves to stay and work in her hometown, even though the pay is modest compared to overseas work. She has also gained a critical consciousness from her experience as a migrant worker, confessing, “I wasn’t a woman interested in world affairs before. After leaving the country, I began to think, ‘Why do so

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

215

many Philippine people have to leave their home and go overseas to work?’” She questions her previous conviction of selfless motherhood, wondering why society places blame on working mothers overseas when fathers fail to provide adequate supervision of children. Lolita also asks that her children actively seek employment and take responsibility for themselves and their own family. At the end of the film, her family is the only one among the five that has no member going abroad, and all stay close to each other. In 2011, Lee traveled to the archipelago nation alone, to see her friends and bring closure to the decade-long film project. This time she is joined by Baby and Lolita in tracking down Arlene and visiting Marilyn’s family (mostly her female kin). Jeffrey, Baby’s cousin whom Lee met back in 2002, is now the crew’s driver. Starting out from Cavite, Baby’s town, to Cabiao where Lolita lives, they head to Quezon and finally find Arlene in her new rental apartment in Bulacan. Ten years have lapsed, and Arlene is running a small business selling her hand-made beads and earrings out of her apartment. Much has happened in one decade. Her marriage was on the rocks after her time in Taiwan and was only repaired recently. Now with her husband working in the Mideast as well and her children coming of age, Arlene excitedly jokes, “We have become single again!” Lee notices that on her living room wall, beside a picture of the Virgin Mary, and photos of the couple, there are three large posters with “love,” “hope,” and “faith’’ on them. Despite all the hardship and heartache, Arlene has retained her humor and vitality. And the bond between them has been reinforced by the reunion. Arlene sings a sentimental yet hopeful song before they part again, “I wish there would be no end/Where the pain has gone/Hope is more important now/The world is the witness to our love…” [Fig. 6.9] The road trip around the country, reconnecting the past and the present, allows the women including Lee to deepen their friendship and brings an end to the more-than-a-decade-long journey the film has taken. In the epilogue, Baby and Lolita, walking side by side on a path in the green field against an expanse of blue sky, discuss their feelings and expectations for the film. Baby says, “I hope that this film will also enlighten some overseas Philippine workers. Because not everyone has a documentary, we are very fortunate [to have one]. We wish when we become very old, we’ll meet…” Lolita chimes in, “…and watch this documentary together.” Sitting in the grass, they ask Lee to visit again in a few years. Knowing she is single and childless, they say, “When you become old, please come to the Philippines and we’ll look after you.” “We’ll take care of each other…” replies Lee. The last shot, in a “happy ending” mode, shows the three and Lolita’s family posing for a group portrait seated around the dining table after their feast. Lee has

216 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 6.9 “The world is the witness to our love…”: Reunion in the Philippines. (Courtesy of Jasmine Ching-hui Lee)

become part of a transnational kinship forged through faith, sisterhood, and filmmaking. Their reunion happened sooner and took the form of a roadshow of screenings around Taiwan after the film was completed. Indeed, the public exhibition and theatrical distribution process turned into a year-long one-film festival and social phenomenon of consequence. In October 2011, an early version of the film had its international premiere at the Pusan International Film Festival, where Lee had been awarded the post-production Asian Network of Documentary Fund (and) award in 2008 and now again received a Distribution Award, the first for a Taiwanese project. Immediately afterwards, the film’s Taiwanese premiere took place at the Women Make Movies International Film Festival in Taipei as the opening film, winning the Audience Award for a Taiwanese film.47 Significantly, Onie and Lolita’s younger sister, who were still working in Taipei, attended the premiere on behalf of all Feima in the film and received rousing applause. A marathon 47 The f ilm went on to garner more awards and international reputation in India (Social Change Creative Award, International Film Festival of Kerala, Trigger Pitch, December 2011), Mexico (Golden Palm Award, Mexico International Film Festival, June 2012), Seoul, South Korea (Alliance Award, Asian Women Film Festival, July 2012), and so on.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

217

Fig. 6.10 Baby and Lolita’s “homecoming” to Taiwan, 2012. (Courtesy of Jasmine Ching-hui Lee)

of trial screenings for soliciting feedback and gaining media exposure and public attention took place in the spring and summer of 2012, building up momentum for theatrical release on October 5, 2012. 48 After a great deal of negotiation and preparation, mostly done single-handedly by Lee, the film was scheduled to open at several major cinemas in Taipei, targeting a cross-section audience consisting of women, elderly, educators, students, families that have elderly care needs, medical care and nursing home managers and staff, ngos, charity organizations, churches, and public policymakers at government agencies, and relevant legal institutions in charge of migrant labor. The launching of the film brought Baby and Lolita back to Taiwan, which gave them something like a heroes’ homecoming welcome. [Fig. 6.10] They arrived ahead of the theatrical release, participating in several warming up “word of mouth” reputation-building events and media interviews. One of the strategies they adopted in selling this sentimental tale is to highlight Feima’s sunny, humorous personality and their kin-like rapport 48 In 2015, they refined the film and updated the characters’ whereabouts up to that year for the dvd version. While Baby, Lolita and Arlene have remained in the Philippines, Onie returns after nine years in Taiwan. Marilyn, widowed several years ago, is still in Israel, entering her eighth year contract. Her mother and grandmother continue to help raise her children in the Philippines.

218 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

with Taiwanese elderly nursing home residents despite and beyond hardship and sadness. After winning another Audience Award at the 8th Taipei International Documentary Film Festival in October 2012, the ambulant roadshow culminates in the 49th Golden Horse Awards, the most prestigious annual awards ceremony for global Chinese-language cinema, where the film was nominated for Best Documentary and Best Editing categories. Baby, Lolita, and Lee, in sparkling gowns and with radiant smiles, walked together on the red carpet. Celebrity-style treatment and media exposure are certainly rewarding for the laborious work in front of and behind the camera. But the social impact the film had on public perception of migrant workers, especially Feima, and policy sectors went far beyond anyone’s expectation when the project began. The release of the film coincided with a series of incidents involving discrimination against migrant workers, especially the notorious red barriers at the Taipei Station banning social gatherings of Southeast Asian workers in September 2012. Reports related to legal disputes (such as Marilyn’s case), inadequate labor conditions and policies, and problems arising from the rapidly expanding eldercare sector suffused Taiwan’s socio-economic realms and media sphere. Both informal screenings sponsored by cultural institutions and government agencies generated media hype and attracted high-level official attention and attendance. The live presence and public articulations of Baby and Lolita at the screenings and on media platforms greatly amplified the affective and representational power of the f ilm. The audience, activists and off icials saw beyond a popular artwork inside the theater auditorium, realizing the urgency of substantive changes in treating migrant workers, especially female care workers working in more isolated and less visible domestic or boundary spaces like the nursing home, and integrating them into a genuinely democratic, multicultural Taiwan. A melodramatic documentary about Feima’s life world and women’s trans-cultural solidarity, Money and Honey, along with other works such as Lesbian Factory, played a consequential, “epic” role in social transformation.

Bibliography Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, 1999. Bayman, Louis. “The Sorrow and the Piety: Melodrama Rethought in Postwar Italian Cinema.” In Gledhill and Williams (eds.), Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 272–87.

In Pr aise of Tr ans-Asian Sisterhood

219

Bhaskar, Ira. “Expressionist Aurality: The Stylized Aesthetic of Bhava in Indian Melodrama.” In Gledhill and Williams (eds.), Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 253–72. Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976. Chi, Robert. “The New Taiwanese Documentary.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 15.1 (2003): 146–96. Chiu, Kuei-fen, and Yingjin Zhang (eds.). New Chinese-Language Documentaries: Ethics, Subject and Place. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. Chow, Yiu Fai, and Jeroen de Kloet, “What is the ‘Trans’ in Trans-Asia?” In Jeroen de Kloet et al. (eds.), Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practice. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019. 43–57. Demos, T. J.. The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis. Duke University Press, 2013. Elsaesser, Thomas. “Tales of Sounds and Fury: Observations on Family Melodrama.” Monogram 4 (1973), reprint in Christine Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute, 1987. 43–69. Gledhill, Christine. “‘An Abundance of Understatement’: Documentary, Melodrama and Romance.” In Christine Gledhill and Gillian Swanson (eds.), Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and British Cinema in the Second World War. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1996. 213–29. Gordon, David B. “Prodigy of Taiwan, Diva of Asia: Teresa Teng.” Association for Asian Studies. https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/ prodigy-of-taiwan-diva-of-asia-teresa-teng/. Heberer, Feng-mei. “Sentimental Activism as Queer-Feminist Documentary Practice; Or, How to Make Love in a Room Full of People.” Camera Obscura 101, 34.2 (2019): 40–69. Hung, Tzu-hui Celina. “Documenting ’Immigrant Brides’ in Multicultural Taiwan.” In Joshua Neves and Bhaskar Sarkar (eds.), Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global. Duke University Press, 2017. 158–75. Kuo, Li-hsin. “Sentimentalism and the Phenomenon of ‘Looking Inward’: A Critical Analysis of Mainstream Taiwanese Documentary.” In Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Tze-lan Deborah Sang (eds.), Documenting Taiwan on Film. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. 183–203. Lan, Pei-Chia. “Subcontracting Filial Piety: Elder Care in Dual-Earner Chinese Immigrant Households in the Bay Area.” Berkeley Center for Working Families Working Paper No. 21, Berkeley, CA: Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/4108.

220 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Lan, Tzu-wei 藍祖蔚. “Shijian de changhe” (時間的長河) [Long River of Time]. Lanse dianyingmeng wangzhan (藍色電影夢網站) [Blue Cinema Dream website], October 12, 2012. http://4bluestones.biz/mtblog/2012/10/post-2536.html. Lee, Ching-Hui 李靖惠. Li Jinghui mianbao aiqing chuangzuo baogao (李靖惠《麵 包愛情》創作報告) [Report on the Creation of Money and Honey], typescript. Liao, Chin-ku 廖錦桂. “Mianbao qingren shisan nian de jilu dengdai: daizhe mengxiang qicheng de yazhou muqin” (《麵包情人》十三年的纪录等待： 带着梦想启程的亚洲母亲) [Thirteen Years of Documenting and Waiting of Money and Honey: Mothers Who Set Sail with Dreams]. Xin xinwen (新新闻) [New News] No.1335 (October 3, 2012): 106–09. Lin, Sylvia Li-chun, and Tze-lan Deborah Sang (eds.). Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. Money and Honey off icial blog, https://moneyandhoney.pixnet.net/blog/ post/2862856. Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton University Press, 2001. Tang, Kwong-leung. “East Asian Newly Industrializing Countries: Economic Growth and Quality of Life.” Social Indicators Research 43.1/2. (1998): 69–96.

7.

“We Are Alive” Minor Transnationalism and Yau Ching’s Experimental Filmmaking “There is a lot to be learned by society about diversity in East Asia.” —Yau Ching 1 “How many cycles does one have to go through in order to be human?” —Hou Wenyi2

Abstract Chapter 7 engages Hong Kong queer filmmaker Yau Ching’s non-fictional works, from her earlier experimental short films made in New York to her feature-length collaborative documentary We Are Alive (2010) made with confined delinquent adolescents in Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan. The transformational and comparative project on juvenile delinquency, adolescent femininities and masculinities, and state-sanctioned social conformity offer an instructive case study of minor transnationalism through a queer lens. Keywords: minor transnationalism, queer experimental film, Hong Kong, diaspora, collaborative documentary, popular media, adolescence in East Asian societies

In fall 2010, Hong Kong queer independent filmmaker Yau Ching, also an associate professor of cultural studies at Lingnan University at the time, presented her multi-year, transborder documentary project, We Are Alive 壞 1 Ng, “The Work of Hong Kong Filmmaker Yau Ching.” 2 An artist from Shanghai and Yau’s neighbor in New York, Hou is the main character in the documentary Flow (1993).

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_ch07

222 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

孩子 (2010), at the Taiwan Documentary Film Festival in Taipei.3 The film, about incarcerated juveniles participating in therapeutic media workshops conducted by Yau in Hong Kong, Macao, and Sapporo, Japan, was nominated for the Asian Vision Award. While there, she was interviewed by the Taipei-based eRenlai Magazine: Pan-Asia Magazine of Cultural, Social and Spiritual Concerns. 4 When asked, “What were you trying to show about these ‘bad’ kids?” Yau replied, “I didn’t really show the kids, to be exact. The kids showed themselves.” Later she stresses the point again, “It wasn’t really a documentary by me, but a collaborative process between me and the workshop participants.” Like Wen Hui and Jasmine Lee discussed in the preceding chapters, Yau’s documentary practices are process-centered and decidedly inter-subjective, fostering alternative kinship and historical, social imagination from conscious feminist perspectives. While she shares Wen’s experimental cross-platform approaches as a multimedia artist, the strong Sinophone invocations in her work are akin to Lee’s sensitive explorations of the nature and meaning of homeland in the modern world divided by empires, nation-states, wealth, power, and other related borders and institutions. Wen’s and Lee’s intimate documentaries are focused on women, often elderly women and their place in family and society, whereas Yau’s film praxis articulates a sophisticated and provocative queer cosmopolitanism, also informing her creative and academic writings. Born, raised, and educated in colonial Hong Kong, Yau’s family background and life experiences straddle several geopolitical borders—between the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Taiwan—as well as psycho-geographic, cultural, linguistic, and artistic ones. She was born in the first year of the Cultural Revolution, on the day the Hong Kong colonial government declared martial law due to the mass protests in Kowloon. She describes herself as a “survivor,” as her mother had trouble getting to the hospital and nearly had a stillbirth. Her mother was an uneducated woman, an orphan who fled a complicated feudal matriarchal family in Southern 3 Yau Ching has close ties to the Taiwanese film and academic communities. In 2002, her narrative feature Ho Yuk was to be premiered in Taiwan, as Erica Lam (who played Zero) received a nomination for that year’s new actor at the Golden Horse Film Festival. But due to the film’s sexual content, it could not pass the censors for public screening and only did a jury screening at the Kaohsiung Film Archive. The following year she was invited by the Women Make Waves Film Festival as one of their directors in focus, showcasing all her works including Ho Yuk. She returned as a jury member for wmwff in 2006. She also taught at the Department of Radio and Television, National Chengchi University for a year in 2005–2006. She was a visiting scholar at the Center for Chinese Studies in Taiwan 2016. Currently she is a Professor at the Department of English in National Central University, Taiwan. 4 Yau, “Bad Kids: Leaving a Message for Their Future Selves.”

“We Are Alive”

223

China. Acutely feeling her father’s pain as “a second-class, colonized citizen” (who was educated in an American missionary college, a refuge from the mainland, and worked in the British Gurkha Army camp in Hong Kong as an office clerk), and the shadow cast on the poor family,5 Yau developed a strong concern with questions of cultural identity and colonial governmentality, especially after she was exposed to feminist, gender theories and postcolonial critique. As a queer Hong Kong citizen with a British National Overseas passport, and as a cosmopolitan artist with a deeply ambivalent relationship with her hometown and China, Yau ventures farther than other filmmakers discussed in this book in probing the myth of the modern nation-state and exposes its structural problems, while being equally mindful and critical of old and new colonialisms. We Are Alive has been seen as “the least queer film” in her filmography and has been rejected by several lgbt+ (and women’s) film festivals. Yet, its engagement with the so-called “bad kids” (the film’s Chinese title) and their complex self-presentations questions dominant repressive moral strictures and criminal justice systems across several East Asian societies from a decidedly queer perspective. In effect, the participatory, transformational, and trans-Asian comparative project on juvenile delinquency, adolescent femininities and masculinities, and social conformity offers a constructive case study of “minor transnationalism” and its transversal “horizontal” methodology through a queer lens.6 In their introduction to an anthology titled Minor Transnationalism, which Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih edited together, they try to think beyond the universalizing, vertical, hierarchically structured discourses and counter-discourses of globalization and transnationalism, such as top-down, North-South. Inspired by Deleuze’s and Guattari’s “rhizome”—“invisible symbolic geography of relations that become the creative terrain”—and Edouard Glissant’s theories of relation, they propose a research paradigm that “look sideways and to lateral networks.”7 They call for attention to “the creative interventions that networks of minoritized cultures produce within and across national boundaries,” and the “micro-practices of transnationality in their multiple, paradoxical, or even irreverent relations with the economic transnationalism of contemporary empires.”8 We Are Alive saliently articulates these minor feelings and networks across East Asian national borders. The notion of “minor” here is both 5 6 7 8

Yau, “Many and Two of (a) Kin(d),” pp. 135–37. Lionnet and Shih (eds.), Minor Transnationalism. Ibid., p. 1. Ibid., p. 7.

224 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 7.1 “Minor feelings”: Yau Ching in We Are Alive, “her most autobiographical work.”

literal in terms of age and sub-citizenship in the film and metaphoric, referring to minoritarian subjects and liminal groups and practices that express underrepresented feelings and voices with limited resources at their disposal. Toward the end of the film, when Yau is wrapping up the workshop in Sapporo’s girl reform institution, she is dressed like a teenager, in a navy-sailor style uniform. [Fig. 7.1] After saying goodbye to the children, who leave the room one after another, Yau is sitting in a corner far away from the door and the camera, looking like a frightened, ostracized “bad girl” in the convent school back in her adolescence when she became aware of her non-normative gender and sexual preference. Yau has remarked, in a playfully reflexive article conversing with herself, that “this is her most autobiographical work.” She confesses that in the process of conducting the workshops, “[g]hosts from her adolescence resurfaced in the form of teenagers locked up … speaking to a present that has deprived them of humanness.”9 The trans-Asian tri-city project has not only assisted the troubled children Yau and her team worked with, but also allowed Yau to process anew her past trauma as an outcast in the confining “closet” of Hong Kong’s colonial educational and social systems in light of the younger generation’s experience and self-discovery. Her third feature-length work, and to date her latest film, is in many ways a synthesis of her decades-long career as filmmaker, poet, 9

Yau, “Many and Two of (a) Kin(d),” p. 134.

“We Are Alive”

225

critic, activist, educator, and scholar, as she migrated and worked across three continents (Asia, North America, and Europe) and several islands (Taiwan, Japan, Hawaii), forming a zigzagged queer Sinophone route of immigration, homecoming, and diaspora. Her journeys intersect with the itineraries of other minor transnational subjects—women of color, queer, immigrants, and juvenile “delinquents” that populate her short and long, mostly non-fictional experimental films made between 1991 and 2010.10

Video Letters: Queerly Dialogues To better understand the articulations of minor transnationalism and the mosaic, collaborative form of We Are Alive, reviewing Yau’s early works more saliently reveals its “autobiographic” queer lens. Motifs of containment, displacement, and alternative worlds recur in her cross-media practices. In We Are Alive, the children compose video letters to themselves in the five-year near future as a means of breaking out of present institutional and mental confines. Indeed, in Yau’s films, the epistolary and dialogic mode, literally or metaphorically, is a consistent expressive form and structuring method that allows “outcast” characters (herself included) on the margins or on the move to connect with each other and their own past or future selves. These conversations, delivered through the osmosis of multi-track images and words/sounds, are how Yau fills the gaps created by history, distance, alienation, trauma, borders, and injustices. In 1990, carrying the lingering energy of and reflections on Hong Kong’s social movement in support of the spring 1989 protests in the mainland, Yau arrived in New York to pursue her dream of studying film, embarking on her circuitous migrating and filmmaking journeys between Hong Kong and a series of temporary homes across the globe. The years in New York,11 though Yau as an international student and struggling queer artist with limited 10 In Yau’s filmography, there are only two fictional films, strictly speaking: short film I’m Starving (1998) and feature, Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong (2002). The latter has been extensively written about. See, for example, Khoo, “The Ground Below Her Feet.” Yau Ching also edited and published a bilingual book, Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong: Script and Critical Essays. It contains articles by Chris Berry, Fran Martin, and Helen Hok-Sze Leung. 11 To support herself, she took up a visiting lecturer position in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego in 1994–1995, before returning to teach at School of Visual Arts, New York, 1995–1996, followed by a two-year teaching stint at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, before she left the United States permanently. All biographical information in the chapter is from Yau Ching’s personal website: http://yauching.com, except when stated otherwise.

226 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

resources often felt “isolated”, in hindsight turned out to be a wellspring of her creative and critical work for decades to come. A budding poet and cultural critic writing and publishing primarily in Hong Kong Chinese,12 Yau passionately embraced experimental filmmaking after enrolling in the Department of Media Studies’ Master’s program at the New School for Social Research (known as New School University since 1997), while working as a teaching assistant and on several odd jobs to support herself. The school was founded by Jewish exile intellectuals—a historical fact and personal connection (as a diasporic subject) she frequently underscores in writings and interviews. Inspired by the potentials of the film medium that writing alone does not possess and galvanized by the combustive power of culture shock and diaspora, Yau made a series of short films within a few years. Is There Anything Specific You Want Me to Tell You About? 你有什麼特別的 要我告訴你？ (1990, 12 min.) was a hybrid work using 16 mm film stock and analog video (Betacam SP). It took the form of a woman filmmaker in New York writing love letters to a woman named Shu in Hong Kong, asking difficult, disjointed questions about cultural and gender identity in an “interrogative, rhetorical tone” reminiscent of her writings of the 1980s.13 The artist and critic Lucretia Knapp, Yau’s friend and collaborator, detects in this tone “a prevailing sense of searching and investigation.”14 The voice-over bridges a visual montage including archival footage and contemporary scenes of New York. A deconstructed travelogue morphs into a queer dialogue with an imagined friend or the other self/half, the short film is a striking debut for a new immigrant filmmaker searching for her voice and place in the “new world.” The time she spent at New School was invaluable. Her playful queer voice became amplified in subsequent experimental shorts, particularly Video Letters 錄像書簡1–3 (1993–1994, 11 min.) and a short documentary, Flow 流 (1993, 39 min.), also involving two women conversing with each other, this time face to face. Yau completely shifted to video for these works until the narrative short, I’m Starving (1998), which was shot entirely on 16 mm film. The second year into her studies at New School, Yau received a fellowship from the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program and found her mentor in a studio art program taught by Yvonne Rainer, dancer, poet, and filmmaker. Rainer had just finished an experimental documentary feature, 12 Cantonese is the most spoken language in Hong Kong. The writing form in print media is close to that used in the prc and Taiwan but retains many distinctive Hong Kong-style expressions. 13 Yau, “Many and Two of (a) Kin(d),” p. 128. 14 Knapp, “Something Borrowed, Something Blue.”

“We Are Alive”

227

Privilege (1990), about women going through menopause and starting a new film project about aging, lesbian love and breast cancer (MURDER and Murder, 1996).15 Yau was blown away by Rainer’s capacious creative power and radical politics, while the latter saw a kindred spirit in the young Hong Kong queer filmmaker.16 Two decades later, having battled breast cancer and entered middle age herself, Yau reflects on her encounter with Rainer in her “imaginary dialogue” with herself: In retrospect, I think it would be fair to say that Yau Ching’s work was greatly inspired by Rainer in many ways. While Rainer has been moving across dance, writing, and filmmaking, Yau Ching also travels between the forms of literary and critical writings to films and videos. While Yau Ching’s work has also sought to put the private, the intimate, and the self-doubting selves into the political, she also learned from Rainer the resistance and fascination with genre-based filmmaking, as all efforts of categorization, including genre, are political. (Emphasis original)17

Mediated by Yau’s personal history and cultural resources, Rainer’s influences were imperceptibly conjugated into Yau’s own singular visions and voices that ruminate on the relationships between the private, the intimate, and the political, and between their experiential realms and expressive forms. Video Letters, completed during a residence at Canada’s Banff Center, were “drafted” on portable video during her travels, alongside letters on paper that Yau wrote to people in her life, using Fisher Price Pixelvision, Super-8, and Hi-8. “They became records of my desires desperately in need of an outlet … They became letters to anyone who can relate to them.”18 The three video letters, all in black and white (with the exception of one repurposed TV clip in color) with increasing length (1’48; 3’20; 5’20) and complexity, and a candid baring of the materiality of the low-tech medium and editing process, are like equivocal messages in bottles thrown into the 15 Interestingly, Rainer and Wen Hui (whose work is discussed in Chapter 5) had a joint exhibition of their cross-media works at the Inside-Out Museum in Beijing, 2019: https://www.e-flux.com/ announcements/280594/yvonne-rainer-and-wen-huidance-only-exists-when-it-is-performed/. 16 Yau recently wrote about her experience in this period, especially Rainer’s mentoring role, in an online article in Chinese, 電影練 (On Film Studies and Yvonne Rainer), M+ Magazine, August 30, 2022. https://www.mplus.org.hk/tc/magazine/yau-ching-on-film-studies-and-yvonne-ra iner/?fbclid=IwAR2hmynuhrevio0nNQptdZJ8Il0SmsK3sRH-m-M8lqnktzkRlA8Noz6pXOo. 17 Yau, “Many and Two of (a) Kin(d),” pp. 127–28. 18 Yau Ching, Video Letters 1–3, http://yauching.com/en/art/video/videoletters/.

228 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 7.2 Video Letters 1: “Dear Mona” (Courtesy of Yau Ching)

Fig. 7.3 Video Letters 2: “I’m not you.” (Courtesy of Yau Ching)

ocean, intended for no one in particular and for anyone who encounters them, separately or together. Untitled and addressed to a certain “Dear Mona,” the first letter simply shows an extreme horizontal closeup face of Yau herself, a kind of “selfie,” moving in a pendulum motion up and down on the screen abuzz with magnetic signal stripes. [Fig. 7.1] The noise on the soundtrack resembles that of a fan in a copy machine. It is as if Yau is simply “scanning,” describing and sending herself as the content of the letter, with tactile yet disintegrated images of her nose, bespectacled eyes, mouth chewing something, lips moving, and then fingers touching part of the face motioning rhythmically closer to the camera. Knapp describes the film’s tone and style in terms of childish “cheekiness” and “queerly coy.”19 Yet the letter seems to pose serious questions: “Who am I?” “Who am I to you?” “Where am I?” “Can you read me?” The images and silences seem 19 Knapp, “Something Borrowed, Something Blue,” p. 2.

“We Are Alive”

229

to pose unanswerable questions about shifting shapes and meanings of identity and place as in Is There Anything Specific You Want Me to Tell You About? The brief, enigmatic Letter 1 abruptly freezes on the hand, “scarred” by disruptive unseen forces. Letters 2 and 3, ironically entitled “Or, Call Me an Essentialist” and “Why Would a Letter Have a Title?” pick up the broken thread of thought in letter 1, furthering a polemic imagined dialogue with an unidentifiable addressee, a personal or even a public readership. Letter 2 begins again in the horizontal pendulum closeup of a face, this time belonging to a man who turns out to be Gregg Bordowitz, Yau’s fellow queer artist friend and collaborator at the Banff Center.20 Explicitly discursive and polyvocal, letter 2 contains a large number of texts, ranging from humorous yet pointed comments like “I’m not you” and “You are not a clock,” mixed with an image of a real rectangular clock, a pillow with a human-like face “wearing” glasses, and after the color clip of a televangelist, a zoom-in of a flushing toilet stall. [Fig. 7.3] This cheeky tone and ironic style extend into letter 3, elaborated by “quotes and misquotes from Italo Calvino, Sigmund Freud, Yau Ching & Sarah” (the “protagonist” and/or addressee?) overtly or obliquely on desire, repression, and mis/representation. This one, with sensuous images of two women (one is Yau) and their soft, open lips, connected yet separated by the invisible distance between the frames, appears to address queer desire most directly. The audacity in juxtaposing canonical modern male authors with two women (one non-Western and the other without a family name) is on purpose for asserting female authorship of a video letter from one woman to another woman. Yet, this desire is also deliberately conflated with a kind of hunger or longing for mother(land) or home, as glimpsed in images of eating (recurring in Yau’s films and poems, for example, I’m Starving and Ho Yuk) and repurposed images/texts of “mother” and “taste of home.” [Fig. 7.4] Once recognizing that desires are but memories realized retrospectively, like homesickness for an exile, we see the “you” as a woman or home are also interchangeable in these video letters: “I always arrive at my desires too late. But it takes all of me—with all my pasts to reach you.” However, among the three letters, letter 2 is most vocal on contemporary matters regarding notions of motherland and home: Hong Kong. The initial playful, intimate audiovisual montage accelerates and spills over into the 20 Ibid., p. 3. The two worked on each other’s projects and even deliberately used the same color clip of the suit-clad televangelist-like figure in their respective works. Knapp sees this inter-textual play as a political gesture,” considering the many battles between queer activists and organized religion” in that period.

230 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 7.4 “Taste of Home:” Mother in the kitchen in Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong. (Courtesy of Yau Ching)

exterior world, peppered with polemic references to British colonialism in Hong Kong (for example, a hand rapidly sorting piles of Darjeeling tea bags), as well as to the impending handover back to China, culminating in the Cantonese pop song, “Queen’s Road East,” composed and sung by Luo Dayou 羅大佑, the iconic Taiwanese musician known for his social and political engagement spiced up with satire and irony. The importance of the song is shown in its entire lengthy lyrics rolling at the end: Queen’s R E, Queen’s R W/why is there no palace? Queen’s Road Central/People like waves. A noble friend on the back of coins Never aged her name is Queen/Every exchange she follows me No facial expression, she gathers prosperity. Friends however good bid farewell See the Great Comrade whips up a little game Selling and buying real estate/Everywhere has room The Busy Spot may have to find a new name. This friend of justice looks familiar and friendly Horses granted to run two days weekly Even the people have to race toward the end. To be a big country’s citizen all you need is money.

“We Are Alive”

231

What begins as a quizzical dialogue on disidentif ication between the two queer artists turns into an open letter about Hong Kong’s precarious place in the world. The song accentuates Yau’s longing for her native city but also apprehensions about the city’s land and its inhabitants’ future, caught between colonialism, capitalism, and a certain new “Great Comrade” (i.e., the prc) ready to take over the territory. Indeed, Yau’s obsession with real estate and home—two different things that relentlessly converge in Hong Kong—stems from a deep-seated ambivalence toward home and homeland, portrayed as both an object of attachment and a site of trauma and containment.

Making Art in Hell’s Kitchen, or the Multiple Lives of Grapes In the other two films made during her New York sojourn, Flow and I’m Starving, Yau experimented with cinéma vérité documentary and the ghost film genre to broaden her inquiries on female bonding, dwelling, displacement, and cultural belonging. Both films are shot in and around her apartments, first in New York’s Little Italy close to Chinatown, the second in New York’s pre-gentrification Hell’s Kitchen, a place name eerily echoing the films’ motifs of hunger and poor living conditions.21 [Fig. 7.5] Here I discuss Flow in detail; its experimental documentary form will find a fuller expression in Diasporama: Dead Air (1997) and We Are Alive. In Flow Yau interviews and films Hou Wenyi 侯文怡, her neighbor next door and a Shanghai artist, who recently relocated to New York. The building they lived in lacked basic utilities such as heating and hot water in the frigid New York winter, but the situation paradoxically drew them closer as they supported each other trying to survive and even make art there.22 Finding in each other a kindred spirit both as an artist and fellow immigrant Chinese woman, their friendship and neighborly solidarity set an intimate tone from the start of the film. Unlike in most documentary projects in which the filmmaker builds her relationship with her subject over time, like Yang Lina with the old men (Chapter 3) or Jasmin Lee with the Filipina care workers 21 In the first apartment, Yau organized a rent strike against the landlord who failed to provide heat and hot water. While she was at Banff, the landlord broke into her home and evicted her. She had to hurriedly move to a new place in Hell’s Kitchen. The latter is located on the west side of mid-Manhattan, was known to be a poor area populated by Irish Americans and other low-income residents until the 1970s. From the 1980s, struggling artists, aspiring actors began to populate the area. Today it is known for its large lgbtq population and business establishments. 22 Yau, “Many and Two of a Kin(d),” p. 129.

232 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig.7.5 I’m Starving: Yau Ching on the set in Hell’s Kitchen. (Courtesy of Yau Ching)

(Chapter 6), Flow is an intriguing blend of an essay film commenting on large-scale currents, or even disastrous torrents, of history and politics. At the same time, it is an intimate dialogue between two women artists in diaspora. Yau views it as a new kinship unbound by patriarchy or state. Grand narratives of nation-building and revolution, occasionally shown through fast-paced montage mixing archival footage and contemporary scenes of New York, are countered by Hou’s mellowing yet forceful voice about her turbulent childhood and growth as an artist on two sides of the Pacific during and after the Cold War. The film is book-ended by lines from a short poem from the ancient Book of Poetry 詩經 (c. 1066 bce) cherished by Hou, about an exile’s envy of a fruit-bearing tree without the worldly longing for a home or family (樂子之 無室). The lines roll over frenzied montage images of a giant yellow “lion”

“We Are Alive”

233

(with men inside) dancing with many onlookers, presumably in New York’s Chinatown, and footage of Mao’s China (youth, Tiananmen Square, the mass cult of Mao, the public execution of a “people’s enemy,” etc.), Hou’s voice-over literally flows into the main body of the film, over milk-colored water with floating green leaves (which later turn out to be part of her art-making using expired tea). [Fig. 7.4] She narrates memories of her childhood during the Cultural Revolution to Yau, who sits across from her, briefly poses questions, and films by the kitchen table. The atmosphere is casual and relaxed, though the topics they discuss are heavy. The Chinatown street scenes, while most are of an everyday nature, have a rehearsed or staged feel, giving the film an enigmatic docudramatic look. For instance, Hou dons an exaggerated outfit, something between a kimono and a Halloween party-style costume, when she talks and cooks. (Later the dress turns out to be a costume for a Butterfly dance she made for herself for her mfa graduation thesis video.) Yet this dramatic mise-en-scène is embedded in a certain kind of “kitchen sink realism,” especially when we see Hou washing rice and vegetables for a meal while talking animatedly about absurdly frightening events during the Cultural Revolution, such as how the Red Guards chopped off pedestrians’ hair and posted virulent “Big Character” posters with rice-made paste. The girl-talk style “interview” shows a palpable trust between the two. The first part of their conversation primarily concerns Hou’s experience as a young girl learning art as a way of coping with uncertainty and lack of normal education (books burnt or confiscated!), constantly living in insecurity and fear due to her grandfather’s “reactionary” background and three-decade imprisonment first in Shanghai’s notorious Tilanqiao Prison and then in labor camps in remote Qinghai province. Hou particularly underscores the fact that her ancestors are of kejia (Hakka) 客家origin, refugees who migrated from the north to Guangdong in premodern times of war and other disasters, hence called “guest people.” Growing up in the low social strata of Shanghai largely due to her grandfather’s case, she constantly felt like an outcast. Hou draws a parallel between her father’s migration to Shanghai and hers to New York. (Yau’s camera pans to survey the shabby apartment.) Coming to the United States to study and then staying practically as an exile after 1989, Hou confesses her culture shock and bewilderment at Western culture like “a [southern] child suddenly running into a frigid snow- and ice-covered land.” In multicultural New York, she feels like a member of the “guest people” again: she cannot speak Cantonese even though her ancestors are from Canton. After coming to the United States, she has forgotten a lot of Shanghainese, her native tongue, and she is not learning English quickly. (In a scene, she cannot even get a cashier’s job

234 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

at a Chinatown bakery due to her inability to speak Cantonese.) During a take when Yau tries to adjust the recording quality, Hou, whose face is distorted by a glass plate of green grapes, insists that it would not matter as she can never articulate any language clearly, even lacking confidence when speaking Mandarin as a Shanghaiese. She holds onto her faith in art but is also confused. “Nowadays, many artists talk about identity—where they come from…. My identity is no identity.” Hou compares her rootless life with the grapes she has been working within her artworks—insignificant, indistinguishable, and scattered. The mid-section of the film takes a surprising turn: an incident involving a suspected male intruder and two nypd policemen momentarily gives the film the look of an action thriller. The episode outlines a different kind of fear, violence, and hardship as an immigrant and struggling woman artist in New York, supposedly a safe haven and beacon of freedom and hope. This time it begins on a black screen with Yau’s voice-over recounting the sudden call from Hou in the middle of the night, reporting a suspicious shadow on the fire escape stairs outside of her window. In darkness, Hou flees to Yau’s place with her ID papers including her son’s birth certificate, while the policemen make an arrest of a dubious “friend” turned intruder. The documentary is no longer just a casually meandering interview punctuated by repurposed archival footage but turns into a live reality show of sorts with Yau herself entering the frame as neighbor and witness as well. The rest of the film, built on a reinforced bond between them, pivots around two vital interrelated matters—Hou’s plant-based art and motherhood—and drives the film’s central theme home. She tells of her unplanned pregnancies, due to a total lack of sex and contraception knowledge in her adolescence, which led to an abortion and a miscarriage, but she decided to keep the child the third time against all odds. Here the other meaning of the Chinese title, 流 as in 流产liuchan (abortion), is added to liuwang 流亡 (exile), complicating the latter with an embodied feminist perspective. We see and hear her son through photos and recorded phone calls from Shanghai where he is cared for by Hou’s mother—a common practice among young mainland immigrants struggling to get a foothold for themselves first (not unlike the left-behind girl cared for by maternal Grandmother in Huang Ji’s Egg and Stone). Yau treats this segment with a unique composition: projecting a large unidentified blue-hued baby image, with a small oval insertion of Hou—like on a contemporary Zoom or WeChat video meeting APP—surrounded by her artworks. Hou sorely misses her child, talking about the desire to be pregnant again all the time so that there will not be the pain of separation. As a substitute

“We Are Alive”

235

for motherhood, making art sustains Hou, despite her realization that her method and material are neither understood in China nor the West—as they are not obviously “modern” or sufficiently “Chinese,” respectively. Holding a pink teddy bear, Hou laughs at this ironic quandary, maintaining her conviction in her way of making art in which she finds joy and “a feeling of intimacy.” “Good art is something that makes you feel free, enables you to forget [pain].” “You cannot predict the outcome… What you are waiting for is you.” While Hou ruminates, Yau’s camera trains on her creative process—soaking tea leaves, pasting grapes on paper, pressing, printing, and drying. A sense of ease and satisfaction permeates the small apartment doubling as an art studio. Years later, Yau comments on the significance of the grapes for Hou as well as the film, The grape metaphor is a key motif in this work. The multiple possibilities that the grape offers for enabling and nurturing life—through its embodiment of seeds and being eaten—are transformed into objects/things for “painting” on handmade paper. In other words, the act of executing the “paintings” kills the grapes, yet, at the same time, injects them into a second life cycle called art, a different process of preservation and decaying, living and dying.23

Working with grapes and other plants, the artist sees more clearly the inhuman condition giving rise to violence and abjection in a civilization like China, ancient and modern, as well as a “promised land” like the United States. Hou left China at a time when the home felt dead, where she could not grow anymore, let alone bear fruit as an artist. But transplantation of a tree can be painful and even deadly, like a tall Texan palm tree will perish in the California desert. And maybe it is not all that different here? As Hou ponders, a series of re-processed blurry but shocking images show police rounding up people in homes and making arrests on the street, the Rodney King video of 1991, juxtaposed with public executions of “criminals” or “reactionaries” (possibly in China). This searing sequence ends with Hou concluding her recollections and reflections on the difficult choices in her life—whether or not to keep a child, to go back to Shanghai or stay in New York, to make a living or make art. Toward the end of the film, watching the film footage on Yau’s editing table, she laments the fate of grape-like people including herself: “How many cycles does one have to go through in order to be human?” 几世为人啊？The process of making Flow has humanized and 23 Yau, “Many and Two of a Kin(d),” p. 129.

236 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

nourished the two struggling Chinese women artists in diaspora, conceiving and raising together a “child” of their neighborly kinship, in the same vein of the making of Video Letter 2 mentioned above. This style of mutual aid of inter-dependent collaboration as a method in immigrant life and art-making will blossom more fully in the form of therapeutic media workshops with the institutionalized children in We Are Alive.

“Building a New Stove” in an Impossible Home In an interview with the f ilm scholar Gina Marchetti, Yau characterizes Flow as “a dialogue between two female subjects from two different worlds about different notions of Chineseness.”24 The feminist questioning of nation and history comes front and center in her f irst feature-length documentary, Diasporama: Dead Air 另起爐灶之耳仔痛 (1997),25 focused on Hong Kong and composed of interviews with eight Hong Kongers who moved to other countries in the 1990s. 26 “Dead air” in the English title and “ear pain” in Chinese refer to the “dead” time and excruciating pain in the ears caused by air pressure during landing on a runway. As with Flow, it is also an “experimental documentary” through a provocative form of mixing talking heads, archival footage, montage, and contrapuntal sound editing. “Diasporama also became a process for me to work through my own pre-Handover anxieties,” Yau confesses. She hurried to f inish the f ilm before the watershed event and returned to her hometown to premiere the f ilm at the Hong Kong Arts Center on June 4 (the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre and a candle vigil in Victoria Park) and June 30 (the day of the handover), two critical and symbolic dates in Hong Kong contemporary history. It was a big success. “I think it fulfilled some demand from the community,” she says.27 On the eve of the handover, she made a short f ilm June 30, 1997 慶回歸 (8 min.), documenting a bittersweet “celebration” party (for the end of British colonial rule) attended by a number of local artists and writers who are her intellectual kin, her community. 24 Marchetti, “Interview with Yau Ching”, p. 215. 25 Yau Ching, Lingqi luzao (Diasporama). The Chinese title’s literal translation is “Building a New Stove—Ear Pain.” It is a reference to her 1996 collection of essays and cultural criticism. 26 In all 21 people were interviewed but Yau chose to use eight. Like her interview with Hou Wenyi in Flow, they are quite unconventional and of a personal, intimate nature. 27 The f ilm won a prize at the 1st Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Award. Marchetti, “Interview with Yau Ching,” p. 216.

“We Are Alive”

237

It was an emotionally charged homecoming and the beginning of a new round of migratory journeys. As a child, Yau was sent to a British missionary school run by nuns, which traumatized her. Cinema became her refuge. A teenager, she was an active member of a burgeoning cineclub trend in the 1970s and then in the 1980s, Videotage, an independent media organization, when she studied English and Comparative Literature at Hong Kong University. Her first job upon graduation was editor-in-chief of Film Weekly, the flagship publication of the Hong Kong independent film community.28 Three months of intensive involvement in Hong Kong’s local artistic and intellectual community inspired her to start the fictional feature project Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong. In spring 1998, she finished the script and quit her teaching job at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After shooting I’m Starving, “a love letter as well as a farewell gesture to New York,”29 in New York in the summer, she packed up and left the United States for London to begin her doctoral studies. Within the next five years, multitasking tirelessly, she completed both the film and obtained her doctoral degree from the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, while teaching full-time at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. From the repressive missionary school to a doctoral thesis about the pioneering Hong Kong independent woman filmmaker Tang Shu-shuen (discussed in the introduction),30 Yau’s education has come full circle. With this solid body of work under her belt, she came back to reclaim the postcolonial hksar as her home base, but her questioning of its volatile identity in relation to China and to the world only intensified. The Impossible Home is the title of Yau’s award-winning bilingual poetry collection published in this prolific period,31 echoing the Chinese title for Diasporama in expressing anxiety about Hong Kong’s future after 1997 and emigration. The poems in the book and the interviews in the film capture 28 On this flourishing independent film culture, see Rodrigue, “The Emergence of the Hong Kong New Wave.” 29 Yau, “Many and Two of a Kin(d),” p. 131. Elsewhere, she explains: “I think being a ‘person of color’ and interested in issues not necessarily US-based, not necessarily about subjects speaking in English, led to my departure.” Marchetti, “Interview with Yau Ching,” p. 215. 30 Yau Ching’s dissertation was quickly published in book form, Filming Margins: Tang Shu Shuen, A Forgotten Hong Kong Woman Director in 2004. Having studied film in the United States, Tang returned to Hong Kong and made four independent films in the 1960s–1970s. Unable to continue her career there, she moved back to the United States. See the introduction for more discussion of this book. 31 Yau and Siu Yi Ky, Bu keneng de jia (The Impossible Home). It was beautifully illustrated by the New York-based Hong Kong woman artist Siu Yi Ky. The book won the Second Prize at the Chinese Literary Biennial.

238 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Yau and her fellow Hong Kongers’ unsettling state of mind and a feeling of transitoriness around that epochal shift. An average of 60,000 Hong Kong people left the city each year ahead of the handover, transplanting themselves to a faraway land (the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia were the most popular destinations). Like the centrality of the kitchen in Flow and the motif of hunger in I’m Starving, “Building a New Stove” in Chinese is a loaded term associated not only with the break-up of an extended family or marriage into new smaller households but with a whole set of social, sensorial, and psychological adjustments. In a poem called “New Year Resolution,” Yau writes, finally home several rugs from various countries varying in thickness … every departure a sacrifice every staying is the same who is greater than who, braver … when I say home I mean spiritual life founded on material being writing poems on rugs cooking congee with eggs a thousand years old …

But that home is rapidly disappearing with thousands of people fleeing the city to build new “stoves” in alien climates, thus “Hong Kong becomes one type of/heartburn on a map/called home.”32 The scholar and translator Jennifer Feeley comments, “the jarring image of Hong Kong as a site of indigestion illuminates the unique complexities of the city which challenges its ability to serve as what is conventionally thought as a stable 32 Yau, “New Year Resolution,” The Impossible Home, pp. 29, 31.

“We Are Alive”

239

home.”33 The “indigestion” refers to many things—food, language, space, culture, and politics, resulting from a century-long repressive colonial rule and free-reeling capitalism, its ambivalent relationship to China, all compounded by and channeled through a robust multivalent popular culture and entertainment industry, including its globally influential commercial cinema. Yau’s treatment of this condition, a symptom of what Jenny Kwok Wah Lau calls the “schizophrenic triple split subject,”34 is facing up to it. Thus, “in Diasporama: Dead Air, it is precisely in the split state of the subject, and the determined anxieties over disidentification that the precarious sharing of collectivity and self-enabling agency are made possible.”35 One precious ingredient in the remedy is pride over Cantonese, most Hong Kong people’s mother tongue. The poetry in The Impossible Home, dialogues and speech in Diasporama, and subsequent films (starting with June 30, 1997) share a strong Hong Kong flavor, in the language spoken or heard. Even though her poems are written in Chinese characters, the slangs and references are unmistakably “made-in-Hong Kong,” and one could imagine hearing Yau reciting them in Cantonese. The interviews in Diasporama are exclusively conducted in Cantonese though the locations spread across Canada, the United States, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. In the interviews with her subjects, most of whom Yau knew or came to know intimately, Cantonese serves as a kind of lifeline, an organic glue that enables these scattered diasporic “grapes” to re-group, via Yau Ching’s filming and shared memories of the city they loved and left behind. Tellingly, the interviewees that Yau retained in the final film are mostly queer people and women. They emigrated or reverse-immigrated for different reasons and have varied family relationships with the mainland, but all speak perfect Cantonese as their first language. The interviews are place-specific, whether speaking over a cup of instant noodles in Vancouver (Denise, queer activist, emigrated at 19), in a modest room in Taipei (Sunny, queer avant-garde choreographer), sitting on a sidewalk lined up with eateries in Hong Kong (Mable, emigrated at 12 but returned at 24), in an office in a typical corporate building (Christine Loh, politician, educated in the United Kingdom and worked in Beijing), or a small living room with a plastic Christmas tree (a middle-aged couple holding different views on their Chinese identity). Their diverging perspectives are linked by their melodious articulation in Hong Kong Cantonese. Having made 33 Feeley, “Heartburn on a Map Called Home,” p. 139. 34 Cited in Yau, “Many and Two of a (Kin)d,” p. 130. Lau, “Besides Fists and Blood: Michael Hui and Cantonese Comedy.” 35 Ibid.

240 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

several experimental short films and being wary of the excessive trend in stylistically challenging “personal films,” Yau had a strong desire to make a “talking-head” documentary, keeping her own presence to a minimum. “Language is very important to me in this film,” she says, “to a large extent the film is a treatment on ‘what is language?’” “We grew up in Hong Kong, speaking Cantonese since childhood. Then we discover that it was really hard to discuss identity and politics in precise terms in Cantonese.” In the interviews, the flow of conversations sometimes gets stuck on certain heavy topics, but “I did not interrupt and let the silence be part of the content.”36 Why is it so hard to speak of identity and politics in Cantonese in Hong Kong? Why do prc politicians and scholars deny Cantonese as a “mother tongue” there? Under British rule, Cantonese was taught in some school alongside English, but the latter dominated as a formal language for political and legal discourses, not least because most members of the colonial administration did not read or write Chinese. In his article, “Too Intimate to Speak: Regional Cinemas and Literatures,” Victor Fan traces the contemporary problem beyond the well-known colonial suppression of Cantonese, to 1930s–1940s debates between the right and the left and subsequent policies to harness the topolect for diverging ideological agendas. With migrants coming to Hong Kong from different parts of China during wartime and its aftermath, Cantonese functioned as a kind of lingua franca for those who decided to settle down in the city. If the first generation spoke with an accent, their children quickly took it up as their native language. Having never been standardized as modern Mandarin, Cantonese, spoken by the masses and intimately bound to corporeality and everyday life, “can stimulate a listener or reader’s sensorium,” observed by scholar Lam Nin-tung.37 The kmt cultural apparatus found dialects uncivilized and banned them for use in cinema when talkies were beginning to be made. Fan argues that both the political right and left regarded Cantonese-speakers as not fully politicized citizens, but as “bare or animal lives.” Ultimately, these debates and the unstable cultural and political status of Hong Kong Cantonese under colonial rule “are symptomatic of the uncertainty of the ontological consistency of the Chinese nation-state during a century when China was on the move.”38 Nonetheless, precisely because of its roots in the blood, 36 Hsieh, “Xingbie ni lü: duochong rentong de aodesai butu — fang You Jing” (Gender Reverse Travel: The Odyssey of Multiple Identifications—An interview with Yau Ching), p. 5 (in clipping version on www.yauching.com). 37 Fan, “Too Intimate to Speak,” p. 55. 38 Ibid., pp. 67–68.

“We Are Alive”

241

flesh, and bones of Hong Kong’s everyday life and a hybrid, if frequently “indigestive,” local culture, the mother tongue is the portable “stove” for those who emigrate—it is intimately connected to their favorite stews or soups, and can provide warmth for a new home in a cold climate. This also sheds light on the recurring image of women cooking and eating in Yau’s films and the centrality of the turnip-cake-making full-figured mother in Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong. Yau credits her close relationship with her mother, in stark contrast to her absent, depressed father, as the most positive aspect of her childhood.39 Like Mable in Diasporama, Yau found herself returning to Hong Kong to “build a new stove” after nearly a decade overseas. Making, showing her films, and writing and reading poems in her mother tongue, while spending time with her aging mother, gave Yau a sense of belonging and grounding despite the unceasing concern with Hong Kong’s future. Meanwhile, her diverse projects continued to put her on zigzagging transborder passages.

Performing “Bad Kids,” Activating Future Selves After finishing Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong, Yau took part in an artistin-residence program funded by Japan Foundation as a visiting artist in Sapporo, Japan, for three months. 40 The requirement was to produce an artwork to join an exhibition at the Hokkaido Museum of Contemporary Art. Having recently worked for three days as a volunteer for media education at a Macau juvenile detention institution, Yau asked to conduct a similar but more extended workshop in a local girls’ welfare institute in Sapporo. 41 Inadvertently this experience cemented the idea for a larger trans-Asian project that resulted in We Are Alive. The workshops in three cities took place between 2002 and 2005 but the multi-faceted project took eight years, taking on multiple forms of video installation, the final feature-length documentary, and related scholarly writings. [Figs. 7.6–8] Above all, Yau meant it to be an inter-Asian workshop generating works of self-representation and empowerment by the teen participants, who made self-portraitures and audiotapes “speaking to a present that has deprived them of humanness,”42 39 Hsieh, Xingbie ni lü, p. 7. 40 In her writing, Yau mentions she went to Japan in 2002, but the film also includes footage from early 2004. 41 Yau Ching, post screening Q&A, Hong Kong Film Festival, New York, April 2016. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ9jx842ek0. 42 Yau, “Many and Two of a Kin(d),” p. 134.

242 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Figs. 7.6–8 Macau-Hong Kong-Sapporo: An Inter-Asian Video Workshop Project

and composed video letters addressed to their future selves. What she and her team (including the teen inmates) engaged with, and bridged, across temporal and spatial distances, illustrates what Iwabuchi calls the “mutual referencing and cross-border dialogues as mundane practice” integral to trans-Asia as a method. These practices produce a “new understanding of transcultural process.”43 We Are Alive, involving perhaps the largest cast and crew (the two often overlap) among Yau’s films, is at once her most “autobiographical,” experimental and socially engaged work. At the title sequence of the film, after a 43 Iwabuchi, “Trans-Asia as Method”, pp. 29, 31.

“We Are Alive”

243

vibrant collage of the young faces and their utterances shot by themselves or Yau, the film is credited “by Yau Ching and workshop participants” 游 靜及工作坊同學作品. As a queer activist, filmmaker, and educator, she ventured into the “forbidden” zone of the juvenile criminal justice system in these highly disciplinary East-Asian societies. She did not come up with the idea out of the blue. Since the 1990s, she has been conducting similar media arts workshops in several countries. In 1996, she led a workshop at the Hong Kong Arts Center, teaching youth about filming the body and empowering the self. 44 In 2000, she conducted another one in Hong Kong, involving the participants experimenting with Cantonese opera and modern theater performance as a way of “finding oneself.”45 Always on the move, her transnational itinerary also took her to the high school of the Shanghai Music Conservatory and a media school in Stockholm, Sweden. The brief time at the Macau facility was, however, the first time when she worked with incarcerated youth. Yau was thus equipped with these experiences and video works of the previous students when she arrived in Sapporo. The institution selected five girls considered most “difficult” for the workshop. For twice a week, three hours one session, for one month, the girls were given digital cameras, disposable cameras, video cameras, and audio recorders and taught how to use them to express themselves. Departing from the “talking head” format in Diasporama in which mature adults narrate past emigration experiences and feelings about cultural identity in the context of Hong Kong’s return/handover to China, We Are Alive adopts a combined performative and narrative style. Most importantly, the bulk of the film is made of footage shot by the teen participants themselves. Yet, as always, Yau’s experimental montage and polemic collage techniques constantly reveal the gaps, silences, and contradictions in and between the images, words, and sounds presented by either the characters themselves or by popular culture that surrounds and shapes their lives. Juvenile delinquency is just the starting point; ultimately, as in all of Yau’s works, questions of personhood and citizenship in relation to who decides what constitutes a truly human and meaningful social subject in the modern global system of nation-state and capitalism are at stake here. As mentioned at the start of this chapter, Yau identified herself with the teenagers in whom she saw the “ghosts” from her own adolescence, specifically the missionary school 44 Marchetti, “Interview with Yau Ching,” p. 217. It was there she first met Wong Chung-ching who later played Chan Kwok Chan in Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong. Two Hong Kong Baptist University students also became the film’s crew members. 45 The process resulted in a short film, Finding Oneself (2000, Betacam, 22 min.).

244 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

she attended. Introducing herself as “the new cleaner here,” she uses the workshop as a way to “reconnect with a human kin of outcasts.”46 In returning to the “scene of crime” of institutions built in the name of charitable education and reform, Yau found a productive laboratory for experimenting with the interventional power of audiovisual media. These punishing institutions have further damaged countless children and youth, especially those with “deviant” social behaviors and gender and sexual orientations. The media workshops offered tools for healing trauma, and fostered agency for rewriting individual and collective narratives, and constructing alternative futures. In her scholarly article about the Sapporo workshop, “Performing Contradictions, Performing Bad-Girlness in Japan,”47 Yau elaborated on the workshop methods and some of her central concerns that would be extensively addressed in the finished film. Seeking to tackle several intersecting problems through amalgamating strategies of media analysis, sociocultural critique, art education, and artistic production, my project transgressed traditional disciplinary boundaries, as well as boundaries between “practice” and “theory,” through utilizing my multiple resources and interests as an educator, an artist, and an academic. One of my intentions was to explore and understand how young women in such a socially marginalized context would devise their own negotiations with media representation in ways that would enable them to experience themselves as authors and performers of their lives.48

This important academic account is theorization in hindsight. In practice, Yau’s approach was more casual and personal. In a manner like Yang Lina’s relationship with her subjects in Old Men, Yau describes her initial approach as “just hanging out” with the girls as friends or students in a normal setting, and the girls bonded with her within days if not hours despite cultural and linguistic barriers. The warden was “shocked” at the quick growth of their affectionate relationship, as some girls had never spoken up and appeared so relaxed and social in front of them. 49 Yau interviewed the girls, taught them how to use the equipment but gave them minimal guidelines, and 46 Yau, “Many and Two of a Kin(d),” p. 134. 47 Yau, “Performing Contradictions, Performing Bad-Girlness in Japan.” The Hong Kong workshop was conducted in 2004. Afterward, Yau took up a Rockefeller fellowship at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, where she developed this article and related research, while preparing for the editing of the film. 48 Ibid., pp. 138–39. 49 Yau Ching, post-screening Q&A, Hong Kong Film Festival, New York, April 2016.

“We Are Alive”

245

brought in popular culture items loved by the teens but usually banned by the institute. (The girls were not allowed access to computers, as part of the effort to “protect” them from negative influence.) Most critically, she screened tapes from previous workshops as an example and a reference point. This trans-cultural “snowball method of screenings” effectively “provided mirror images for them to register the humanity of the other-selves.”50 These interwoven workshops put the otherwise isolated youth within both their societies and the world at large in touch through the communal act of media-making and reception, building a minor trans-Asian commons of affect, imagination, and communication, quite literally, inside out. The antidote to what Yau sees as the misguided “correctional” method of the institution was simply to try to resuscitate the youth’s vitality and creativity by treating them “as normal as possible.”51 An effective strategy is to recognize and re-energize the “[m]utual study and learning from other Asian experiences,” such as TV dramas, film, and pop music that permeate the youth’s lives.52 For the “fallen girls” who were punished and institutionalized because of “compensated dating” (enjo kosai) and other socially stigmatized behaviors, including excessive indulgence in idol-worshiping and dancing,53 it was therapeutic and empowering to own their sexuality and life experiences through mediated story-telling and sharing. Shaming discourse, as well as the modern myth of innocent childhood that undergirds capitalism and nationalism, are deconstructed along the way. For instance, one girl was expelled by her previous school “because she danced too much.” Yau bought her favorite CD of the all-girl group Morning Musume performing “Shabondama.” The girl danced energetically to the song, manifesting a forcefulness and a form of body heat that appeared frenzied while at the same time was quite autonomous and individualized.54 In Hong Kong and Macau, the juvenile inmates idolized Bruce Lee and Stephen Chow for their fighting spirit, resilience, moral righteousness, resourcefulness, and humor in the face of adversity. A tomboy nicknamed “Bruise Lee” in Macau is so obsessed with Bruce Lee that she practices Lee’s signature moves constantly. The film inserts extended clips of Bruce Lee’s interviews where he made the famous “be water” analogy, as well as footage from the Cantonese films he starred as a child actor. [Fig. 7.9] She chose to shoot a video of her performance in the detention 50 Yau, “Many and Two of a Kin(d),” p. 135 51 The title of a book Yau edited during this period, As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland and Hong Kong. 52 Iwabuchi, “Trans-Asia as Method,” p. 32. 53 Yau, “Performing Contradictions,” pp. 142–48. 54 Ibid., pp. 148–49.

246 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 7.9 “Be water, my friend”: popular culture and film history as sources of healing

center’s playground for the workshop’s “assignment.” Denise Tang, cultural studies scholar and the erstwhile Vancouver-based interviewee in Diasporama, sees this act of appropriation of a rebellious cultural icon not simply as an “assertation of moral righteousness” but also, invoking Judith Halberstam, as “a queer time and space.”55 The workshops transformed, if momentarily, the dehumanizing reformatory settings into an “inter-Asian playground of outcast youth” through a plethora of performance and art-making exercises. The project also built a future tense into the youngsters’ newly developed self-awareness in the form of video letters to themselves in five years. The fact that some letters are partially or wholly “shared” and read while the workshop was in progress and constitute an integral part of the final film, means they become a kind of open letters to themselves as well as to the larger public. The present and future lives are fused together, activating a double temporal reflection that brings insights into the here and now, which in turn shape an evolving future. The things each of them said in their video letters varied, but they all adopted a frontal position, as if speaking to a mirror. [Fig. 7.10] Some got so close to the video camera that it seemed they were whispering intimately to the future selves who lived just on the other side of the lens. The camera is like a time portal linking the parallel worlds of here and there, now and then. Some vowed to become devoted children to their parents and grandparents, projecting a normative morality prescribed by society, while others envisioned an economically and emotionally independent adult. Several boys in Hong Kong expressed pessimism about the future in which they saw themselves involved in gangs or might be locked up again, 55 Tang, “Feeling Alive,” p. 10. Tang returned to Hong Kong to take up academic positions, first at the University of Hong Kong and currently at Lingnan University where Yau used to teach.

“We Are Alive”

247

Fig. 7.10 Recording a video letter for the future self. (Courtesy of Yau Ching)

whereas the five girls in Sapporo expressed, to varying degrees, a more hopeful and concrete vision, such as becoming a hairdresser, a chef, or a care worker happily looking after the elderly in their homes. Although the participants in three locations never physically met, they were put in touch with their peers in other East Asian cities through the relay workshops. The final film weaves their stories and videos into a transAsian collaborative documentary work that opens the windows to worlds outside the disciplinarian institutions as well as the repressive legal and moral strictures. The feeling of being alive and connected to others extends beyond the duration of the workshop, activating an alternative world even while still incarcerated. A few boys talked about the fear and shame they experienced when they were put in the maximum-security house and treated like a dog. The media workshop allowed them to process these traumatic memories and move forward. One said that he would purchase similar equipment upon release so that he could often chat with himself. Another felt the workshop solidified their friendship and community which he would sorely miss after leaving the institution. The experience has left an indelible mark on these “bad kids” who regained a measure of their human dignity by seeing themselves in a larger context and in a long view. They have met their future selves in their heroes—Bruce Lee, Stephen Chow, Morning Musume, and especially Yau Ching, someone they came to know intimately.

Coda Would the children be alright? Not f ive years but more than a decade have passed, and they are now in the peak of their youth. The workshop

248 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

experience has hopefully served them as a “vaccine” against despair in the societies that fail to ensure their well-being and flourishing. And how about Yau Ching herself? The films by Yau Ching discussed in this chapter were made one or two decades ago. Revisiting them, especially those directly or indirectly about Hong Kong, in light of the hksar’s current situation brings about a heavy-hearted feeling of nostalgia and melancholy. The heady days of “reverse immigration” back to Hong Kong around the turn of the century are now giving way to a new wave of exodus and self-imposed exile, or “reverse-reverse migration.” Yau Ching left her full-time teaching position at Lingnan University many years ago. The hostile environment for local independent cinema has forced her to discontinue filmmaking. She has nonetheless continued to write poetry and essays, while conducting research as an independent scholar in the field of film, media and gender studies. In 2021, she moved to Taiwan as a visiting scholar at Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute and the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at Academia Sinica. She then joined the faculty of the English Department at National Central University. After decades of wandering and searching across the world, returning to, and leaving Hong Kong, the “impossible home,” multiple times, Yau may have finally found a possible home base for her intellectual, artistic, and personal life, at least for now.

Bibliography Fan, Victor. “Too Intimate to Speak: Regional Cinemas and Literatures,” Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 15.2 (2018): 47–71. Feeley, Jennifer. “Heartburn on a Map Called Home: Yau Ching and the (Im)possibility of Hong Kong Poetry as Chinese Poetry.” Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 10.1 (2010): 134–59. Hsieh, Jen-chang 謝仁昌. “Xingbie ni lü: duochong rentong de aodesai butu – fang You Jing” (性別逆旅：多重認同的奧德賽步徒——訪游靜) [Gender Reverse Travel: The Odyssey of Multiple Identifications—An interview with Yau Ching], Dianying xinshang (電影欣賞) 22.3 (Spring 2004). Iwabuchi, Koichi. “Trans-Asia as Method: A Collaborative and Dialogic Project in a Globalized World.” In Jerone de Kloet et al. (eds.), Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practice. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019. 25–40. Khoo, Olivia. “The Ground Below Her Feet: Fault Lines of Nation and Sensation in Yau Ching’s Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14.1 (2008): 99–119.

“We Are Alive”

249

Knapp, Lucretia. “Something Borrowed, Something Blue.” Exhibition catalogue essay translated into Chinese for “Future in Past Tense: A Retrospective of Yau Ching’s Film and Video Art,” Guangdong Times Museum, China, 2014. Lau, Jenny Kwok Wah. “Besides Fists and Blood: Michael Hui and Cantonese Comedy.” In Poshek Fu and David Desser (eds.), The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 158–75. Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu-mei Shih (eds.). Minor Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Marchetti, Gina. “Interview with Yau Ching: Filming Women in Hong Kong’s Queerspace.” In Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Tan See-Kam, eds., Hong Kong Screenscapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Frontier. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 213–23. Ng, Eve. “The Work of Hong Kong Filmmaker Yau Ching,” June 9, 2013. https://evecng. wordpress.com/2013/06/09/the-work-of-hong-kong-filmmaker-yau-ching/. Rainer, Rainer, and Wen Hui. “Dance Only Exists When It Is Performed.” Beijing Inside-Out Museum, 2019. https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/280594/ yvonne-rainer-and-wen-huidance-only-exists-when-it-is-performed/. Rodrigue, Hector. “The Emergence of the Hong Kong New Wave.” In Esther Yau et al. (eds.), At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 29–70. Tang, Tse-Shang Denise. “Feeling Alive: Voices of Incarcerated Youth in We Are Alive.” Crime Media Culture 1.18 (2017): 153–70. Yau, Ching. http://yauching.com. Yau, Ching. Lingqi luzao (另起爐灶) [Building a New Stove—Ear Pain]. Diasporama. Hong Kong: Qingwen, 1996. Yau, Ching 游静. Haoyu: dianying juben ji pinglun (好郁：電影劇本及評論)[Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong: Script and Critical Essays] Hong Kong: Youth Literary Bookstore, 2002. Yau, Ching. Filming Margins: Tang Shu-shuen, a Forgotten Hong Kong Woman Director. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004. Yau, Ching. “Xing/bie guangying: xianggang dianying zhong de xing yu xingbie wenhua yanjiu” (性/别光影：香港電影中的性與性別文化研究) [Sexing Shadows: Gender and Sexuality in Hong Kong Cinema.] Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics’ Society, 2005. Yau, Ching. “Performing Contradictions, Performing Bad-Girlness in Japan.” In Kathy E. Ferguson, and Monique Mironesco (eds.), Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific: Method, Practice, Theory. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2008. 138–58.

250 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Yau, Ching. As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland and Hong Kong. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 2010. Yau, Ching. “Bad Kids: Leaving a Message for Their Future Selves.” Renlai November 2, 2010. http://www.erenlai.com/en/focus/2010-focus/free-memory-2010-tidf/ item/4094-bad-kids-leaving-a-message-for-their-future-selves.html. Yau, Ching. “Many and Two of (a) Kin(d): An Imaginary Dialogue with Hong Kong Filmmaker Yau Ching.” Chinese History and Society (Berliner China-Hefte) 40 (August): Berlin: Freie Universität, 2012. 127–37. Yau, Ching. “Q&A with Yau Ching,” Hong Kong Film Festival, New York, April 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ9jx842ek0. Yau, Ching and Siu Yi Ky. Bukeneng de jia (不可能的家) [The Impossible Home]. Hong Kong: Youth Literary Bookstore, 2000. Reprint by Hong Kong Dirty Press, 2017. Yau, Ching. 電影練 (On Film Studies and Yvonne Rainer), M+ Magazine, August 30, 2022. https://www.mplus.org.hk/tc/magazine/yau-ching-on-f ilmstudies-and-yvonne-rainer/?fbclid=IwAR2hmynuhrevio0nNQptdZJ8Il0Sms K3sRH-m-M8lqnktzkRlA8Noz6pXOo.

8

Outcries and Whispers Digital Political Mimesis and Radical Feminist Documentary “I still treat documentary as art, or a kind of art of thought.” —Ai Xiaoming “Art is ultimately useless. … But now, it intricately and actively enters–– and is compelled to enter––the terrain of power.” —Zeng Jinyan

Abstract Chapter 8 elaborates the political and aesthetic significance of leading feminist scholar, cultural critic, and activist Ai Xiaoming’s documentary films in tandem with those of Zeng Jinyan. It does so in relation to a digital political mimesis borne out of the widespread adoption of DV by media activists in China in the new century and its subsequent suppression and dispersion into internal and external exile. Keywords: activist video, digital political mimesis, animation, citizen documentation, state violence, exile

I came to know the work of Ai Xiaoming 艾晓明 (b. 1953) and Zeng Jinyan 曾金燕 (b. 1983) around 2007 in connection with my research and curatorial work on Chinese independent cinema. They were considered peripheral figures by the predominantly male indie circle invested largely in a mix of cinephilia arthouse and “avant-garde” contemporary art aesthetics. Ai is famous for being the first woman PhD after the Cultural Revolution and an outspoken feminist scholar and activist. She began to publish social commentaries in newspapers on the sars outbreak and later online about the Sun Zhigang 孙志刚 incident in 2003, regarded by activists and netizens as

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_ch08

252 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

“the start year of the citizen rights movement.”1 Ai’s activist work, including writing and filming with a strong feminist agenda, won her a Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom Award in 2010.2 A generation younger than Ai, Zeng became an activist, first in support of her civil rights activist ex-husband Hu Jia and then in her own right. She was named one of the 100 Pioneers and Heroes by Time Magazine in 2007 for her fearless blogging on environmental and human rights issues in China.3 In 2012 my path crossed with both again. On April 19, 2012, when southern China was already in full-fledged summer bathed in monsoon rain and humidity, I traveled by train from the New Territories in Hong Kong to Guangzhou. Ai invited me to give a talk and have a conversation with her and her graduate students at the Sun Yat-sen University where she was teaching. 4 This was our second meeting since her brief visit to New York four years earlier.5 In late August that same year, I met Zeng for the second time at the ill-fated Beijing Independent Film Festival in Songzhuang (see Introduction, Fig. 0.1),6 shortly before she departed for Hong Kong to pursue doctoral studies in social work and social administration at Hong Kong University. She seemed excited and hopeful, while uncertain about what the future had in store. 1 Sun, a college graduate turned migrant white-collar worker, died in police custody in Guangzhou. It was the first year of the leadership of Hu Jintao (as party secretary) and Wen Jiabao (as prime minister), which intermittently allowed some leeway to the media and public opinion in comparison to the preceding and following regimes. This era ended in 2012 when their term ended. See Ai, “The Citizen Camera.” 2 Ai was not allowed to travel abroad and was unable to attend the award ceremony. Another Chinese woman human rights activist, Guo Jianmei, received the same award in person in Paris. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Co6-KnkW4. 3 Under house arrest, Zeng was unaware that she was one of the three women protagonists in Forbidden Voices: How to Start a Revolution with a Laptop (dir. Barbara Miller, 2012), which included her video diaries she posted online. She was selected as the 2007 Sakharov Prize’s one of four semi-finalists by the European Parliament, and as one of the 150 Women Who Shake the World 2008 by The Daily Beast. 4 I was on a University Fellowship at Baptist University and lived in its faculty housing near Shatin, New Territories, not far from the mainland border in the spring semester of 2012. Ai began teaching at Sun Yat-sen University in 1994, building a gender and sexuality studies curriculum and China’s f irst research center on the subject since 1998. She retired in 2014, per the state mandatory retirement regulation for female professors at sixty (male professors at sixty-five). For an English version of my conversation with Ai during that visit, see Zhang, “From Academia to Xianchang.” 5 Ai came to screen her work at Columbia University in 2008. Her Taishi Village (2005) was shown at the 4th Reel China Biennial in October 2008. 6 I met Zeng there in 2011. I gave a talk on “Art, Affect and Activist Documentary” in which some of the initial research and ideas for this chapter were developed.

Outcries and Whispers

253

Zeng’s move to the south and her chosen field of study quickly brought Ai and Zeng closer. Previously, Zeng was primarily known as Hu Jia’s spouse. The couple made a documentary, Prisoners in the Freedom City 自由城的囚徒 (2007), during Hu’s house arrest, using footage from Hu’s home-video style shooting in conf inement. But their exhibition of the f ilm in Europe resulted in harsh treatment—conf iscation of passports and intensif ied invasive surveillance. During the most diff icult time, when Hu was in police custody and then sentenced to three and a half years in prison during 2008–2012, Zeng gave birth to their daughter and was continuously surveilled and harassed by the secret police. When she occasionally managed to leave the house, she visited Songzhuang, not too far from their home in Tongzhou, where she found a community among f ilmmakers and artists. Attending the f ilm festival screenings and using the resources of the Li Xianting Film Fund, she learned more about the critical connection between activism and documentary. For her dissertation, “The Genesis of Citizen Intelligentsia in Digital China: Ai Xiaoming’s Practice of Identity and Activism,” which she defended in 2017, Zeng focused on Ai’s work including her films, writings published on blogs and social media (Twitter, Kaidi bbs, Sina Weibo, WeChat), and digitally mediated body performance. She clearly saw Ai as a role model and ally in activism, and most importantly, was greatly inspired by her feminist vision and commitment after she got to know Ai intimately during her research and writing process. In the spring of 2013, Zeng went to Guangzhou and conducted extended interviews with Ai right before her retirement. While there Zeng witnessed Ai’s bold support of the activist Ye Haiyan 叶海燕 following Ye’s arrest due to her protest against a school principal’s child sexual abuse,7 by posting a nude photo of her upper body with a protest slogan, “Check in with me, leave Ye Haiyan alone,” written across her chest, while holding a pair of scissors. The incident and the heated online reaction inspired a chapter in Zeng’s dissertation.8 [Fig. 8.1] 7 The case ignited a nation-wide outcry. A middle-aged male primary school principal in Hainan province checked into a hotel room with his young female students. Ye, a well-known grassroots activist, along with several activist lawyers, went to Hainan and protested with a placard stating, “Check in with Me, Leave the Children Alone.” They were intimidated and harassed by police. See Wang Nanfu’s powerful award-winning documentary, Hooligan Sparrow: A Champion for Girls’ and Women’s Rights in China (2016), available on Kanopy. 8 It was first published as an article, by Zeng, “The Politics of Emotion in Grassroots Feminist Protests.” In the article, Zeng reveals that she helped to take the photo. Ai said to Zeng, “if it was not you, I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking nude photos,” stressing the trust between two fellow feminists.

254 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 8.1 Ai Xiaoming’s “naked” protest against child abuse, in solidarity with activist Ye Haiyan. (Courtesy of Ai Xiaoming and Zeng Jinyan)

In this final chapter, I trace an intergenerational genealogy of feminist civic rights media activism pivoted around Ai and Zeng’s activities and interaction in and outside of academia and the independent documentary circle between 2004 and 2020, from Guangzhou to Beijing to Hong Kong, and beyond. As of this writing, Ai, with her passport confiscated, is living in de facto internal exile in her hometown Wuhan, while still engaging in activism whenever possible, primarily through social media. Zeng, a single mother of a teenage daughter, recently relocated to Sweden as a postdoctoral fellow at Lund University, after living for several years in Hong Kong and two fellowship residences in the United States and Israel.9 Reviewing their documentary works together, I am struck by their shared passion for “committed documentary”10 infused with radical feminism, using their own body as a medium for resisting state-patriarchal violence. These bold works break new ground for broadening the intimate-public commons serving intersectional solidarity and incremental social change. 9 The Oak Fellowship at Colby College, Main, in 2017–2018, and a fellowship at the University of Haifa, Israel. 10 Waugh, Show Us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetic of the Committed Documentary.

Outcries and Whispers

255

They diverge from the mainstay of independent cinema, especially the so-called “direct cinema” using fly-on-the-wall, contemplative methods, and experiment with a “direct action” approach in the spirit of civil rights movements and other non-violent protests, as famously articulated and championed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In the following, I first outline an evolving landscape of Chinese activist documentaries and the ferment of digital political mimesis in the wake of DV. I will then focus on Ai’s work, especially Garden in Heaven 天堂花园 and Taishi Village 太石村, both completed around 2005, in the context of a larger citizen documentation movement in the first decade of the new century. Finally, I discuss Outcry and Whisper 喊叫与絮语 (2020), which Zeng co-directed with Wenhai 文海 (also known as Huang Wenhai) and the Irish animation filmmaker Trish McAdam. Their overlapping and divergent approaches within two bookend-like moments in China’s citizen rights social movement are outlined in relation to the dialogues between the two as fellow feminist scholars, filmmakers, and activists. They embody a form of committed feminist work—combining theory and practice through embodied presence and radical engagement. At the same time, their film practices are in one way or another akin to the approaches of other filmmakers discussed in preceding chapters, process-centered, affectionate, and collaborative in nature.

The Activist Turn and Digital Political Mimesis Social-politically oriented and activist filmmaking emerged as an increasingly visible and integral part of the independent documentary in China since the popularization of portable DV cameras, editing software, and internet-based social media in the first decade of the new century. Yet the thematic and formal attributes of these films as well as the manner of their production and dissemination are as varied and complex as contemporary Chinese social and political life that fuels the filmmakers’ sense of urgency, creative passion, and action. Many of these films seem to fit well with the international tradition of “committed documentary” by virtue of their singular sympathetic preoccupation with subaltern, marginal, and activist subjects and their struggle for survival and recognition within a contradiction-ridden social and political order that rests precariously on an unjust judicial and distributive system. Yet these films are also markedly different in terms of modes of production, distribution, spectatorial address, “authorship,” and more. In this section, I offer some observations on the variegated activist lens, focusing on the overlap and divergences in

256 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

the experimentation with DV documentary as a new expressive form and medium for political intervention and social transformation. I am interested in exploring the forms and meanings of a certain digital political mimesis as manifested in the independent documentary practice in general and the more radical activist strand, which Ai and Zeng have pushed further with a salient feminist agenda. As the film critic Wang Xiaolu incisively points out, the large bulk of independent documentaries from the formative phase in the 1990s to the more recent DV-enabled phase is driven by subjects or topics that lend themselves well to direct cinema-style shooting and the contemplative 静 观 long-take aesthetic. A few filmmakers ventured into more “subjective” or “constructive” modes of shooting and editing, resulting in more stylistic innovation and variation.11 After a brief period of the transitional “Hi8 movement” involving a handful of filmmakers including Ji Dan, Hu Jie, Feng Yan, and Zhao Liang,12 a much larger number of cross-generational independent filmmakers embraced the portable and affordable DV (and nonlinear editing on a personal computer) and its social and expressive possibilities. The early Hi8 and DV documentary works by Zhu Chuanming, Du Haibin, and Hu Jie dubbed the “ninja video warriors” 影像忍者 by film critic Cao Kai,13 exhibited a politically edgier quality, in large part enabled by small cameras that could be more imperceptibly inserted into the social margins and effectively edited with a minimal budget and crew size. Within a few years, the contingent of the video-wielding ninjas quickly grew and a series of f ilms with a palpable sense of social urgency and political advocacy appeared one after another, revealing the unjust and oppressed conditions of subaltern or disenfranchised groups (aids villages, earthquake victims, the unemployed, migrant workers including sex workers, homeless children) and repressed historical memories, and calling for rectification, redress, and intensified struggle for grassroots democracy. Prominent works include To Live Is Better Than to Die 好死不如赖活着 (Chen Weijun, 2003), In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul 寻找林昭的灵魂 (Hu Jie, 2004), Garden in Heaven (2005), Taishi Village (2005), Village Video Project 乡村影像计划 (Wu Wenguang et al., 2006–2007), Meishi Street 煤市街 (Ou Ning, 2006), Fengming: A Chinese Memoir 和风鸣 (Wang Bing, 2007), 11 Wang, “Jingguan dianying yu zhaohuan meixue” (Contemplative Cinema and the Aesthetic of Relations), Dianying Yishu (Film Art). 12 Wang, “Zhuti jian xian — 20 nian Zhongguo duli dianying de guancha” (The Gradual Revelation of Subjectivity—Observations on 20 Years of Development in the Independent Documentary) Dianying yishu (Film Art). 13 Cited in Voci, China on Video, p. 134.

Outcries and Whispers

257

The Epic of Central Plains 中原纪事 (Ai Xiaoming and Hu Jie, 2006), We are the…of Communism 我们是共产主义的省略号(Cui Zi’en, 2007), Though I Am Gone 我虽死去 (Hu Jie, 2007), Who Killed Our Children? 谁杀了我们的 孩子？(Pan Jianlin and Zhang Lei, 2008), Prisoners in Freedom City (2007), Buried 淹埋 (Wang Libo, 2009), Queer China, “Comrade” China 誌同志 (Cui Zi’en, 2009), Disturbing the Peace 老妈蹄花 (Ai Weiwei, 2009), Karamay 克 拉玛依 (Xu Xin, 2010), To Justify Bu Qinfu 还卜琴父以美丽 (Wang Yunlong, 2011), Juvenile Laborers Confined in Dabao 大堡小劳教 (Xie Yihui, 2013), Hooligan Sparrow 流氓燕 (Wang Nanfu, 2016), We the Workers 凶年之 畔 (Wenhai, 2017), and so on. Other films with less artistic and political clout have, to varying degrees, also entered the public arena, particularly online, and pose challenges to the status quo or mainstream media culture as well as to academic discourse on independent documentary and media citizenship. The use of the internet by activist filmmakers, notably Ai Weiwei and Ai Xiaoming, who also insert their own bodies and emotions into the documentary xianchang (see Chapters 3 and 4 for a discussion of the term), further takes the independent documentary into a broad sphere of civic and media activism. Ai Xiaoming emerged as a pioneering voice infusing strong feminist concerns into this new trend in independent documentary, converging with a nascent citizen rights social movement. Are existing definitions of “committed” and “radical” documentary in the West applicable in post-socialist China? A term often traced to revolutionary Soviet filmmakers Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein rather than liberal humanists John Grierson and Robert J. Flaherty, a “committed filmmaker” is “not content only to interpret the world but is also engaged in changing it.”14 In the wake of the critique of realism (bourgeois or socialist) and the cult of “political modernism” of the 1970s, Thomas Waugh and other advocates of activist cinema were hardly naive about how one might go about deploying the ideologically charged cinematic medium for “committed” purposes. He stresses that in addition to the “revolutionary principle” and “activist stance,” the “subject-centered” orientation or ideal is vital to committed filmmaking. The latter is defined “not by finding and repeating a ‘correct’ line… but rooting them, working within actively ongoing political struggles; by making films… not only about people engaged in these struggles but also with and by them as well…”15 Writing in the Cold War context of the early 1980s, Waugh admits, however, that little has been done to account for the “aesthetics of political documentary,” the difficulty of which is not 14 Waugh, Show Us Life, p. xiv. 15 Ibid., emphasis in the original.

258 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

unrelated to the fact that “[it] refuses to meet any of the expectations of bourgeois aesthetics, modernist or otherwise.” Instead of meeting the criteria of durability, abstraction, ambiguity, individualism, uniqueness, formal complexity, deconstructed or redistributed signifiers, novelty, and so on, all in a packageable format, political documentaries provide us with disposability, ephemerality, topicality, directness, immediacy, instrumentality, didacticism, collective or anonymous authorship, unconventional formats, nonavailability, and ultimately nonevaluability.16

These observations are strikingly relevant for describing the politically engaged Chinese documentary, even though world order and global history have changed radically in the last three decades. Waugh and other contributors to the above-cited volume were armed with the passionate leftism of the “First World,” and engaged mostly with a “Third World” in Latin America at the time. A post-Mao China, emerging from the shadow of the Cultural Revolution and poised to embrace a market economy, is conspicuously missing, due in large part to the absence of Chinese film and media studies in Western academia at the time.17 In terms of documentary production itself, this absence is hardly surprising given that “political documentary” had long been reified into a totalitarian state apparatus for the expressive purposes of propaganda and indoctrination in the form of newsreel, policy, and educational film. An independent documentary movement began to sprout in the crevices of a state television system only when video systematically replaced film stock in production and when the era of reform entered its second decade following the suppression of the Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989. The fervent “Third World” or anticapitalist and anti-imperialist rhetoric does not sit well with the historical conditions of post-Mao China, now the world’s second-largest economy, although the aesthetic strategies that Waugh identif ies in “committed documentary” find resonances in socially engaged Chinese documentary work. This seemingly anachronistic reverberation across East and West, the Cold War and post-Cold War divide could be illuminated by Jane Gaines’s 16 Ibid., p. xxii. 17 Other than Jay Leyda’s pioneering yet error-ridden Dianying/Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and Film Audiences in China, Chinese cinema studies outside of China began to emerge in the mid-1980s, in the wake of the Fifth Generation cinema’s entrance into international festivals and its winning of awards and acclaims.

Outcries and Whispers

259

observations on the nature and function of radical documentary in response to Jacques Derrida’s reflections on the “end of communism” in his 1994 book, Specters of Marx. In her article “Documentary Radicality,” Gaines takes up Derrida’s question on the meaning or continued relevance of “radicaliz[ing]” in an epoch proclaimed as the “end of Marxism,” yet one that “still [sees] no end of world suffering.” It is an ambitious move to rescue a form of historically embedded radical “realism” from the academic “critique of realism” in vogue since the 1970s.18 Gaines sees Derrida’s passionate call “not to neglect” the exponentially multiplied sites of suffering in the contemporary world as a call to reassess the classical Marxist theory of social transformation, or rather the relationship between “the evidence of material conditions and the aspiration to transform the world.”19 Excavating its etymological meaning as radix or “rootedness, as in its botanical or mathematical usage”,20 Gaines develops the concept of “Marxist indexicality” by returning to the early twentieth century and still and motion photography’s engagement with capitalist labor relations. She revisits the hand-painted magic lantern slides of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911 and their effective—and “melodramatic”—use in the radicalization of New York’s women’s workforce. She writes, “[T]he magic lantern show series elongates the family narrative aftermath of the Triangle Fire, enlarging the impact on the immigrant community.” Thus, “[s]ites of suffering rendered as sights of suffering are made all the more poignant through a paradoxical supplement to their apparent microscopic factuality.”21 Such an affective aesthetic “touched up” by “colorful” fiction and sentiment, in contrast to a “sober” or more “trust-worthy” photorealism, illustrates what she calls the documentary “pathos of facts,” which Gaines developed after Eisenstein’s concept of “political pathos” in an earlier article, “Political Mimesis.”22 “The pathos of facts” appeals to and galvanizes the spectators’ sensuous perceptions of realities imaged and viewed for grasping a social “causality” through photographic indexicality, and thereby mobilizes their political consciousness and the desire for change. Gaines elaborates this notion further in “Documentary Radicality”: 18 Gaines, “Documentary Radicality,” p. 6. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., p. 9. 22 In Gaines, “Political Mimesis,” p. 92, the “pathos of facts” is plainly spelled out: “this happened; people died for this cause; others are suffering; many took to the streets; this innocent victim can be saved if only something is done.”

260 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Here, we may think of the “pathos of fact” as pedagogical, and it is insofar as radicality is a pedagogy that may be aligned with productive overstatement, that is, with melodrama. The supreme political value of melodramatic hyperbole may be the boost it gives the portrayal of the need for swift change and the possibility of and the hope for an awe-inspiring reversal.23

What happens to “Marxist indexicality” and “political mimesis” in the digital era? Philip Rosen updates the question in the digital era by developing the pair of terms “digital indexicality” and “digital mimicry,” underscoring the hybrid nature of digital temporality and its “radical historicity.”24 Bridging the debate on Chinese post-socialism and Rosen’s theorization of “digital mimesis,” I used elsewhere Rosen’s critique of digital utopia for the sensemaking of the “profusion of hybrid images that stockpile the indexical and the digital.” These experimental images, I argued, are heavily “invested in time and body,”25 carrying the impulse to change or “transfigure” the present through a range of expressive tools and strategies across the analog and digital—still, moving, and composite images. I find it productive to combine Gaines’s and Rosen’s insights, out of different discursive contexts but related by their shared commitment to “radical historicity” of old and new media, to advance an experimental conceptual frame, digital political mimesis, with regard to the political and activist DV works produced in post-Mao, neo-authoritarian China and circulated locally, transnationally, and virtually. For Gaines, a large number of documentaries worldwide, which in one way or another “melodramatically” expose unjust social and material conditions and agitated political situations, would qualify for “documentary radicality.” I propose that the new breed of Chinese “personal-political” DV documentary made outside the state and mainstream commercial media systems (the two increasingly overlap) is inclined to generate the dynamism of such radicality precisely through its more direct bodily and affective involvement in the grassroots (caogen 草根) scenes of happenings—to echo her emphatic etymological (botanic) use of the term “radicality.” The spectrum of activist tendencies and practices in these videos overlaps with what Ching Kwan Lee and You-tien Hsing describe as a “broad array of modes of activism” and a “spectrum of politics” that has emerged since 23 Gaines, “Documentary Radicality,” p. 18. 24 Rosen, Change Mummified, pp. 307–09. 25 Zhang, “Transfiguring the Post-socialist City,” pp. 100–01.

Outcries and Whispers

261

the beginning of economic reforms in the 1980s and intensified after the Chinese government fully adopted an aggressive model of market economy in the mid-1990s.26 Faced with the “fragmented, dispersed, and fluid modes of state-society relations that have dominated the reform era,” Lee and Hsing outline a typology of activism—politics of redistribution, recognition, and representation, and the attendant forms of actions and discourses, such as “legal mobilization, civic activism, and symbolic forms of subversion.”27 They name cultural producers including journalists, filmmakers, and artists as “activists” in carrying out the “symbolic contestations.” Many of the DV documentaries that I discuss in this chapter, Ai’s and Zeng’s works particularly, complicate and enrich this typology not so much by symbolically representing social activism, but by often directly and contingently arising from an affinity with activist experiences. In some instances, the distance between art (representation) and activism is so radically reduced that the filmmaker becomes the activist or vice versa, as the two bodies overlap in the act of political mimesis. DV became an effective means of networking, archiving, and communitybuilding for burgeoning queer activism as well, which can be traced back to the first Beijing Queer Film Festival in 2001.28 Cui Zi’en 崔子恩, novelist, film critic, co-founder of the festival, and a professor at Beijing Film Academy (“relieved” of teaching duties and now living in the United States) is a pioneer of this subculture and activist movement. Cui’s DV works have consistently traversed the fiction and non-fiction border, as exemplified by his first “documentary,” Night Scene (2004).29 Lesbian artist Shi Tou 石 头 also began to make documentaries around 2004. Dyke March (2004) is seen as a turning point in the “coming out” of Chinese lesbian identity via a transnational route, in this case, a gay parade in the United States.30 This queer activist-oriented filmmaking trend eventually blossomed fully in the collective project Queer China, “Comrade” China (2008), which archives, in a mosaic and testimonial style, a critical and polyphonic history of queer 26 Lee and You-tien Hsing, “Introduction: Social Activism in China: Agency and Possibility,” pp. 2–3 (emphasis in the original). 27 Ibid., p. 2. 28 Cui was an executive producer of Our Story (Women de gushi, Yang Yang 2013), about the tortuous history of the Beijing Queer Film Festival. For an up-to-date study of feminist and queer media activism, see Tan, Digital Masquerade. 29 See Paola Voci’s reading of Cui’s “hybridized docu-drama with the flavor of a film essay” in her “Blowup Beijing: The City as Twilight Zone.” 30 On Shi Tou’s films and art, see Chao, “Coming Out of the Box, Marching as Dykes”; and Qi Wang, “Embodied Visions: Chinese Queer Experimental Documentaries by Shi Tou and Cui Zi’en.”

262 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

activism.31 Cui Zi’en acted as the chief director of the project as a group portrait and collective history.

Citizen Documentation and “Ninja Video Warriors” A markedly different activist DV documentary emerged with the work of Ai Xiaoming and Hu Jie in southern China, institutionally and aesthetically quite distant from the avant-garde cultural scene in Beijing. Their collaborative works, including Garden in Haven, Taishi Village, and The Epic of Central Plains, shocked the indie film scene with their extremely “sensitive” subject matter and unflinching activist style. When a friend first introduced Taishi Village to me, they were apologetic about its lack of formal rigor. My first viewing of the film left me very moved but also somewhat puzzled. Indeed, what kind of aesthetic criteria can we bring to bear on this type of work that seems to recharge the concept and practice of xianchang with raw energy and political commitment? The direct cinema or cinéma vérité styles that had been borrowed and read into the new documentary do not apply to them easily, though the films are definitely direct in their manner of inserting the filmmaker into the action being filmed, fearlessly trying to get the truth (zhenshi 真实) out loud and clear in most difficult circumstances. Zeng aptly adopts Foucault’s genealogical inquiry of parrhēsia to illustrate Ai and other “citizen intelligentsia’s”—in distinction to the elite, masculine Chinese intellectual tradition—care and risk-taking in seeking and telling truth on behalf of the vulnerable or voiceless fellow citizens against adverse situations and consequences, including threats of imprisonment and other harm.32 Neither auteur-conscious nor deliberately cultivating an intellectual agenda with a reinvented “going to the people” ethos,33 Ai Xiaoming and Hu Jie belong to the more militant “ninja video warriors” who espouse a radical stance in the independent documentary circle. They mostly made 31 See Robinson, “To Whom Do Our Bodies Belong?” 32 Zeng Jinyan, “Visualizing Truth-telling in Ai Xiaoming’s Documentary Activism,” p. 186. The article focuses on the production and screening of Ai’s epic-length film Jiabiangou Elegy: Life and Death of the Rightists (2017) and her 2008 Sichuan earthquake series, but the argument pertains to Ai’s work as a whole. 33 “Going to the people” 到民间去 refers back to the intellectual and artistic movement in the early twentieth century that tried to reconcile the gap between the high-brow Enlightenment and vernacular movement’s agenda of creating a modern standard national language, on one hand, and the everyday world of popular and oral culture on the other. The impulse resulted in projects to collect folk songs and archive rural vernacular culture, among other things. For its impact on cinema, see Chapter 5 in my book (2005) Amorous History of the Silver Screen.

Outcries and Whispers

263

films individually, with Hu Jie’s own works more invested in repressed historical memory and an exposé approach, in contrast to Ai’s direct take on highly controversial contemporary events. However, they share a strong commitment to activist causes using DV and related platforms for rewriting history and intervening in the present. They are also substantially older and intellectually more mature than the majority of the DV generation, having experienced the Cultural Revolution firsthand and worked inside the “system” (tizhi 体制) before embarking on independent filmmaking. Ai, a Communist Party member and a professor of literature, in particular, openly advocates social and political activism and sees her documentary work as “a form of participatory action.”34 She signed Charter 08, initiated by the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize awardee Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) and other Chinese intellectuals and writers, who were joined by hundreds of ordinary people.35 Her activism outside the campus and online has led to police harassment, detention, and now an indefinite ban on foreign travel as well as controlled domestic travel. Hu, a veteran independent filmmaker, has a more “professional” background in art and media work as a painter and a photojournalist for the Xinhua News Agency. While employed, he made several films on the side, including one on Yuanmingyuan bohemian artists in Beijing in the 1990s. His career as a documentary filmmaker took a sharp turn when he was forced to resign from his job because of his research on Looking for Lin Zhao, about the eponymous young woman who was tortured and died in prison for her audacious writings, some in her own blood, in which she criticized Mao and the Cultural Revolution. It was a subject deemed far more off-limits than the “observational” expositions of contemporary social problems by his peers.36 Unemployed and based in his hometown Nanjing, he went completely independent and began a series of documentary projects tapping into taboo subjects in Chinese communist historiography. Like 34 See Ai, “My Work Constitutes a Form of Participatory Action,” pp. 71–77; and Zhang and Ai, “Zhang Zhen duihua Ai Xiaoming: Cong xueyuan dao xianchang — nüxing zhuyi, jilu meixue, shehui yundong” (Dialogue between Zhang Zhen and Ai Xiaoming: From Academia to Xianchang-Feminism, Documentary Aesthetic, Social Movement). Dianying zuozhe (Film auteur), pp. 156–80. 35 The Charter 08 manifesto was published online on the sixtieth anniversary of the UN Human Rights Declaration, December 10, 2008, and signed by over 350 Chinese artists, activists, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens. For the full text in English, visit http://www .charter08.eu/2.html. 36 My conversation with Hu Jie during the 4th Reel China Biennial at New York University, October 2008; see also Shen Rui’s interview with him, “To Remember History: Hu Jie Talks about His Documentaries.” Senses of Cinema 35, http://sensesofcinema.com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/ author/shen-rui/.

264 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Wu Wenguang’s change after encountering Yang Lina’s footage of Old Men (Chapter 3), Hu admits that meeting Ai also changed his filmmaking. He says, “I used to be like a fly on the wall, making films of the subjects’ life in an unperturbed manner. Now I also march toward the front stage while recording, facilitating, and intervening in the processes of public events.”37 Their collaboration began in 2003, when Ai invited Hu to show his Looking for Lin Zhao and other films in a series called “Women and Marginalized Groups” at Sun Yat-sen University.38 Touched and impressed by Hu’s work, she asked him to help film the first Chinese adaptation of Vagina Monologues, which she spearheaded.39 Their encounter solidified her resolve to take up DV documentary as an effective form for social and political advocacy as a feminist activist and public intellectual. The result was a cluster of films in the next six years. Hu assisted her to make her first film, White Ribbon 白丝带 (2004), about the mysterious death of a female student following a date. Garden in Heaven’s premise is similar, but the impact of the case and the film went far beyond anyone’s expectation. It escalated from local police’s cruel indifference to a date rape victim and her family, to nationwide public outcry over broader questions of women’s rights and China’s flawed judicial system with systemic gender discrimination. At the same time, as the case stalled and evolved over three years, the two made Taishi Village about the villagers’ heroic battle with corrupt officials and police forces over electoral and land property rights, and The Epic of Central Plains (2006), about aids victims in the wake of the notorious, government-endorsed plasma industry in Henan province. In the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, they worked together again on Citizens’ Investigation (2009), part of Ai’s multi-installment project about the victims of the “tofu dregs” school buildings in the earthquake and the people who try to unearth the truth, especially by compiling a list of the dead children’s names and identities. 40 37 Xu, “Yuanzi minjian de gongmin yingxiang” (Citizen images from the unofficial realm). 38 Several of Lin’s friends were invited to the screening of Looking for Lin Zhao. The audience was in shock and awe after the lights went up. They cried and embraced Hu, thanking him for the bold film and offered to be interviewed. Witnessing this, Ai came to realize the power of documentary. See Wenhai, Fangzhu de ningshi — jianzheng Zhongguo duli jilupian (The Exilic Gaze—Bearing witness to Chinese independent documentary), pp. 191–92. Wenhai also credits Huang Weikai’s Floating (2003) about the violent treatment of migrants without a so-called “temporary resident permit” in Guangzhou, along with the notorious case of Sun Zhigang’s death under police custody, as other sources of inspiration for Ai to take up filming. 39 This resulted in the documentary, The Vagina Monologues: Stories from China (2005). 40 They include Our Children (2009), Citizens’ Investigation (2009), River of Forgetting (2009), Enemy of the State (2009), and Why Are the Flowers So Red? (2010) See Zeng, “Visualizing Truth-telling in

Outcries and Whispers

265

To give a full account of Ai’s prolif ic cross-platform work would be impossible here (and indeed Zeng’s dissertation is a critical resource). For identifying an activist aesthetic stemming from direct action and affective affinity in the forging of political digital mimesis, I will focus on Garden in Heaven and Taishi Village in parallel, illustrating recurring motifs and strategies that would continue in her subsequent films. Ai’s engaged feminist stance was made clear at the start of filming Garden in Heaven. The film title is taken from the website that friends created to rally support for Huang Jing 黄静, a young kindergarten teacher in Xiangtan, Hunan province, who was found dead, her naked body badly bruised, in bed after spending the night with her boyfriend. 41 When a trial was finally scheduled three years later, the court found the man not guilty of rape and manslaughter, on account of their “love” relationship and Huang’s fuzzily defined “existing” pathological condition, based on male-chauvinist views and fraudulent forensic investigation. The local police simply refused to open an investigation. Ai quickly joined the netizens’ rallying support of Huang’s family, especially her mother Huang Shuhua’s persistent struggle in obtaining a trial with further investigation, recalling Who Killed Vincent Chin? (Christine Choi and Rene Tajima-Peña, 1987). [Fig. 8.2] It turned out to be a multi-year long march with the filming becoming an integral driving force for a nationwide social movement involving lawyers, legal scholars, forensic and medical experts, feminist activists, sympathizing media professionals, and representatives of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, volunteers, other families or survivors suffering from similar violence and injustice. In the end, when the case moved to the region’s intermediary court, the appeal was rejected. However, public outcry and activist struggles resulted in a change of the law regarding the integrity of the forensic investigation, liberating it from the exclusive control of the police. The society has learned important lessons on the challenges in legal reform and advancement in civil rights. Ai Xiaoming’s Documentary Activism.” For a thoughtful analysis of Our Children, especially the use of music and poetry in tandem with photographs and other citizen-generated images, see Jin, “Sound, Image, Rhetorical Strategy and Traumatic Memory in Ai Xiaoming’s Our Children,” pp. 209–22. 41 Ai first learned about the Huang case online when netizens posted responses to her article on Sun Zhigang, calling her attention to Huang Jing’s story. Completed in 2007, the original film was divided into three parts, using an investigative reportage format. Ai and Hu later added two additional shorts, one on the verdict and events around it, and another on a forum discussion on the verdict and the case’s significance in general, as special features. The final ensemble under the title, Garden of Heaven: Fighting for Women’s Rights in China, with fully revised English subtitles, was distributed by the former Chinese University of Hong Kong’s China Information and Research Center in 2017. The Center had the most comprehensive collection of Chinese independent films until it was abruptly shut down in early 2021.

266 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 8.2 Huang Shuhua seeks justice for her daughter. (Courtesy of Ai Xiaoming)

The making of Garden of Heaven signaled the conscious insertion of a feminist agenda in independent documentary. After examining the information on the website that all pointed to “date rape,” a concept nonexistent in the Chinese legal and social lexicon back then, 42 Ai posted an article boldly titled “Stop Phallus Worshipping,” debunking the defense of the suspect on account of seeming lack of penetration, despite the mounting evidence of physical and psychological violence. To help push for new forensic examinations and a prosecution, Ai decided to take up the camera and make a documentary—to record and investigate gender and sexual politics, generate public debate on this case, and call for changes in culture and the judicial system. Ai wanted to make a film that could reach a wide public like Looking for Lin Zhao. But more importantly, she “also felt it was time for a Chinese feminist documentary film tradition to begin.”43 In the special dvd feature “Discussion” (about the verdict and the film), Ai gives a sharp analysis of the overwhelming challenges the investigation and prosecution faced, and the systemic gender bias, including a male-centered view on sex and sexual violence. She pointedly asks, “[I]s the truth also a kind of cultural construct?” The preview screening at the forum aroused strong reactions 42 Zhao, Tamen de zhengtu — zhiji, yuhui yu chongzhuang, Zhongguo nüxing de gongmin juexing zhi lu (Their journeys—direct attack, detour and collision, Chinese women’s road to civil awakening), p. 51. 43 Ai, “Citizen Camera.”

Outcries and Whispers

267

Figs. 8.3–4 “It’s time to create feminist documentary films in China.”

and opened many questions along this line. Ai declares that “it is time to create feminist documentary films in China,” debunking the complacent remarks of a cctv (China Central Television) producer interviewed by Ai and Hu when they went with Huang Shuhua to petition government agencies and seek legal, medical, and other support in Beijing. [Figs. 8.3–4] Early in the filming, Ai began to explore ways of integrating feminist perspectives that she had been developing in her scholarly work as well during the performance and filming of Vagina Monologues. Having never touched a film camera before, she simply skipped the manual and started by trial and error. The filming shows a strong affinity, and growing solidarity, between Ai and Huang, who was an educator as well. The latter taught political and ethical education in public schools and was shocked to see how police and other public institutions, blinded by bias and self-interest, refused to see facts and pursue truth. Ai quickly decided that the film would center on the mother’s fight for justice on her daughter’s behalf. After an initial interview with the defendant’s family, 44 Hu became unsure about the project, as he was led by them to think it was not rape. A confused and agitated Hu told Ai that he was unable to continue. Ai was shocked by this sudden change and wandered the street aimlessly until she saw a boisterous street performance of folk opera in a dialect she could not understand, but the music and the scene made her realize what she was after. She started filming the performance right way. 45 In another account, she relates: One day, after Hu and I finished an interview at a hospital with one of the doctors who had examined Huang Jing’s body, we walked out into 44 Ai asked Hu to go to the family alone first out of discretion, so that the family would be more willing to talk. 45 Zhao, Tamen de zhengtu, pp. 52–53.

268 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

the street. There, some street singers were performing a folk opera, and as I started to film them, I suddenly felt a connection between this scene and the Huang Jing case—the same voice had been passed on since time immemorial, stories going from mouth to mouth, past to present—and wanted to record the moment, to express this feeling. 46

Ai would use folk music again in her subsequent films. But here, the epiphany comes from the vernacular performance of operatic storytelling about innocence wronged, family trauma, suffering from injustice, and retribution in a bustling modernizing city. This xianchang sets a wide historical stage on which the melodrama of Huang Jing’s case has played out. Hu later returned to help her but insisted on not filming as the principal cameraperson. Ai took over the role and delegated Hu to be a “character” as an interviewer, though he was eventually credited as co-director and co-editor. From that point on, Ai continued this shooting method, interweaving the story of the principal characters and interviews with the ambient sights and sounds in everyday life in Xiangtan, as well as other cities they traveled to. In Beijing, Ai listened to the grievances of many petitioners like Huang who went there to appeal to higher levels of authorities and filmed their resilience despite incredible obstacles. Some of them, having lost everything back at home, had been living in abject conditions on the city periphery for a long time, becoming members of the so-called “fifty-sixth ethnical minority in China. 47 In contrast to their despair and pain, her filming of another kind of contemporary popular street performance, the so-called plaza dance (mentioned also in Chapter 3) favored by the urban middle class and retirees, captures a certain complacency and indifference toward social unevenness and injustice among the mainstream social group. One anonymous well-dressed and well-coiffed middle-aged woman wearing rubber gloves, while dancing stiffly and expressionlessly to revolutionary tunes, appears twice later in the film. These images are intercut with the exhausted Huang after years of appeals and journeying, generating a 46 Ai, “The Citizen Camera.” This account does not entirely overlap with the one in Zhao’s book. There might be a mixing of recalled events preceding the f ilming of the performance after many years. 47 There are fifty-five officially recognized ethnic minorities such as Tibetans, Mongolians, Yi, and Naxi, while there are many ethnic groups still striving for the recognition of cultural autonomy and attendant legal and economic rights. Important independent documentaries on the subject include Ma Li’s Born in Beijing (2012) and Zhao Liang’s Petition (2009). Both took nearly a decade to film and complete. Ai’s filming of the petitioners in Beijing was among the first records of this large subaltern demographic in China.

Outcries and Whispers

269

wordless poignant statement. These “wide shots” of a post-socialist China with startling socio-economic differences and cultural dissonance offer broader perspectives on the legal drama of the Huang family. In addition to juxtaposing the high and low, the powerful and the vulnerable, the film’s montage editing also frequently uses superimposition to demonstrate the complexity and contradiction behind the case. Most notably, the iconic image of a fear-inspiring large unicorn sculpture guarding the regional court gate, with its long straight horn pointing to the sky. A legendary chimerical creature, the Chinese unicorn qilin 麒麟, traditionally associated with the arrival or passing of a benevolent ruler, is popularly seen as a symbol of luck and prosperity. But this menacing sculpture with a phallic horn in front of the court that failed to show sympathy and legal support for Huang’s family is hardly a mascot for benevolence on behalf of the victims. Multiple shots of the sculpture from different angles accentuate its symbiosis with abusive official power and are superimposed on scenes of workers’ rallying cry on withheld wages, as well as an old video of Huang Jing’s dance performance at the first art festival of the school where she worked and was found dead. [Fig. 8.5–8] The unicorn at the court gate strikingly recalls the lion sculptures at the bank entrance on the Bund of Shanghai that appeared ubiquitously in “left-wing” melodrama films focused on the class gap and women’s suffering in the 1930s, notably in Street Angel 马路天使(1937). The two seemingly unrelated events, like other sideway glances extending into Chinese history and society, allow the audience to consider struggles for women’s rights and worker’s rights, and intimate sexual politics and labor activism as interrelated building blocks in public and civic participation for systemic legal reform and social change. The last superimposition ends in the fading of the erected unicorn and the “resurrection” of Huang Jing through archival footage, performing a folk dance to melodious music in the school courtyard, as though Huang Shuhua and the documentary’s arduous journey of seeking truth and justice have finally called back her soul, momentarily overcoming the deep-seated monstrous forces, even though a court hearing and verdict were still not quite within reach. In Ai’s and fellow activists’ documentaries, the mobilization of “pathos of facts” (such as showing forensic photos of Huang Jing’s violated body, and villagers’ wounds and children crying over their arrested parents in Taishi Village) is dialectically intertwined with spectacular action (e.g., protests, mourning rituals, performances, and sometimes physical confrontation) and rhetorical speech (or writing). Both include the filmmaker’s involvement in seeking rights and justice. More subdued observational and formally conscious documentaries rarely deploy such forms of direct action and

270 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Figs. 8.5–8 “Against Phallic worship”: dialectic montage and superimposition editing calling for truth and justice.

“direct speech,” instead using a detached, restrained filming and editing style. Taishi Village documents the villagers’ heroic protest in a village in Guangdong province with the aim to impeach the village leader for illegal land seizure and embezzlement and the ensuing arrests and harassment by the police sent by the authorities. [Fig. 8.9] Here again, Ai does not hide herself from the subject she films, but rather stands side by side with the victims of state violence, using voice-over, asking questions, making comments, and increasingly merging herself and her camera into the agitating scenes of conflicts and protests. The manner of such filming in part resembles that of an embedded war journalist, 48 except here Ai takes a stance wielding her camera as both a shield and a spear—like a foot soldier among the radicalized citizens fighting with bare fists, slogans, and songs. Yet her films are not just on-scene “reporting,” but are innovative constructs that activate 48 Ai has been called a “frontline citizen’s reporter” by prominent cultural critics such as Cui Weiping. Ai also says that China needs many frontline reporters, given the country’s particular conditions today.

Outcries and Whispers

271

Fig. 8.9 Elder women guarding the evidence in the village office. (Photo by Huang Haitao, courtesy of Ai Xiaoming)

and synthesize multiple voices under an unambiguous activist agenda. Her documentary tale of a dispute over electoral rights in a village escalating into an explosive national event is quite different from the omnibus Village Video Project consisting of ten short (ten-minute) episodes “produced and curated” by Wu Wenguang. The latter deals with village elections (as mandated by the funding bodies) in a microscopic but inevitably disjointed manner, resulting in an anthology of video diaries on everyday life in postsocialist rural China. 49 Taishi Village addresses grassroots democracy with a great sense of urgency and political passion. The protests and violent clashes with the police in Taishi village were sensational news in various Chinese and Western media. The political mimetic power generated by activist documentary, Ai contends, exceeds conventional media—official or otherwise: You can gain an understanding of its contributing factors through a great deal of written material and news reportage, but what’s important is to see—to see the images of the villagers, their emotional state. Directly facing the range of human emotions, it compels us to try to understand

49 See Johnson, “A Scene beyond Our Line of Sight.”

272 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

the inner life of the people behind the incident, to understand their experience and feelings.50 (Emphasis added.)

The “ninja video warrior” and her small crew of activist lawyers f ind themselves literally entering a war zone of sorts, quickly turning a project of documentation into “participatory action.” While acting as her own camerawoman, Ai’s presence is never absent from the mimetic space on- and off-screen. Her activist stance and voice are immediately communicated to the villagers and the viewers through her questions and injunctions, as well as the positions and movement of her camera, insistently indicating, “I’m on your side.” The film has an agitating pulse as Ai and the legal activists follow and join the villagers’ struggles and un-expected twists and turns in the process. Alternating between close shots and overhead long shots, Ai captures the physical intensity, pain, and heroism of the protesting villagers (many are elders and women), as well as the overwhelming high-tech force of state violence. Amid a dangerous confrontation, Ai shouts at the police, “No violence! Stop it!” while trying to carry on filming even though all she could capture are wrangled limbs and waving fists and batons. [Fig. 8.10] Her own position and body are as vulnerable and defiant as the villagers’. The chaotic and shaky framing vividly transmits, via an “awe-inspiring” (Gaines) spectacle pressing for swift change, radical mimesis shaped by the blurring of the subject-object boundary, and an embodied solidarity. Here the “blurred boundaries” between subject and object, between representation and participation, also illustrate Stella Bruzzi’s negotiation with Bill Nichols’s“ wariness” of the “performative mode” (for “drawing attention to itself”) in documentary.51 Through her documentary practice, Ai actively seeks public attention, not for herself, but for the activist subject as a collective in the making, in the face of great danger. The dialect of action and affect ambles compellingly throughout the film. Whenever possible, Ai takes care to yield her camera to the villagers’ emotional state behind the front line. She again uses folk melodies from the region and lyrical imageries of the village’s lush natural environment to accentuate the villagers’ feelings and contrast them with the harshness and even terror in their everyday reality. Shortly after the confrontation with the police and the massive arrests that followed, Ai and the activist lawyers return to the village and try to collect further evidence and offer legal aid to the villagers. They encounter two women (Jiao and Xing) resting on the 50 Ai, “The Citizen Camera,” p. 73. 51 Bruzzi, New Documentary: A Critical Introduction, p. 154.

Outcries and Whispers

273

Fig. 8.10 “I’m on your side”: Ai Xiaoming filming Three Days in Wukan Village. (Photo by Deng Chuanbin, courtesy of Ai Xiaoming)

roadside, just after being released from a police detention center and stop to talk to them. The women first tell them in a matter-of-fact manner where they have just come from and how they were badly harassed by police. As the conversation flows and a trusting rapport is established, they become increasingly emotional and tearful, appealing to Ai and her camera to “get more journalists and scholars” to help them. Ai’s camera lingers on their faces and the moon cakes on the ground. It is the Chinese mid-autumn Moon Festival, and the neighbors have offered cakes to the traumatized, hungry women, as both food and sympathy. The juxtaposition of their tearful faces and the mooncakes amplifies the magnitude of their suffering and the dire need for care and redress. For the Chinese, there is nothing sadder than not spending the festival celebrating the harvest and earthly happiness with loved ones at home. However, the roadside “reunion” of the villagers and the activists offers an unusual occasion for affirming their shared belief and destiny. These moments suffused with empathy through intimate contact propel the filmmaker to take part in her subjects’ lives and bear not just witness but also certain ethical and practical responsibilities. Ai’s more transparent activist position literally places her and her camera in the same physical danger that has befallen her subjects. Toward the end of Taishi Village, Ai and her friends, beaten and terrorized, narrowly escape from the “war

274 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

zone.” A taxi miraculously comes to their rescue, but as it leaves the village its windows are smashed by a mob of menacing men with undisclosed identity. This assault is directed at Ai and her friends’ bodies as well as the camera as an activist prosthetic. As the glass fractures and falls and filming becomes mortally dangerous, the panic-stricken voices of the activists provide the most unusual soundtrack for the blackout screen—like a silent film’s melodramatic “text of muteness” (Brooks)—with intertitles describing and giving evidence of unlawful state persecution of innocent citizens. In such scenarios where representation is nearly impossible, we witness the overlap and mutual reinforcement of “legal mobilization, civic activism, and symbolic forms of subversion” in activist documentaries. In the final title card (or “afterword”), Ai states that after seeing many cameras busy at work in Taishi Village, “I decided that the villagers deserve a camera, too.” Ai’s radical practice vividly illustrates “video activism” def ined by Thomas Harding: “In the hands of a video activist, a camcorder becomes a powerful political instrument that can deter police violence. An edit suite becomes a means for setting a political agenda. A video projector becomes a mechanism for generating mass awareness.”52 Rather than labeling and marketing her filmmaking as “independent cinema” or part of the New Documentary Movement, Ai has called her documentaries “a part of China’s fledgling rights defense movement 维权运动.” International festivals and art institutions, which have raised Jia Zhangke, Wang Bing, Zhao Liang, and Du Haibin to the altar of rarefied art cinema, hardly heed this type of work. Ai’s one-woman not-for-profit cottage-industry productions rely on her own and volunteers’ work and above all her subjects’ support and endorsement. She resorts to the internet platforms and regularly emails links of her new videos to friends, in addition to other means for free and fast dissemination, a practice common among media-savvy activists, for which self- and collective piracy serves as a productive means for networking and mobilization. The monetary donations the free videos generate are usually channeled to grassroots video-making programs. Ai’s practice and conception of the documentary took a new turn in the wake of the death of Wei Wenhua53 and the great Sichuan earthquake in 2008, joining what she calls the fast-growing phenomenon of “citizen documentation” 公民纪录. This new orientation pushes political digital 52 Harding, The Video Activist Handbook, p. 1. 53 Wei, an innocent civilian (a company manager and party member), was shot to death when he tried to record villagers’ protest of illegal dumping of hazardous waste in Hubei with his cell phone.

Outcries and Whispers

275

mimesis from representing the suffering subaltern to taking part in a broad social movement wherein the disenfranchised populations and their sympathizers strive for political and digital citizenship with a far more visible and consequential degree of media literacy and agency. Coalitional authorship takes on a more socially salient and multi-layered form. In Our Children (2009) and Citizens’ Investigation (2009), Ai worked closely with Tan Zuoren, an environment activist who devoted himself to the investigation of the “tofu dregs projects” 豆腐渣工程 school building and was arrested in the course of their collaborative project. They use a large quantity of photographs (especially family albums that survived the destruction) and video footage shot by local people during and after the collapse of the shoddy school buildings, killing thousands of children. More than eyewitness evidence,54 Ai sees the citizens’ conscious deployment of media technology in the rights defense process as a “new feature of citizen participation in social movements.”55 The editing of the f ilm has the effect and look of quilting, stitching together material from different sources, media, formats, and sizes, using a host of audiovisual rhetorical devices to generate both argumentation and emotional resonance. If Our Children, as the title gives away, still relies heavily on a politics of pathos invested in exposing the magnitude of loss and mourning, Citizen Investigation, as the title declares, turns loss into action and mourning into a form of activist labor within a larger context of a citizen’s rights movement. It clearly articulates its close relation to citizen documentation as a new breed of independent media production outside the venerated tradition of alternative art cinema. Ai’s work with “citizen documentation” inspired fellow women activists to take up documentary making. The “Fujian Three Netizens” 福建三网 民 case in the spring of 2010 pushed the envelope further, as the case itself concerns the rights of netizens to use digital tools and platforms to disclose and circulate information suppressed by official channels. The arrests and trial of the three netizens (two are women), who helped to post a video and testimonies surrounding the violent death of a young woman working at a ktv (karaoke bar), outraged millions of other netizens. Organized quickly 54 The film was submitted to the court as defense evidence by Tan Zuoren, “citizen journalist” and activist on behalf of unnecessarily sacrificed and mistreated earthquake victims. Typescript (from Ai Xiaoming), interview with Wu Dongmu of Taiwan public television, April 28, 2010. 55 This collage style derived from weaving archival and found footage and the collective agency it embodies is also evident in two other ostensibly activist films made under different circumstances in 2009, namely, Queer China, “Comrade” China and The Journey of the Tiananmen Mothers. In each case, the “directors” or “producers” are leading members of the respective advocacy groups.

276 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

and effectively by Wang Lihong 王丽蕻,56 along with other activists, through tweeting, blogging, emailing, and texting, thousands of netizens and activists traveled to Fuzhou to support the defendants and found themselves confronting and recording police violence. Wang’s courageous filming with a small DV camera recalls Ai’s filming in Taishi Village. Neither a trained academic/ public intellectual nor a filmmaker, the retired Beijing businesswoman with severe chronic back injuries and no institutional base seized digital tools as an integral part of her activist cause, using them for evidence-collecting as well as mass mobilization. Afterward, Ai made a series of films about Wang both before and after her arrest, including the series of Postcards 明 信片 on the occasion of her birthday, all posted on Ai’s blog (frequently shut down by censors and thus constantly migrated) or other sites. Their videos, online for free viewing and downloading, formed an interlocking chain of documentaries as an open and collaborative experience infused with a moving feeling of sisterhood and a shared feminist agenda.

Outcry and Whisper: Coalitional Creativity and Activist Kinship Women’s mutual affection and support are very much at the emotional center of Outcry and Whisper. In December 2017, Zeng and (Huang) Wenhai screened and discussed We the Workers, their first collaboration, at New York University.57 Based on Wenhai’s long-term filming of workers’ living conditions and unionization in Guangdong province, the finished film also incorporates animation by Trish McAdam, which not just filled in narrative gaps but also lent it a powerful form conducive to portraying the alienated labor on the assembly line and its potential re-animated human power.58 56 Ai’s article “Who Is Wang Lihong?”, a moving and eloquent introduction to Wang, was posted at http://www.bullogger.com/blogs/xiaom ingai/archives/381136.aspx (no longer accessible). 57 The f ilm premiered at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam on January 31, 2017. Zeng served as a producer for the film. The two became friends and collaborators in Hong Kong, where both have found a home base after leaving China. Huang ran into trouble with secret police after filming We (wo men) (about dissidents who were former high-ranking officials) and showing it at the Venice Film Festival. Unable to live and work in safety, he immigrated to Hong Kong in 2012, the same year Zeng arrived there for her doctoral studies. Huang has also worked closely with Wang Bing and Ai Weiwei. Zeng was on her fellowship in Maine in the fall of 2017, when Huang traveled to the United States to show the film at several venues. 58 Zeng befriended her at a film festival previously and collaborated on a short 3D animation f ilm, A Poem to Liu Xia (2015). Liu, an artist and poet, is the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo’s widow, who was under house arrest while Liu was serving a long sentence for his allegedly “anti-state” activities.

Outcries and Whispers

277

On the second day, the filmmakers had a private preview of Outcry and Whisper, their new film in progress and a sister companion to the previous f ilm focused on male workers and union activists. The post-screening discussion became a charged debate on the f ilm’s structure, style, and authorship between Wenhai, who considered himself the sole director at the time, and Zeng (credited as producer) with the support from several women critics and scholars in attendance. We advocated for Zeng’s and McAdam’s authorship as co-directors on the grounds of their extensive contribution behind the camera and on the editing table, especially the critical role of Zeng’s intimate video diaries and photographs of her nude performance played in the film, giving it a structural, agentive force. Her first-person presence and voice recorded under duress, echoing Wenhai’s footage of female workers’ protests followed by intimidation, violence, arrest, and unemployment, underscores the dialectical play between “outcry” and “whisper,” between collective action and abject private suffering as mutually constitutive for coalitional feminist activism. Wenhai was receptive to some of the comments, though adamant about keeping some material he shot of ethnic minorities in Yunnan province, which we agree with Zeng digressed from forging a consciously feminist perspective geared toward healing and empowerment. He eventually agreed to list Zeng as co-director and McAdam as animation director and leave out the Yunnan footage while the film underwent protracted revisions. Ultimately, the interwoven strands of their respective materials—documentary footage of the workers and Zeng’s daily life in Hong Kong, video diaries and performance art, and animation—created a polyvocal, multilayered work. A fruitful transborder collaboration on several levels, the multi-track film addresses the richness and complexity of art activism as a form of coalitional creativity and a medium, in Victor Fan’s words, for “rebuilding humanity” through an alternative or extraterritorial … kinship.59 This kinship in the making of Outcry and Whisper is forged through the linking of the workers, artists, and filmmakers (including the entire crew) across the Pearl Delta region and a transnational space (especially between Ireland of the past, dominated by industrial capitalism, and southern China under post-socialist statecapitalism, powerfully bridged by McAdam’s animation). [Fig. 8.11–12] The film grew out of Zeng’s and Wenhai’s camaraderie as fellow exiles in Hong Kong before their working relationship took a more contentious turn due to quibbles over authorship and creative decisions. After completing We the Workers, Wenhai invited Zeng to continue to collaborate on 59 Fan, “Rebuilding Humanity,” p. 149.

278 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Figs. 8.11–12 Irish filmmaker Trish McAdam’s animation bridges women workers’ struggles across time and space.

Outcry and Whisper as producer. While examining the limited amount of footage about the female workers, they also realized that they were unable to return to Guangdong to shoot more to edit a complete f ilm under a worsening political climate. Expanding the theme of women’s struggle beyond the factory setting, they decided to pursue the “whisper” side of the story (with a nod to Ingmar Bergman’s film, Cries and Whispers) by including more material from Zeng’s video confessions and new footage of her everyday experience as an immigrant single mother negotiating multiple pressures. With Zeng’s experiences as a lynchpin, the film is threaded into a unique first-person plural “autobiographic film” about different kinds of “female

Outcries and Whispers

279

rebels” and their “ferocious battle for individual and collective autonomy.”60 At the same time, the extended conversations and revisions pivoted on authorship, ethics of representation, and legal/political risk control, resulting in three versions: a 100-minute film festival edition for public distribution, a director’s edition for the personal archive of Wenhai (which retains the Yunnan material and a much longer sequence of the Umbrella Movement protest), and a 62-minute edition for ngo internal training.61 Here I resort to the arthouse distributed version, which, in comparison to the longer preview version at New York University (likely closest to the director’s cut), is more coherent in structure and tone in my view, and certainly more salient in constructing a multifaceted feminist poetics of protest against violence and of self-transformation, as well as an “ethics of care and (intimate) solidarity with protagonists.”62 The collaboration between Zeng and Wenhai stemmed from their shared passion for documentary in conjunction with social movement, yet the relationship was also fraught with tension, which became more pronounced in this new project.63 Obsessed with Ingmar Bergman’s and Chris Marker’s modernist styles, Wenhai treated the thematically, geographically, and formally dispersed material as an opportunity for an avant-garde experimental film about political and economic oppression under the current regime. Zeng is, however, acutely aware of the differences between the women’s struggle on varying fronts (including within social movements), and other kinds of activism led by (mostly male) intellectuals (such as Liu Xiaobo and Hu Jia) in China and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. How to politically and aesthetically synthesize these materials and their respective agendas is a tough challenge. With Zeng and McAdam entering 60 Zeng, McAdam, Marchetti, online conversation following the film’s premiere at Visions du Réel, April 29, 2020. https://www.dgeneratefilms.com/post/outcry-and-whisper-a-conversationbetween-jinyan-zeng-trish-mcadam-and-gina-marchetti. 61 Entitled Women/Workers: A Tale of Courage and Leadership, this version solely focuses on women workers’ struggle and collective bargaining. 62 Zeng elaborates on these ideas in her two recent articles, “Desiring Feminism in Chinese Documentary,” discussing issues around the film series, “Desiring China: Sexuality and Female Subjectivity,” which she co-curated with her advisor, the noted feminist scholar Sik Ying Hoh, at Hong Kong University, November 15–19, 2016; and “The Filmmaker as Feminist” (in an anthology forthcoming from Amsterdam University Press). I am grateful to Zeng for sharing her work in progress and for our extended conversations in Lund, Sweden in August 2021. 63 In 2013, they co-founded the Chinese Independent Film Lab in Hong Kong, together with Ying Liang, Li Tiecheng, and Peng Shan. An intimate circle of filmmakers and critics, they screened and discussed several Chinese independent f ilms. Many local audience members attended the activities. The Lab was discontinued in 2014 as the Umbrella Movement was gathering momentum.

280 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

a more equal creative partnership with Wenhai, the team gradually arrived at a method and structure that foregrounded gendered violence and healing as an organizing motif. Zeng’s personal journeys, externally and internally, in seeking liberation from past and ongoing trauma, intersect with other women’s protests and growth, forging empathic feminist solidarity with her co-protagonists. The f ilm is book-ended by Zeng’s eight-year Hong Kong sojourn (2012–2020), though the larger historical framework extends back to the years when Zeng was under secret police surveillance and harassment in Beijing (2004–2012), causing severe trauma that took years to process and overcome. In a recent interview, Zeng describes the eight years for her as a period of “freedom and fear in symbiosis,” first as a political exile and eventually as a Hong Kong citizen with an uncertain future.64 At the start of the film, Zeng seems to have temporarily settled into her new life in Hong Kong, living with her five-year-old daughter in a small but cozy apartment, without secret police outside her door or on her way around the city. But she appears fatigued and stressed out, juggling between her responsibilities as a single mother and doctoral student, busily chaperoning her daughter to the border so that the newly released Hu Jia could spend time with the child while under security police’s watch in Shenzhen. Wenhai’s camera captures her dozing off frequently, at home or on the ferry and bus. In the aforementioned interview, she confesses that for some time she would still have the sensation of fear she experienced in Beijing when she bumped into some men with a crew cut (popular among the secret police) on her staircase. Zeng admits, “My fear has lingered in my body for years.” Three video confessions mark Zeng’s self-transformation. [Fig. 8.13] When she began making video diaries, confiding her innermost feelings and thoughts to the camera, she embarked on a journey of healing. The very first time she started the recording, she admitted that her loneliness had finally made her talk to the camera as a confidant. Having just sent off her daughter and mother to China for two weeks, she could finally catch her breath and focus on her research. But past trauma haunted her even in the relative safety of Hong Kong. In the film, clips from Prisoners in Freedom City appear in flashback style, like a recurring nightmare. The scene on 64 “The Eight Years in Hong Kong for a Marginal Person: Freedom and Fear in Symbiosis.” Written interview by Wang Yuemei, June 9–10, 2021. Shortly after the interview, Zeng and her daughter moved to Sweden, where Zeng began a postdoctoral position at Lund University to research Chinese ethnic-minority women’s creative work. Zeng is originally from a mountainous Fujian rural area populated by the Hakka-speaking ethnic group.

Outcries and Whispers

281

the street when Zeng holds up a placard with “Shame on You to Insult a Woman!” on it, blocking and protesting the secret police following her in their car, echoes similar actions by women workers against police violence. The secret police even followed her to the hospital, standing outside the operation room, where she underwent abortion and delivered her child. The omnipresent invasion into her most intimate, bodily existence took on a new form, cyberbullying, from multiple sources, after she moved to Hong Kong. For months, she received obscenities, sex-related blackmails, and other brutal insults. Video diaries enabled her to pour out anger and overcome fear, eventually flushing all the hurt and dirt out of her body and mind. The long separation between her and Hu Jia (who spent three and a half years in prison before Zeng’s move to Hong Kong), exacerbated by the constant surveillance of their private life, has damaged their marriage. She has also come to question the masculine-centered social movement that demands women’s sacrifice as handmaids, who often also suffer from domestic violence, and resolved to obtain a divorce. In the second video diary, she processes her decision to leave Hu and looks forward to the future with an open heart, as an “emotionally and intellectually mature woman.” In the third and last video toward the end of the film, Zeng addresses herself as a new person, “nearly all the feelings of oppression have disappeared.” She finds a sense of serenity and ease. This is followed by a group of beautifully staged photos of her performing nude in a derelict lavatory during a difficult time. [Fig. 8.14] The tone of her voice-over is calm yet resolute: “…nothing, no one can defeat me when I have the courage to show my naked body to the whole world.” “No one, no moralizing values, gazes, or an authoritarian apparatus…can change me.” We are now back in the present: Zeng and her daughter leave their apartment and go to see the burgeoning Umbrella Movement defending Hong Kong people’s rights under the “One country, two systems” agreement. Carrying an umbrella for a possible rainstorm, Zeng blends in among the locals and begins to record with her camera. [Fig. 8.15] The interweaving of the personal and the collective, artistic, and activist domains of social movements in Outcry and Whisper finds a celebratory moment when we follow Zeng’s visit (accompanied by Wenhai and his camera) to Ai Xiaoming in Wuhan. Though banned from taking part in public activities, Ai has turned her home into a “dining room theater,” or “a semi-public space.”65 Zeng joined the trial screening of Ai’s work in progress, 65 Zeng, McAdam, Marchetti, online conversation following the film’s premiere at Visions du Réel.

282 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Figs. 8.13–15 Healing and transformation: video confession, performance, and documenting.

Jiabiangou Elegy: Life and Death of the Rightists 夹边沟祭事,66 about the harrowing stories in the labor camps in remote northwest Gansu province during the so-called “anti-Rightist” campaign in the late 1950s, erased from official history and popular memory. Like a real ritual or “festival,” the marathon screening over three days was preceded by one day of preparing ample food for the gathering and followed by discussions and a celebration. Labor activists, feminists, and independent filmmakers, as well as friends who joined the party virtually, had a family reunion of sorts in the heartland of China. [Fig. 8.16] For a precious moment, Ai and Zeng, two path-breaking 66 The six-part epic-length f ilm’s f inal version was made in 2017 and is now available for streaming on Kanopy. For an in-depth discussion of the film, see Zeng’s conversations with Ai on the film in the online journal, Made in China, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/10/25/ jiabiangou-elegy-a-conversation-with-ai-xiaoming/.

Outcries and Whispers

283

Fig. 8.16 A homemade “film festival”: screening of Ai’s film and the gathering of friends and fellow activists in Ai Xiaoming’s apartment in Wuhan. (Courtesy of Zeng Jinyan and Wenhai)

documentary makers and activist scholars of two different generations appeared together in a film about what they are committed to and the intimate-public commons they have endeavored to build with fellow “citizen intelligentsia” and “female rebels.”

Bibliography Ai, Xiaoming. “The Citizen Camera.” Interview by Tieh Chi Chang and Ying Qian. New Left Review 72 (2011): 63–79. Ai, Xiaoming. “Who Is Wang Lihong?” (2011), http://www.bullogger.com/blogs/ xiaom ingai/archives/381136.aspx (no longer accessible). Bruzzi, Stella. New Documentary: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2000. Chao, Shi-yan. “Coming Out of the Box, Marching as Dykes.” In Chris Berry et. al. (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 77–95. The Charter 08 manifesto. December 10, 2008, http://www.charter08.eu/2.html. Fan, Victor. “Rebuilding Humanity: Gaze of the Exile and Chinese Independent Cinema,” Studies in the Humanities 44/45.1/2 (2019): 148–67. “For Whom Do You Make Documentary?”, stm (short text message) questionnaire, 2008, http://zgushu.blog.163.com/blog /static/43270469200851515644527/.

284 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Gaines, Jane M. “Political Mimesis.” In Jane M. Gaines and Michael Renov (eds.), Collecting Visible Evidence, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 84–102. Gaines, Jane M. “Documentary Radicality.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 16.1 (2007): 5–24. Harding, Thomas. The Video Activist Handbook. London: Pluto Press, 1997. Jin, Lei. “Sound, Image, Rhetorical Strategy and Traumatic Memory in Ai Xiaoming’s Our Children.” Asian Cinema 24.2 (2013): 209–22. Johnson, Mathew D. “‘A Scene beyond Our Line of Sight’: Wu Wenguang and New Documentary Cinema’s Politics of Independence.” In Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang (eds.), Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First Century China. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2015. 47–76. Lee, Ching Kwan, and You-tien Hsing. “Introduction: Social Activism in China: Agency and Possibility.” In Ching Kwan Lee and You-tien Hsing (eds.), Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism. New York: Routledge, 2010. 1–14. Leyda, Jay. Dianying/Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and Film Audiences in China. Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1972. “Outcry and Whisper”: A conversation between Jinyan Zeng, Trish McAdam, and Gina Marchetti, dGenerate Films, April 24, 2020. https://www.dgeneratefilms. com/post/outcry-and-whisper-a-conversation-between-jinyan-zeng-trishmcadam-and-gina-marchetti. Peng, Yurong, and Judith Pernin. “My Work Constitutes a Form of Participatory Action.” China Perspectives 1 (2010): 58–65. Robinson, Luke. “To Whom Do Our Bodies Belong? Being Queer in Chinese DV Documentary.” In Zhen Zhang and Angela Zito (eds.), DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent Film. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2015. 289–315. Rosen, Phillip. Change Mummified: Cinema, Historiography, Theory. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2001. Shen, Rui. “To Remember History: Hu Jie Talks about His Documentaries.” Senses of Cinema 35 (April 2005). http://sensesofcinema.com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/ author/shen-rui/. Tan, Jia. Digital Masquerade: Feminist Rights and Queer Media in China. New York: New York University Press, 2023. Voci, Paola. “Blowing Up Beijing: The City as a Twilight Zone.” In Chris Berry et al. (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 99–115. Voci, Paola. China on Video. London: Routledge, 2010. Wang, Qi. “Embodied Visions: Chinese Queer Experimental Documentaries by Shi Tou and Cui Zi’en.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 21.3 (2013): 659–81.

Outcries and Whispers

285

Wang, Xiaolu 王小鲁. “Jingguan dianying yu zhaohuan meixue” (静观电影与召 唤美学) [Contemplative Cinema and the Aesthetic of Relations] (电影艺术) [Film Art] No. 5 (2012): 75–80. Wang, Xiaolu 王小鲁. “Zhuti jian xian – 20 nian Zhongguo duli dianying de guancha” (主体渐显——20年中国独立电影的观察) [The Gradual Revelation of Subjectivity—Observations on 20 Years of Development in the Independent Documentary]. (电影艺术) [Film Art] No. 6 (2010): pp. 72–78. Wang, Yuemei 王月眉. “Bifang Zeng Jinyan – yi ge bianyuanren de Xianggang banian: ziyou yu kongju gongsheng” (筆訪曾金燕 — 一個邊緣人的香港八 年：自由與恐懼共生) [The Eight Years in Hong Kong for a Marginal Person: Freedom and Fear in Symbiosis]. Interview by Wang Yuemei, June 9–10, 2021. Xuci/wuxing (虚词/无形), 2021. http://p-articles.com/heteroglossia/2321.html?fb clid=IwAR07NRda6YwcngI5VEl7Izw5TsariWxIKf6d1Bq98DhNMj_lidyovaxgIXk. Waugh, Thomas. Show Us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetic of the Committed Documentary. Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow, 1984. Wenhai 文海. Fangzhu de ningshi – jianzheng Zhongguo duli jilupian (放逐的 凝視—見證中國獨立紀錄片) [The Exilic Gaze—Bearing witness to Chinese independent documentary]. Taipei: Tendency Publishing, 2016. Xu, Xiayin. “Yuan zi minjian de gongmin yingxiang” (源自民间的公民影像) [Citizen images from the unofficial realm]. Changcheng yuebao (长城月报) [Great Wall Monthly], 2010. https://cdtnet2.info/chinese/2010/10/源自民间的公民影像/ (no longer active). Zeng, Jinyan. “The Politics of Emotion in Grassroots Feminist Protests: A Case Study of Ai’s Nude Breasts Photography Protest Online.” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (Winter/Spring 2014): 41–52. Zeng, Jinyan. “Visualizing Truth-telling in Ai Xiaoming’s Documentary Activism.” Studies in Documentary Film, 11:3 (2017): 184–99. Zeng, Jinyan. “Desiring Feminism in Chinese Documentary.” Chinese Independent Cinema Observer 3 (May 2022): 142–178. Zeng, Jinyan. “The Filmmaker as Feminist.” In Chris Berry et al. (eds.), Anthology on Chinese Independent Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (forthcoming). Zeng, Jinyan, and Ai Xiaoming. “Jiabiangou Elegy: A Conversation with Ai Xiao­ ming.” Made in China, Oct. 25, 2019. https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/10/25/ jiabiangou-elegy-a-conversation-with-ai-xiaoming/. Zhang, Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896-1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Zhang, Zhen. “Transfiguring the Post-socialist City: Experimental Image-Making in Contemporary China.” In Yomi Braester and James Tweedie (eds.), Cinema

286 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 95–118. Zhang, Zhen, and Ai Xiaoming. “Zhang Zhen duihua Ai Xiaoming: Cong xueyuan dao xianchang – nüxing zhuyi, jilu meixue, shehui yundong” (张真对话艾晓明： 从学院到现场－ 女性主义，纪录美学，社会运动‎ ) [Dialogue between Zhang Zhang and Ai Xiaoming: From Academia to Xianchang-Feminism, Documentary Aesthetic, Social Movement]. Nü zuozhe zhuanhao (女作者专号) [‎ Special Issue in Women Authors]. Dianying zuozhe (电影作者) [Filmauteur) 4 (2013): 156–80. Zhang, Zhen and Ai Xiaoming. “From Academia to Xianchang: Feminism, Documentary Aesthetic and Social Movement.” Studies in Documentary Film (June 2017): 248–61. Zhao, Siyue 趙思樂. Tamen de zhengtu – zhiji, yuhui yu chongzhuang, Zhongguo nüxing de gongmin juexing zhilu (她們的征途—直擊、迂迴與衝撞，中國女 性的公民覺醒之路) [Their Journeys—Direct Attack, Detour and Collision, Chinese Women’s Road to Civic Awakening]. Taiwan: Xinbei baqi wenhua/ yuanzu wenhua shiye (台灣新北八旗文化/遠足文化事業), 2017.

Epilogue Abstract The epilogue gives an update on several filmmakers’ recent work and situations, assessing the implications of digital technologies as well as the challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic and neo-Cold War cultural politics. A new tide of global Sinophone women’s cinema is emerging in Asia, North America and elsewhere, bringing hope for the future in a time of great uncertainty in the world. Keywords: Covid-19 pandemic, neo-Cold War culture politics, Sinophone women’s cinema

Where are we now? How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected Sinophone women’s cinema? The pandemic has brought tremendous loss and caused serious disruptions in the world. China was the first country to have a nationwide lockdown in late January 2020. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other neighboring countries quickly followed suit. Before long, the entire engine of globalization seemed to have come to a halt, with domestic and international airlines discontinuing entire seasons of flights, and cargo containers stockpiled in harbors for months with no destinations. Parliaments, congresses, Olympic Games, and countless international conventions were suspended or delayed for months. Theaters, museums, gyms, coffee houses, restaurants, and other indoor public venues were shut down. Much of the standard manifestation of the public sphere reliant on these physical infrastructures seems to have vanished overnight. Cinema, a relatively cheap entertainment, and a medium that has connected people in the intimate public space of the movie theater and across borders for over a century, suddenly found itself retreating into the private sphere in home theaters, laptops, and tablets. Film festivals were canceled one after another and, with fits and starts, mostly switched to the virtual mode at a significantly reduced scale, joining the existing streaming culture in hybrid formats availing, among other means, of pre-recorded interviews and Zoom-in talkbacks. Second or third-tier

Zhang, Zhen. Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463729352_epilo

288 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

festivals that specialized in indie flicks, documentaries, lgbtq+ gems, and women’s works also joined the great “migration” online. After the initial shock and blockage, film communities began to find ways to regroup and expand in various ways. The involuntary virtual turn for most of the public activities, including movie-going and festival-attending, taking place through streaming and zooming in private homes, has inadvertently given quite a literal meaning to the intimate-public commons, making films and festivals large and small almost equally accessible. On April 29, 2020, Outcry and Whisper had its world premiere, virtually, at Visions du Réel. Zeng Jinyan and Trish McAdam had an extended conversation with film scholar Gina Marchetti right after the premiere on Zoom. They discussed the long difficult production process across eight years and three continents—McAdam in Ireland, Zeng was transitioning between China, Hong Kong, United States, and Israel—and complicated, but ultimately generative collaboration among three filmmakers (see Chapter 8). The film and conversations were viewed by audiences from different parts of the world. The relative success in containing the spread of Covid-19 in Taiwan enabled the 27th Women Make Waves International Film Festival to take place in person in Taipei in October 2020 as usual. While the rich program with a worldwide selection lacked entries from the mainland, it presented a strong shorts program called “Taiwan Competition,” selected from hundreds of submissions. The special program “Proud to Fail” is a direct response to the persistence of sexism and misogyny that surfaced in the aftermath of the striking down of Taiwan’s eighty-five-year-old adultery law by the constitutional court on May 29, 2020. In 2021, the 28th edition of the festival opened with the restored Unmarried Mothers 未婚媽媽 (1980) directed by a pioneering female director Mi Mi Lee 李美彌 (b. 1946), part of a threefilm program, “Return to the Unknown,” dedicated to her.1 Availing of the “three women make up a drama on stage” formula in time-honored Chinese theatrical tradition, this modern coming-of-age tale is ahead of its time in portraying three women forging alternative kinship and family. The 2021 Golden Horse Film Festival Awards highlighted both veteran and emerging women filmmakers from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the diaspora.2 Macau-born Hong Kong-Australian Clara Law Cheuk-yiu 羅卓瑤 won the 1 For a film synopsis and a short bio on Lee, see http://www.wmw.org.tw/en/film/1595. The other two films are Evening News (1980) and Girl’s School (1982). 2 Since 2019, mainland filmmakers have been ordered by the Chinese government to “boycott” the Golden Horse Film Festival. Hong Kong’s commercial filmmakers have declined nominations for fear of compromising their market in the mainland. As a result, the Golden Horse’s selections have been concentrated on entries from Taiwan, Singapore, and independent films from Hong

Epilogue

289

Best Director award for Drifting Petals 花果飄零 (2021), a melancholic eulogy for the filmmaker’s twin hometowns through an experimental narrative of a diasporic traveler’s encounters with the living and the spirits during the 2019 protests.3 Taiwan’s newcomer Fiona Roan Feng-I 阮鳳儀 was selected as the Best New Director. Her feature debut, American Girl 美國女孩 (2021), about the pain of reverse migration and family illness during a pandemic, was nominated for best narrative feature and won the Audience Choice Award. Former high school teacher Chen Hui-ling’s 陳慧齡 A Letter to A’ma 給阿嬤的一封信, drawn from a youth collective memory project through art activism about Taiwan’s history, was nominated for best documentary feature. In lockdown China, ironically, several small-budget films were spared the pressure to compete with domestic or Hollywood blockbusters when publicity campaigns for theatrical release were irrelevant for several months. Yang Lina’s second feature, Spring Tide 春潮, her breakthrough into the mainstream which won top awards at Shanghai International Film Festival, the First International Film Festival (Xining), and the Golden Rooster Awards in 2019, had to postpone its theatrical release for a couple of times due to the lockdown. While its theatrical release was much anticipated, the prospect for an arthouse melodrama film like this to compete with mainstream mega-budget genre films or “red main melodies” is unpredictable and even risky. Unwilling to wait much longer, its producer and distributor decided to launch the film virtually on the popular iQiyi platform (a Chinese version of Netflix) on May 27, 2020, with advance reservation. The film, shot entirely in Yang’s hometown of Changchun and mostly in her aunt’s cramped apartment, is an intimate maternal melodrama involving three generations of women in a household with no man living with them. A middle-aged journalist (played by Hao Lei) is caught between her difficult relationship with her mother (played by Hong Kong veteran Elaine Jin) steeped in both superstition and state propaganda and her “little red pioneer” daughter’s emotional needs. With the awards and word-of-mouth praise the film had received, the online release went viral on social media, and the various online panels featuring filmmakers and critics and conversations with audiences were highly popular, serving not only as a promotion campaign but also as a public forum for discussing gender, family, state relations, and feminist Kong which are banned by the New Film Ordinance under the auspices of the National Security Law, as well as from the Chinese diaspora such as Australia. 3 See https://advox.globalvoices.org/2021/12/02/taiwans-golden-horse-film-awards-highlightshong-kongs-censored-productions/.

290 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

filmmaking. 4 In a year with a landslide slump in film attendance and box office returns, Spring Tide found a sizable niche in the virtual domain and made some big waves in China and beyond.5 Spring Tide premiered at the 22nd Shanghai International Film Festival in 2019, pre-pandemic. In China it was widely seen as the most important film about women made by a strong women’s team that year, prefiguring a trend of films on mother-daughter relationships. Interestingly, Yang’s “woman’s film,” reinventing maternal melodrama, might not have had a place in the hard-core independent cinema world in Songzhuang and Nanjing that favored an austere avant-garde style narrative film or hard-hitting social, political documentary. At a time when the previous independent film communities clustered around biff (Beijing Independent Film Festival) and ciff (Chinese Independent Film Festival, Nanjing) in China practically dissolved under harsh conditions, Yang’s move into the gray area of a new kind of arthouse genre cinema—sponsored by the affluent commercial companies which are more willing to work with censors—signaled an alternative way of survival for cine-feminism in that environment. The newly ascendant middle class, especially women, crave family melodramas that deal with generational gaps, moral confusion, disorientation of socio-political values, and emotional pain despite the rising living standard. Spring Tide, which had to undergo several rounds of internal and external censoring, is not as edgy and dark as Yang’s previous Longing for the Rain (2013) (see Chapter 3), never officially shown in China due to the lack of a “dragon seal.” It nonetheless carried over similar concerns such as conflicting or complicitous values straddling the religious and the secular, socialist and capitalist, and the lack of emotional support for lonely (or single) working mothers. Barbarian Invasion 野蠻人入侵 (2021), which is similarly about conflicts between motherhood and career undergirded by structural gender bias and related problems, is written and directed by Malaysian-Chinese filmmaker Tan Chui-mui 陈翠梅, who also starred in the film. [Fig. E.1] It made refreshing waves at Shanghai International Film Festival in 2021, 4 See Zhang and Jiehong Jiang, “Life in-between Screens.” 5 But the film, though its executive producer is Liao Ching-song, Taiwan’s master editor who also helped the final editing of Yang’s first narrative feature, was not submitted to the Golden Horse Film Festival. As mentioned earlier, since 2019, all mainland filmmakers and producers were warned not to join the festival in Taiwan but submit and attend instead the Golden Rooster Awards in Xiamen right across the Strait. The film was nominated for Best Film and Best Director at the Golden Rooster Awards, but it was in her hometown, Changchun, where the film is set and shot, that Yang received the Best Director Award and a Jury Award for Best Film at the 15th Changchun Film Festival in 2020.

Epilogue

291

Fig. E.1 Poster for Barbarian Invasion, 2021 (Courtesy of Tan Chui-mui)

as Spring Tide did pre-pandemic in 2019. Tan’s f ilm directly comments on the glass ceiling in the f ilm industry, exacerbated by trans-regional power play. Compared to previous editions, the festival had minimal international visitors due to the pandemic and related travel restrictions and was visibly under tightened control due to the centenary of the ccp. Unexpectedly, this Malaysian New Wave gem shone brightly in a muggy, depressing plum rain-enveloped Shanghai. The f ilm was awarded the Jury Grand Prix at the Golden Goblets Awards during the festival’s closing ceremony. The jury’s commendation states: “This film takes a genre that

292 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

is familiar to us all and turns it on its tail. Its handling of pace is pitchperfect, as it continues to subvert and surprise at each turn. The director also bravely tackles her film by throwing herself fearlessly in the leading role.” I happened to be in Shanghai at the time for my mother's funeral and related matters, and saw the film in the big auditorium where Spring Tide premiered two summers earlier. A genre-bending arthouse action f ilm set on a Malay island, where Moon Lee (Tan), a washed-up actress, with her young son, Yuzhou (“Universe”) in tow, arrives in a boat to take up a lead role in an action film involving her mastering martial arts within a short time. The project, produced by Woo Ming Jin and Bianca Balbuena (from the Philippines), brings back the old crew from her previous films, all members of a closely-knit community that contributed to the emergence of Malaysian New Wave cinema in the 2000s.6 At a budget (rmb 1 million, c. US$ 145,000) far smaller than Spring Tide (rmb 15 million),7 Tan’s film, is innovative, courageous, and playful, exemplifying Sinophone cine-feminism at its best. Shot in Terengganu and Kuala Lumpur in the summer of 2020, the film had to overcome many challenges during the pandemic. Tan’s feature debut, Love Conquers All (2006), pushed her to the forefront of the Malaysian New Wave. After making her second feature, Year without a Summer (2010), Tan spent several years in Beijing’s independent film community, making short films, writing scripts, and curating f ilm programs, before returning to Malaysia. Like Yang Lina, becoming a mother put her film career on hold for years. The film’s plot, revolving around an actress’s come-back after a difficult divorce and her attempt to regain a sense of self, has strong autobiographic undertones. Shifting between Chinese, Malay, and English, the reflexive back-stage drama-cum-wuxia thriller makes frequent references to the small budget and the powerful threat from the Chinese film industry (e.g., for a moment the “director” was under pressure to replace Moon Lee with a Chinese star). Lee is put through grueling training to be her own martial arts stuntperson. But unexpected twists in the plot put her through traumatic ordeals that deprive her of memory and identity and trap her in danger. In a telling scene, Lee, wearing a red wig, asks herself in the mirror, “who am I?” in three languages (Malay, Mandarin, and English). The question pertains 6 See https://fallingstones.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/malaysian-new-wave/. Yasmin Ahmad (1958–2009) is perhaps the best-known director of the Malaysian New Wave. For an insightful study of Ahmad, see Hee and Heinrich, “Desire Against the Grain.” 7 Chen’s film is presented by Heaven Pictures, a Hong Kong- and Beijing-based company that supports low-budget projects by up-and-coming young filmmakers. The Hong Kong International Film Society co-produced the film.

Epilogue

293

also to the f ilmmaker herself as an actor, director, and mother, as well as her work that straddles Sinophone cinema, Malaysian New Wave, and world cinema. Despite the stellar achievements of Sinophone women filmmakers in 2020–2021, including numerous important f ilms by women f ilmmakers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, and elsewhere, 8 none of them appear among the “Best 50 Movies of the Year 2021” selected by a hundred critics at the invitation of Sight and Sound (with the exception of Nomadland, listed twenty-second). It prompts the questions: who are the critics? How many films by non-Western women have they seen? And what criteria informed the selection? Gina Marchetti in her recent article, pointedly titled, “Where in the World Are Chinese Women Filmmakers?” asserts the urgent need to put (more) Chinese women filmmakers on the map, beyond the token figures like Chloe Zhao and Ann Hui.9 We need more films like Spring Tide, Barbarian Invasion, and many others mentioned in this book, to “invade” film festivals, online platforms, home theaters, and classrooms in countries and regions where they are made, as well as everywhere where these stories of women defending their bodily and intellectual integrity and fighting for justice and peace in the world will most certainly resonate.

8 Notable f ilms of 2019–2022, both mainstream and independent productions, by women directors from the region include: My Edward Prince 金都 (Norris Wong 黄绮琳, 2019); Send Me to the Clouds 送我上青云 (Teng Congcong 滕丛丛, 2019); Fear(less) and Dear 诚惶（不） 诚恐，亲爱的 (Anson Mak 麦海珊, 2020); Lost Course 迷航 (Jill Li 李哲昕, 2020, the 57 th Golden Horse Best Documentary); Summer Blur 汉南夏日 (Han Shuai 韩帅, 2020); Mama 妈 妈和七天的时间 (Li Dongmei 李冬梅, 2020); The Cloud in Her Room 她房间里的云 (Zhenglu Xinyuan 郑陆心源, 2020); Hi, Mom 你好，李焕英 (Jia Ling 贾玲, 2021); My Sister 我的姐 姐 (Yin Ruoxin 殷若昕, 2021); Singing in the Wilderness 旷野歌声 (Chen Dongnan 陈东楠, 2021, nominated for best documentary at First International Film Festival, but was banned from screening), American Girl 美國女孩 (Feng-yi Fiona Roan 阮鳳儀, 2021), Myth of Love 爱情神话 (Shao Yihui 邵艺辉, 2021), and Bad Women of China 中华坏女人 (He Xiaopei 何 小培, 2021). More recently, The Water Murmurs 海边升起一座悬崖 (Chen Jianying 陈剑莹, 2022) garnered the Short Film Palme d’Or. Meanwhile, a new Chinese-American women’s wave seems to be on the rise, with works by Chloé Zhao, Lulu Wang 王子逸, Domme Shi 石之予, Alice Wu 伍思薇, Nanfu Wang 王男栿, Shengze Zhu 朱声仄, Cathy Yan 阎羽茜, Jessica Kingdon and Kate Tsang appearing frequently on screens large and small and winning various awards. As the book undergoes f inal editing for production, more f ilms have appeared at festivals and theaters as well online platforms, such as Untold Herstory 流麻溝十五號 (2022) by Zero Zhou, Gaga 哈勇家 (2022) by Laha Mebow, and Hidden Letters (2022) by Violet Du Feng and Qing Zhao. 9 Marchetti, “Where in the World are Chinese Women Filmmakers?”

294 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Bibliography Hee, Wai-Siam, and Ari Larissa Heinrich. “Desire Against the Grain: Transgender Consciousness and Sinophonicity in the Films of Yasmin Ahmad.” In Howard Chiang and Ari Larissa Heinrich (eds.), Queer Sinophone Cultures. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. 386–430. Lam, Oiwan. “Taiwan’s Golden Horse Film Awards highlights Hong Kong’s censored productions,” Global Voices Advox, December 2, 2021. https://advox. globalvoices.org/2021/12/02/taiwans-golden-horse-f ilm-awards-highlightshong-kongs-censored-productions/. “Malaysian ‘New Wave,’” WordPress, May 11, 2008. https://fallingstones.wordpress. com/2008/05/11/malaysian-new-wave/. Marchetti, Gina. “Where in the World are Chinese Women Filmmakers? Transnational China and World Cinema in the Twenty-First Century.” Studies in World Cinema 1 (2021). 121–44. Zhang, Zhen, and Jiehong Jiang. “Life in-between Screens: ‘The World, Two Meters Away.’” Translated, edited, and introduced by Ellen Y. Chang. Feminist Media Histories, 7.1 (2021): 61–80.



Chinese Glossary

Note: both complex and simplified Chinese characters are adopted to reflect the diverse writing forms in different regions. The prc uses the simplified form uniformly in education and publication, whereas Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere largely use the complex form connected to pre-modern Chinese. Ai Xiaoming Alice Wu Allen Fong Ang Lee Anhua xian Ann Hui Baidu Beijing duli yingzhan (Beijing Independent Film Festival) Beijing guoji nüxing dianyingjie (Beijing International Women’s Film Festival) benshengren bieguan Bing Xin bi zhen buzhuo cainü Caochangdi Cathy Yan Chang Hsiao-hung Chang Tso-chi Chang Yi chao jing Chaoyang men Chen Feibao Chen Hui-ling Chen Kaige chi he la sa shui

艾晓明 伍思薇 方育平 李安 安化县 许鞍华 百度 北京独立影展 北京国际女性电影节

本省人 别馆 冰心 逼真 捕捉 才女 草场地 阎羽茜 张小虹 张作骥 张毅 潮境 朝阳门 陈飞宝 陳慧齡 陈凯歌 吃喝拉撒睡

296 

Ching-hui Lee Chu T’ien-wen cijian Clara Law Cui Zi’en dajian dao minjian qu diao yu dao Domme Shi Dong Kena doufuzha gongcheng Edward Yang Esther Eng Feima Fenghuangling foying Fujian san wangmin ganxing gaozhigan wuzhi shenghuo genzhe Gong Li gongmin jilu gongzhong guangchang wu Guo Jianmei Hakka henyi He Yin-zhen Hou Hsiao-hsien Hou Wenyi hsiang-tu Huang Ching-cheng Huang hun lian Huang Ji Huang Jianye Huang Jing Huang Shuqin

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

李靖惠 朱天文 此间 罗卓瑶 崔子恩 搭建 到民间去 钓鱼岛 石之予 董克娜 豆腐渣工程 杨德昌 吳錦霞 菲妈 凤凰岭 佛影 福建三网民 感性 高质感物质生活 跟着 巩俐 公民纪录 公众 广场舞 郭建梅 客家 恨意 何殷震 侯孝贤 侯文怡 鄉土 黃清埕 黄昏恋 黄骥 黄建业 黄静 黄蜀芹

297

Chinese Glossary

Huang Yu-shan huayu dianying hukou huoxian gongmin jizhe Hwang Chun-ming jia Jian chi dao di jiu shi shengli jiaren jiating lunli ju Jia Zhangke Jiedu Qiong Yao aiqing wangguo jiefang jilu jingguan Jin yu chi xiaoqu jishi ji shi wei ren a Kaohsiong Kaohsiung guoji dianyingjie (Kaohsiung International Film Festival) Kao Pao-shu Kenneth Bi King Hu Ko I-chen Ko Laha Mebow la teng laoban Law Cheuk-yiu Lee Hsing Lee Han-hsiang Lee Kui-hsiang Lee Mei-mi Lee Sin-je Le zi zhi wu shi Liao Ching-song liuchan Liu Jiayin

黃玉珊 华语电影 户口 火线公民记者 黃春明 家 坚持到底就是胜利 佳人 家庭倫理劇 贾樟柯 解读琼瑶爱情王国 解放 纪录 静观 金鱼池小区 纪事 几世为人啊 高雄 高雄國際電影節 高寶樹 毕国智 胡金铨 柯一正 陳潔瑤 辣疼 老板 羅卓瑤 李行 李翰祥 李桂香 李美彌 李心洁 樂子之無室 廖庆松 流产 刘伽茵

298 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Liu Jo-ying Liu shou er tong liuwang Li Xianting dianying jijinhui (Li Xianting Film Fund) Li Xiaojiang Li Xinmin Long biao Lou Ye Lulu Wang Luo Bing Luo Dayou Marion Wong Mazu mengyou mingding lishi minglang (lucidity) mingxinpian minjian minzu wu Mu lian zheng jiao xie pen jing Nanfang yingzhan (South Taiwan Film Festival) Ning Ying Nüxing zhuyi si bu qu (Feminist Tetralogy) Penghu Pu Songling qieshen xing qilin qingchun Qingliu Qingta Qing yu san bu qu (Trilogy of Erotic Desire) Qiong Yao qiyanshi Ren Pengnian

刘若英 留守儿童 流亡 栗宪庭电影基金会 李小江 李新民 龙标 娄烨 王子逸 罗兵 羅大佑 黃女娣 妈祖 梦游 命定历史 明朗 明信片 民间 民族舞 目连正教血盆经 南方影展 宁瀛 女性主義四部曲 澎湖 蒲松龄 切身性 麒麟 青春 清流 青塔 情慾三部曲 琼瑶 七言诗 任朋年

299

Chinese Glossary

Ren Yizhi reqing ri zhao Roan Feng-I rui xiang sange nüren yitaixi Shanyi guoji nüxing dianying zhan (The one International Women’s Film Festival) shenti gongzuofang Shiao-ying Shen Shijing Shi Tou Shi-yu Wei Shu-mei Shih Shuqin Cui Song Fang Songzhuang Stanley Kwan Sun Zhigang Sylvia Chang Tainan Taiwan nüxing shijue yishujie (Taiwan Women’s Visual Arts Festival) Taiwan guoji nüxing yingzhan (Taiwan Women Make Waves International Film Festival) Takachiho Maru Tan Chui-mui Tang Danhong Tang Shu-shuen Tao Te-chen Teng Li-Chun Tsai Ming-Liang Wang Bing Wang Fen Wang Lihong

任意之 热情 日照 阮鳳儀 瑞像 三个女人一台戏 山一国际女性电影展

身体工作坊 沈晓茵 詩經 石头 魏时煜 史书美 崔淑琴 宋方 宋庄 关锦鹏 孙志刚 张艾嘉 台南 台灣女性視覺藝術節 台灣國際女性影展

高千穗丸 陈翠梅 唐丹鸿 唐書璇 陶德辰 邓丽君 蔡明亮 王兵 王芬 王丽蕻

300 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Wang Nanfu Wang Ping Wang Wo Wang Xiaobo Wang Yinjie Wanshousi weiquan yundong Wenhai Wen Hui wenyi wenyi pian Wu yi-feng Wong Kar-wai Wu Ke Song Wu Nien-jen Wu Wenguang xianchang xiao xian rou Xie pen jing Xingdong yishujia xiehui (mouve Artists Association) Xue Hong Yan Ge-ling yang’ge Yang Hui-shan Yang Lina Yang Yuanying Yau Ching Ye Haiyan Ye Zhaoyan yimen yingxiang renzhe yingxiangshi yimin yinxiang jilu yu yingxiang weihu yanjiusuo yu

王男栿 王苹 王我 王小波 王音洁 万寿寺 维权运动 文海 文慧 文艺 文艺片 吳乙峰 王家衛 五棵松 吴念真 吴文光 现场 小鲜肉 血盆经 行動藝術家協會 薛红 严歌苓 秧歌 杨惠姗 杨荔钠 杨远婴 游靜 叶海燕 叶兆言 易门 影像忍者 影像诗 遺民 音像纪录与影像维护 研究所 雨

301

Chinese Glossary

yueliang daibiao wo de xin Yu Kan-ping Zeng Jinyan Zhang Nuanxin Zhang Yi-mou Zhang Yuan zhao zhaogu zhaohun zhao jingzi Zhao Liang Zhao Siyuan Zhao Ting (Chloé Zhao) zhaoxiang zhenshi zhiyan juchang Zhongguo guoji nüxing dianyingjie (China International Women’s Film Festival) zhongguo meng Zhongguo minjian nüxing dianyingjie (China’s Minjian Women’s Film Festival) Zhongguo nvxing xing sanbuqu (Chinese Women’s Sexuality Trilogy) Zhou Enlai zhuanxing zhuantipian Zhu Shengze Zhu Tianwen zuo niu zuo ma Zou Xueping Zuo Yixiao

月亮代表我的心 虞戡平 曾金燕 张暖昕 张艺谋 张元 照 照顾 招魂 照镜子 赵亮 赵思源 赵婷 照相 真实 直言剧场 中国国际女性电影节

中国梦 中国民间女性电影节 中国女性性三部曲 周恩来 转型 专题片 朱声仄 朱天文 做牛做马 邹雪平 左益虓

Bibliography Selected Bibliography in English Ai, Xiaoming. “The Citizen Camera.” Interview by Tieh Chi Chang and Ying Qian. New Left Review 72 (2011): 63–79. Ai, Xiaoming. “Who Is Wang Lihong?” (2011), http://www.bullogger.com/blogs/ xiaomingai/archives/381136.aspx (no longer accessible). Andres, Kirsten W. “Engaging the Spirits of the Dead: Soul-Calling Rituals and the Performative Construction of Efficacy.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14.4 (2008): 755–73. Andrew, Dudley. “Ghost Towns.” In Yomi Braester and James Tweedie (eds.), Cinema at City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 37–47. Bao, Hongwei. Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2020. Bao, Hongwei. Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Culture under Postsocialism. New York: Routledge, 2020. Bataille, Georges. Theory of Religion. Trans. Robert Hurley. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books (French edition 1973), 1992. Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, 1999. Bayman, Louis. “The Sorrow and the Piety: Melodrama Rethought in Postwar Italian Cinema.” In Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (eds.). Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 272–87. Bean, Jennifer. “Editor’s Introduction, Affect: The Alchemy of the Contingent.” Special issue on Affect, Feminist Media History 7.2 (Winter 2021): 1–20. bell hooks. Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. New York: Routledge, 2015. Berlant, Lauren. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997. Berlant, Lauren. The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Berry, Chris. “China’s New ‘Women’s Cinema.’” Camera Obscura 18 (1988): 8–19. Berry, Chris. “Xiao Wu: Watching Time Go By.” In Chris Berry (ed.), Chinese Films in Focus II. Basingstoke: British Film Institute/Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 250–57. Berry, Chris, and Mary Farquhar. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Berry, Chris, and Feii Lu (eds.). Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005.

304 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Berry, Chris, Xinyu Lu and Lisa Rofle (eds.). The New Chinese Documentary Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Berry, Chris, and Lisa Rofel. “Alternative Archive: China’s Independent Documentary Culture.” In Chris Berry et al. (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 135–54. Berry, Michael. Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Berry, Michael. A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Bhaskar, Ira. “Expressionist Aurality: The Stylized Aesthetic of Bhava in Indian Melodrama.” In Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (eds.), Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 253–72. Black and White Film Studio, http://yushan133.pixnet.net/blog. Bottici, Chiara. Men and States: Rethinking the Domestic Analogy in a Global Age. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Bottici, Chiara. Anarchafeminism. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021. Braester, Yomi. “‘Excuse Me, Your Camera Is in My Face!’” In Chris Berry, Xinyu Lu, and Lisa Rofel (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 195–218. Braester, Yomi. Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976. Bruzzi, Stella. New Documentary: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2000. Chang, Ivy I-chu. Taiwan Cinema, Memory and Modernity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Chao, Shi-yan. “Coming Out of the Box, Marching as Dykes.” In Chris Berry, Xinyu Lu, and Lisa Rofle (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 77–95. Chao, Shi-yan. Queer Representations in Chinese-language Film and the Cultural Landscape. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. The Charter 08 manifesto. December 10, 2008, http://www.charter08.eu/2.html. Chen, Caroline. “Dancing in the Streets of Beijing: Improvised Uses within the Urban System.” In Jeffrey Hou (ed.), Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary City. New York: Routledge, 2010. 21–35. Chen, Lijun et al. (ed.). Child and Youth Well-Being in China. New York: Routledge, 2019.

Bibliogr aphy

305

Chen, Ya-chen (ed.). (En)Gendering Taiwan: The Rise of Taiwanese Feminism. New York: Springer, 2018. Chi, Robert. “The New Taiwanese Documentary.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 15.1 (2003): 146–96. Chiang, Howard, and Ari Larissa Heinrich (eds.). Queer Sinophone Cultures. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. Chiu, Kuei-fen, and Yingjin Zhang. New Chinese-Language Documentaries: Ethics, Subject and Place. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. Chou, Bih-Er. “Gendering of Academic in Taiwan: From Women’s Studies to Gender Studies, 1985–2015.” In Chen (ed.), (En)Gendering Taiwan. New York: Springer, 2018. 115–47. Chow, Rey. “All Chinese Families Are Alike: Biopolitics in Eat a Bowl of Tea and the Wedding Banquet.” In Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films. Columbia University Press, 2007. 123–44. Chow, Rey. “Autumn Hearts: Filming Feminine ‘Psychic Interiority’ in Song of the Exile.” In Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 85–104. Chow, Yiu Fai, and Jeroen de Kloet, “What is the ‘Trans’ in Trans-Asia?” In Jeroen de Kloet et al. (eds.), Trans-Asia as Method. New York: Routledge, 2016. 43–57. Cui, Shuqin. Women Through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. Cui, Shuqin. “Ning Ying’s Beijing Trilogy: Cinematic Configurations of Age, Class and Sexuality.” In Zhen Zhang (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 241–63. Cui, Shuqin. Gendered Bodies: Toward a Women’s Visual Art in Contemporary China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2015. de Kloet, Jeroen et al. (eds.). Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practice. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019. Demos, T. J. The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Deutsche Welle. “2021 Goethe Medals Honors Communicators Who Go beyond Borders”. August 28, 2021. https://www.dw.com/en/2021-goethe-medals-honorscommunicators-who-go-beyond-borders/a-58930723. Doane, Mary Ann. The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s. Bloomington, IN: Indian University Press, 1987. Edwards, Dan. Independent Chinese Documentary: Alternative Visions, Alternative Publics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Elsaesser, Thomas. “Tales of Sounds and Fury: Observations on Family Melodrama.” Monogram 4 (1972), reprint in Christine Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart

306 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute, 1987. 43–69. Fan, Victor. Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2015. Fan, Victor. “Too Intimate to Speak: Regional Cinemas and Literatures.” Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 15.2 (2018): 47–71. Fan, Victor. “Rebuilding Humanity: Gaze of the Exile and Chinese Independent Cinema.” Studies in the Humanities 44/45.1/2 (2019): 148–67. Feeley, Jennifer. “Heartburn on a Map Called Home: Yau Ching and the (Im)possibility of Hong Kong Poetry as Chinese Poetry.” Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 10.1 (2010): 134–59. Feeley, Jennifer. “The Art of Documenting China’s Most Vulnerable.” In Michelle Vosper (ed.), Creating across Cultures: Women in the Arts from China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Hong Kong: East Slope Publishing, 2017. 153–71. Ferraris, Maurizio. Manifesto of New Realism. Trans. Sarah De Sanctis. Albany, NY: suny Press, 2012. “For Whom Do You Make Documentary?”, stm (short text message) questionnaire, 2008, http://zgushu.blog.163.com/blog /static/43270469200851515644527/. Fuhrmann, Arnika. Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Gaines, Jane M. “Political Mimesis.” In Jane M. Gaines and Michael Renov (eds.), Collecting Visible Evidence. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 84–102. Gaines, Jane M. “Documentary Radicality.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 16.1 (2007): 5–24. Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Love, Sexuality and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford University Press, 1992. Gilman, Sean. “All About Sylvia Chang.” mubi, 2018. https://mubi.com/notebook/ posts/all-about-sylvia-chang. Gledhill, Christine (ed.). Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute, 1987. Gledhill, Christine. “The Melodramatic Field: An Investigation.” In Christine Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute, 1987. 5–39. Gledhill, Christine. “‘An Abundance of Understatement’: Documentary, Melodrama and Romance.” In Christine Gledhill and Gillian Swanson (eds.), Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and British Cinema in the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. 213–29. Gledhill, Christine, and Julia Knight (eds.). Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015.

Bibliogr aphy

307

Gledhill, Christine, and Linda Williams (eds.). Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Gordon, David B. “Prodigy of Taiwan, Diva of Asia: Teresa Teng.” Association for Asian Studies. https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/ prodigy-of-taiwan-diva-of-asia-teresa-teng/. Grewal, Interpal, and Caren Kaplan. Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Gripsrud, Jostein and Martin Eide. “Editors’ Introduction.” In Jostein Gripsrud and Martin Eide (eds.), The Idea of the Public Sphere: A Reader. Lanham: MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 6–22. Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action. New York: Beacon, 1981/1984. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA.: mit Press, 1989. Hallam, Julia, and Les Roberts. Locating the Moving Image: New Approaches to Film and Place. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013. Hansen, Miriam. “Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: ‘The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology’.” New German Critique 40 (1987): 179–224. Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Harding, Thomas. The Video Activist Handbook. London: Pluto Press, 1997. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negril. Empire. Harvard University Press, 2000. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negril. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Random House, 2004. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negril. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Heberer, Feng-mei. “Sentimental Activism as Queer-Feminist Documentary Practice; Or, How to Make Love in a Room Full of People.” Camera Obscura 34.2 (2019): 40–69. Hee, Wai-Siam. Remapping the Sinophone: The Cultural Production of Chineselanguage Cinema in Singapore and Malaya before and after the Cold War. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2019. Hee, Wai-Siam, and Ari Larissa Heinrich. “Desire Against the Grain: Transgender Consciousness and Sinophonicity in the Films of Yasmin Ahmad.” In Howard Chiang and Ari Larissa Heinrich (eds.), Queer Sinophone Cultures. New York: Routledge, 2014. 386–430. Hong, Guo-juin. Taiwan Cinema: A Contested Nation on Screen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Hoskins, Janet. Biographic Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People’s Lives. New York: Routledge, 1998.

308 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Huang, Yu-shan. “‘Creating and Distributing Films Openly’: On the Relationship between Women’s Film Festivals and the Women’s Rights Movement in Taiwan.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4.1 (2003): 157–58. Huang, Yu-shan, and Chun-chi Wang. “Post-Taiwan New Cinema Women Directors and Their Films: Auteurs, Images, Language.” In Wang (ed.), Chinese Women’s Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 132–53. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia. “Women’s Creativity in Indonesian Cinema.” Indonesia and the Malay World 39, 115 (2011): 417–44. Hung, Tzu-hui Celina. “Documenting ‘Immigrant Brides’ in Multicultural Taiwan.” In Joshua Neves and Bhaskar Sarkar (eds.), Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. 158–75. imdb member @jvH48, “First hour is promising, arousing our interest in a logical development and ending. Alas, nothing of the sort happens,” https://www. imdb.com/review/rw2790607/?ref_=tt_urv. Longing for the Rain, May 1, 2013. Iwabuchi, Koichi. “Trans-Asia as Method: A Collaborative and Dialogic Project in a Globalized World.” In Jeroen de Kloet et al. (eds.), Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practices. London: Towman & Littlefield, 2019. 25–40. Jeong, Seung-hoon, and Jeremi Szaniawski (eds.). The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship in Twenty-first Century Cinema. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. Ji, Huang, and Ryoji Otsuka. “Directors’ statement.” Undated typescript. Jiang, Zoe Meng. “Soft Archive: Motherhood and Daughterhood in Post-socialist China,” Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art 4, no. 1 (2019): 35–54. Jin, Lei. “Sound, Image, Rhetorical Strategy and Traumatic Memory in Ai Xiaoming’s Our Children.” Asian Cinema 24.2 (2013): 209–22. Johnson, Mathew D. “‘A Scene beyond Our Line of Sight’: Wu Wenguang and New Documentary Cinema’s Politics of Independence.” In Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang (eds.), From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film Culture in Contemporary China. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlef ield, 2006. 47–76. Johnston, Claire. “Women’s Cinema as Counter Cinema.” In E. Ann Kaplan (ed.), Feminism and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1973]. 22–33. Khoo, Olivia. “The Ground Below Her Feet: Fault Lines of Nation and Sensation in Yau Ching’s Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14.1 (2008): 99–119. Knapp, Lucretia. “Something Borrowed, Something Blue.” Exhibition catalogue essay translated into Chinese for “Future in Past Tense: A Retrospective of Yau Ching’s Film and Video Art.” Guangzhou: Guangdong Times Museum, China, 2014. Ko, Dorothy. Teachers of the Inner Chamber: Women and Culture in Seventeenth Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Bibliogr aphy

309

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press (French edition 1980), 1982. Kuo, Li-hsin. “Sentimentalism and the Phenomenon of ‘Looking Inward’: A Critical Analysis of Mainstream Taiwanese Documentary.” In Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Tze-lan Deborah Sang (eds.), Documenting Taiwan on Film. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. 183–203. Laing, Heather. The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2007. Lam, Oiwan. “Taiwan’s Golden Horse Film Awards highlights Hong Kong’s censored productions,” Global Voices Advox, December 2, 2021. https://advox. globalvoices.org/2021/12/02/taiwans-golden-horse-f ilm-awards-highlightshong-kongs-censored-productions/. Lan, Pei-Chia. “Subcontracting Filial Piety: Elder Care in Dual-Earner Chinese Immigrant Households in the Bay Area.” Berkeley Center for Working Families Working Paper No. 21, Berkeley, CA: Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/4108. Lau, Jenny Kwok Wah. “Besides Fists and Blood: Michael Hui and Cantonese Comedy.” In Poshek Fu and David Desser (eds.), The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 158–75. Leary, Charles. “Performing Documentary or Making It to the Other Bank.” Senses of Cinema, 2003. Lebow, Alisa. The Cinema of Me: The Self and Subjectivity in First Person Documentary. New York: Wallflower, 2012. Lee, Ching Kwan, and You-tien Hsing. “Introduction: Social Activism in China: Agency and Possibility.” In Lee, Ching Kwan, and You-tien Hsing (eds.), Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism. Routledge, 2010. 1–14. Lee, Ching Kwan, and You-tien Hsing (eds.). Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism. Routledge, 2010. Lee, Kevin B. “Cinema Talk: Conversation with Huang Ji, Director of Egg and Stone.” dGenerate Films. Trans. Heran Hao. August 24, 2012. https://www.dgeneratefilms. com/post/cinematalk-conversation-with-huang-ji-director-of-i-egg-and-stone--i. Leung, Helen Hok-sze. “Queerscapes in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema.” positions 9.2 (2001): 423–47. Leyda, Jay. Dianying/Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and Film Audiences in China. Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1972. Li, Cheuk-to. “The Return of the Father: Hong Kong New Wave and Its Chinese Context.” In Nick Browne et al. (eds.), New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 160–79.

310 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Li, Jie, and Enhua Zhang (eds.). Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Lim, Bliss Cua. Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Lim, Song Hwee. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2006. Lim, Song Hwee. “The Voice of the Sinophone.” In Andrey Yue and Olivia Khoo (eds.), Sinophone Cinemas, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 62–76. Lin, Sylvia Li-chun, and Tze-lan Deborah Sang (eds.). Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu-mei Shih (eds.). Minor Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Liu, Lydia, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko (eds.). The Birth of Chinese Feminism: The Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 2013. Lo, Dennis, and Will Shakes. The Authorship of Place: A Cultural Geography of the New Chinese Cinemas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2021. Lu, Meijing. “Special Interview with Huang Yu-shan,” December 2, 2014. http: // yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/post/44283415-凤凰网文化—專訪導演黃玉珊 Lu, Sheldon H. “Genealogies of Four Critical Paradigms in Chinese-language Film Studies.” In Andrey Yue and Olivia Khoo (eds.), Sinophone Cinemas. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 13–26. Lu, Sheldon H., and Emily Yueh-yu Yeh (eds.). Chinese-language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Lupke, Christopher. “Chu Tien-wen and the Sotto Voce of Gendered Expressions in the Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien.” In Lingzhen Wang (ed.), Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 274–92. Ma, Karen. “Interview with Huang Ji.” Vcinema: Asian Film, Media, and Culture (online journal) February 10, 2017, http://www.vcinemashow.com/ interview-with-huang-ji/. “Malaysian ‘New Wave,’” WordPress, May 11, 2008. https://fallingstones.wordpress. com/2008/05/11/malaysian-new-wave/. Marchetti, Gina. “Interview with Yau Ching: Filming Women in Hong Kong’s Queerspace,” In Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Tan See-Kam (eds.), Hong Kong Screenscapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Frontier. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 213–23. Marchetti, Gina. “Handover Women: Hong Kong Women Filmmakers and the Intergenerational Melodrama of Infidelity.” Intergenerational Feminist Media Studies: Conflicts and Connectivities, special issue of Feminist Media Studies 16.4 (2016): 590–609.

Bibliogr aphy

311

Marchetti, Gina. “Hong Kong as Feminist Method: Gender, Sexuality, and Democracy in Two Documentaries by Tammy Cheung.” In Yiu-Wai Chu (ed.), Hong Kong Culture and Society in the New Millennium. Singapore: Springer, 2017. 59–76 Marchetti, Gina. “The Feminine Touch: Chinese Soft Power Politics and Hong Kong Women Filmmakers.” In Paola Voci and Luo Hui (eds.), Screening China’s Soft Power. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017. 229–51. Marchetti, Gina. “Chloé Zhao and China: The Nomadland Moment.” Film Quarterly (Quorum), April 28, 2021. https://f ilmquarterly.org/2021/04/28/ chloe-zhao-and-china-the-nomadland-moment. Marchetti, Gina. “Where in the World are Chinese Women Filmmakers? Transnational China and World Cinema in the Twenty-First Century.” Studies in World Cinema 1 (2021): 121–44. Margulies, Ivone. In Person: Reenactment in Postwar and Contemporary Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Margulies, Ivone, and Jeremy Szaniawski (eds.). On Women’s Cinema: Across Worlds and Generations. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. Marks, Laura. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Martin, Fran. Situating Sexualities in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. Mercer, John, and Martin Shingler. Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility. London and New York: Wallflower, 2004. Moltke, Johannes von. No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Money and Honey off icial blog, https://moneyandhoney.pixnet.net/blog/ post/2862856. Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Nancy, Jean-Luc. Being Singular Plural. Trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Negt, Oskar, and Alexander Kluge. Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 (German edition 1972). Ng, Eve. “The Work of Hong Kong Filmmaker Yau Ching.” June 9, 2013. https://evecng. wordpress.com/2013/06/09/the-work-of-hong-kong-filmmaker-yau-ching/. Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. The one International Women’s Film Festival. http://www.oneiwff.com/aboutshanyi-brand.html.

312 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Ochiai, Emiko. “Introduction: Reconstruction of Intimate and Public Spheres in Asian Modernity.” In Emiko Ochiai and Hosoya Leo Aoi (eds.), Transformation of the Intimate and the Public in Asian Modernity. London: Brill, 2014. 1–36. Ots, Thomas. “The Silenced Body—the Expressive Leib: on the Dialectic of Mind and life in Chinese Cathartic Healing.” In Thomas J. Csordas (ed.), Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 116–36. Park, Hyun Seon. “South-Korean Cine-feminism on the Move.” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. 12.2 (2020): 91–97. Pattison, Michael. “Longing for the Rain [review].” Eye for Film (June 11, 2013). http:// www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/longing-for-the-rain-2013-film-reviewby-michael-pattison. Pecic, Zoran Lee. New Queer Sinophone Cinema, Local Histories, Transnational Connections. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Peng, Yurong, and Judith Pernin. “My Work Constitutes a Form of Participatory Action.” (Interview with Ai Xiaoming). China Perspectives 1 (2010): 71–7. Pernin, Judith. “Performance, Documentary, and the Transmission of Memories of the Great Leap Famine in the Folk Memory Project.” China Perspectives 4 (2014): 17–26. Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Pickowicz, Paul. “Zou Xueping’s Post-socialist Home-coming.” In Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang (eds.), Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First Century China. Lanham: MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2015. 69–83. Pickowicz, Paul and Yingjin Zhang (eds.). Filming the Everyday: Independent Documentaries in Twenty-First Century China. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2015. Pissin, Annika. “The Global Left Behind Children in China: ‘Unintended Consequences’ in Capitalism.” Working Paper No. 39, Center for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden, 2014. Polan, Dana. “Public’s Fear, or Media as Monster in Habermas, Negt and Kluge.” Social Text, No. 25/26 (1990): 260–66. Povinelli, Elizabeth. Geontologies: A Requiem for Late Liberalism. Duke University Press, 2016. Rainer, Yvonne, and Wen Hui. “Dance Only Exists When It Is Performed.” Beijing Inside-Out Museum, 2019. https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/280594/ yvonne-rainer-and-wen-huidance-only-exists-when-it-is-performed/. Reynaud, Bérénice. “Chinese Digital Shadows: Hybrid Forms, Bodily Archives, and Transnational Visions.” In Zhen Zhang and Angela Zito (eds.), DV-Made

Bibliogr aphy

313

China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2015. 187–214. Robinson, Luke. “From ‘Public’ to ‘Private’: Chinese Documentary and the Logic of Xianchang.” In Chris Berry, Xinyu Lu and Lisa Rofle (eds.), The New Chinese Documentary Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 177–94. Robinson, Luke. Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Robinson, Luke. “To Whom Do Our Bodies Belong? Being Queer in Chinese DV Documentary.” In Zhen Zhang and Angela Zito (eds.), DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2015. 289–315. Rodrigue, Hector. “The Emergence of the Hong Kong New Wave.” In Esther Yau et al. (eds.), At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 29–70. Rosen, Phillip. Change Mummified: Cinema, Historiography, Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Russell, Christine. Experimental Ethnography. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. Seoul International Women’s Film Festival, https://www.siwff.or.kr/eng/. Seetoo, Chiayi. “Documentary in Motion: Dramaturgy of the Corporeal in Chinese Dance Artist Wen Hui’s Works.” Asian Theater Journal. 38.1 (2021): 275–305. Shen, Rui. “To Remember History: Hu Jie Talks about His Documentaries.” Senses of Cinema 35 (April 2005). http://sensesofcinema.com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/ author/shen-rui/. Shen, Shiao-ying. “Locating Feminine Writing in Taiwan Cinema: A Study of Yang Hui-shan’s Body and Sylvia Chang’s Siao Yu.” In Sheldon Lu and Emilie Y. Yeh (eds.), Chinese-language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics, 2005. 266–79. Shih, Shu-mei. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007. Shih, Shu-mei. “On the Conjunctive Method.” In Howard Chiang and Ari Larissa Heinrich (eds.), Queer Sinophone Cultures. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. 474–8. Shih, Shu-mei, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards (eds.). Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Shohat, Ella. “Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge.” Social Text 20.3 (2002): 67–78. Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and Media. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

314 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Stam, Robert. Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. Stam, Robert. World Literature, Transnational Cinema, and Global Media: Towards a Transartistic Commons. New York: Routledge, 2019. Stoller, Paul. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. “Sylvia Chang Pictures,” http://www.brns.com/pages3/sylvia1.html. Tan, Jia. Digital Masquerade: Feminist Rights and Queer Media in China. New York: New York University Press, 2023. Tan, Tammi. “Sylvia Chang Says the Birth of Her Son, Who Was Kidnapped as a Child, Is the ‘Greatest Challenge’ She Has Ever Had.” November 7, 2021. https://www. todayonline.com/8days/sylvia-chang-says-birth-her-son-who-was-kidnappedchild-greatest-challenge-she-has-ever-faced. Tang, Kwong-leung. “East Asian Newly Industrializing Countries: Economic Growth and Quality of Life.” Social Indicators Research. 43.1/2. (1998): 69–96. Tang, Tse-Shang Denise. “Feeling Alive: Voices of Incarcerated Youth in We Are Alive.” Crime Media Culture 13.2 (2017): 153–70. Tarocco, Francesca. “The Wailing Arhats: Buddhism, Photography and Resistance in Modern China.” In David Park and Kuenga Wangmo (eds.), The Art of Merit: Studies in Buddhist Art and Its Conservation. London: Archetype Publications, 2013. 113–23. Tay, Sharon Lin. Women on the Edge: Twelve Political Film Practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Teo, Stephen. Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions. London: British Film Institute, 1997. Trinh, T. Minh-Ha. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989. Tsai, Eva. “Kaneshiro Takeshi: Transnational Stardom and the Media and Culture Industries in Asia’s Global/Postcolonial Age.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 17.1 (Spring 2005): 100–32. Vesudevan, Ravi. The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema. New Delhi, India: Permanent Black, 2010. Voci, Paola. “Blowing Up Beijing: The City as a Twilight Zone.” In Chris Berry, Xinyu Lu and Lisa Rofle (eds.). The New Chinese Documentary Movement: For the Public Record. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 99–115. Voci, Paola. China on Video. London: Routledge, 2010. Vosper, Michelle. “Wen Hui: Releasing the Past for a Boundless Future.” In Michelle Vosper (ed.), Creating across Cultures: Women in the Arts from China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Hong Kong: East Slope Publishing, 2017. 308–27.

Bibliogr aphy

315

Walsh, Bryan. “What Woman Want.” May 15, 2004. http://www.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,600935,00.html. Wang, David. “Sinophone Intervention with China.” In Haun Saussy (ed.), Texts and Transformations: Essays in Honor of the 75th Birthday of Victor H, Mair. Amherst, New York: Cambria, 2018. 59–79. Wang, Lingzhen (ed.). Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Wang, Lingzhen. Revisiting Women’s Cinema: Feminism, Socialism, and Mainstream Culture in Modern China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. Wang, Qi. “Closed and Open Screens: The 9th Beijing Independent Film Festival.” Film Criticism 37.1 (Fall 2012): 62–69. Wang, Qi. “Embodied Visions: Chinese Queer Experimental Documentaries by Shi Tou and Cui Zi’en.” positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 21.3 (2013): 659–81. Wang, Yiman. “The Amateur’s Lightning Rod: DV Documentary in Postsocialist China.” Film Quarterly 58.4 (2005): 16–26. Waugh, Thomas. Show Us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetic of the Committed Documentary. Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow, 1984. Weber, Brenda R. “The Intricacies of an Intimate Public Sphere.” Review of Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Contemporary Literature 50.3 (Fall 2009): 619–23. Wen, Hui. “Female Memory Begins with the Body.” In Jörg Huber and Zhao Chuan (eds.), The Body at Stake: Experiments in Chinese Contemporary Art and Theater. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2013. 131–34. Wen, Hui. “Living Dance Studio: Listening to Third Grandmother’s Stories” (2014), http://www.kampnagel.de/en/program/listening-to-third-grandmothers-storiesmemory-ii-hunger/. Wen, Hui. Artist’s statement for Venice Biennale (2015), typescript, n. p. White, Patricia. Women’s Cinema/World Cinema: Projecting Feminisms in Film. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Widmer, Ellen, and Kang-i Sun (eds.). Writing Women in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Women Filmmakers and Transnational China in the Twenty-First Century. https:// chinesewomenfilmmakers.wordpress.com/. Wu, Guanglun Michael, and Yang Hu. Living with Vulnerabilities and Opportunities in a Migration Context: Floating Children and Left-Behind Children in China. Rotterdam/Boston/Taipei: Sense Publishers, 2016. Wu, Wenguang. “Just on the Road: A Description of Individual Way of Recording Images in the 1990s.” In Hung Wu et al. (eds), Reinterpretation: A Decade of

316 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Experimental Chinese Art, 1900-2000. Guangzhou: Guangdong Museum of Art, 2002. 132–38. Wu, Zhuoliu. Orphans of Asia. Trans. Ioannis Mentzas. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Yau, Ching. http://yauching.com. Yau, Ching. Video Letters 1–3. http://yauching.com/en/art/video/videoletters/. Yau, Ching. Filming Margins: Tang Shu-shuen, a Forgotten Hong Kong Woman Director. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004. Yau, Ching. “Performing Contradictions, Performing Bad-Girlness in Japan.” In Kathy E. Ferguson and Monique Mironesco (eds.), Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific: Method, Practice, Theory. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2008. 138–58. Yau, Ching (ed.). As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland and Hong Kong. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 2010. Yau, Ching. “Bad Kids: Leaving a Message for Their Future Selves.” Renlai November 2, 2010. http://www.erenlai.com/en/focus/2010-focus/free-memory-2010-tidf/ item/4094-bad-kids-leaving-a-message-for-their-future-selves.html. Yau, Ching. “Many and Two of (a) Kin(d): An Imaginary Dialogue with Hong Kong Filmmaker Yau Ching.” Chinese History and Society (Berliner China-Hefte) 40 (August): Berlin: Freie Universität, 2012. 127–37. Yau, Ching. “Q&A with Yau Ching,” Hong Kong Film Festival, New York, April 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ9jx842ek0. Yau, Esther. “Border Crossing: Mainland China’s Presence in Hong Kong Cinema.” In Nick Browne et al. (eds.), New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. New York: Cambridge Press, 1997. 180–201. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu, and Darrel Davis. Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu. “Wenyi and the Branding of Early Chinese Film.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6.1 (2012): 65–94. Yip, June. Envisioning the Nation: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation in the Cultural Imaginary. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. “National/International/Transnational: The Concept of Trans-Asian Cinema and the Cultural Politics of Film Criticism.” In Valentina Vitali and Paul Willemen (eds.), Theorizing National Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 2006. 254–61. Yu, Kiki Tianqi. “Toward a Communicative Practice: Female First-Person Documentary in Twenty-First Century.” In Keith Wagner et al. (eds.), China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the Twenty-first Century. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 23–44.

Bibliogr aphy

317

Yu, Kiki Tianqi. First-Person Documentary Practice in an Individualizing China. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Yu, Kiki Tianqi. “A Conversation with Wen Hui.” Studies in Documentary Film 14.1 (2020): 21–29. Yue, Audrey, and Olivia Khoo (eds.). Sinophone Cinemas. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Zeng, Jinyan. “The Politics of Emotion in Grassroots Feminist Protests: A Case Study of Ai’s Nude Breasts Photography Protest Online.” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (Winter/Spring 2014): 41–52. Zeng, Jinyan. “Visualizing Truth-telling in Ai Xiaoming’s Documentary Activism.” Studies in Documentary Film 11:3 (2017): 184–99. Zeng, Jinyan. “Desiring Feminism in Chinese Documentary.” Chinese Independent Cinema Observer 3 (May 2022): 142–78. Zeng, Jinyan. “The Filmmaker as Feminist.” In Chris Berry et al. (eds.), Anthology on Chinese Independent Cinema, (forthcoming from Amsterdam University Press). Typescript. Zeng, Jinyan, and Ai Xiaoming. “Jiabiangou Elegy: A Conversation with Ai Xiaoming.” Made in China, October 25, 2019. https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/10/25/ jiabiangou-elegy-a-conversation-with-ai-xiaoming/. Zeng, Jinyan et al. “Outcry and Whisper”: A conversation between Jinyan Zeng, Trish McAdam, and Gina Marchetti, dGenerate Films, April 24, 2020. https:// www.dgeneratefilms.com/post/outcry-and-whisper-a-conversation-betweenjinyan-zeng-trish-mcadam-and-gina-marchetti. Zhang, Yingjin. Chinese National Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. Zhang, Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896-1937. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Zhang, Zhen. “Introduction: Bearing Witness: Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation’ (Zhuanxing).” In Zhen Zhang (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 1–45. Zhang, Zhen (ed.). The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Zhang, Zhen. “Transfiguring the Post-socialist City: Experimental Image-Making in Contemporary China.” In Yomi Braester and James Tweedie (eds.), Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 95–118. Zhang, Zhen. “Migrating Hearts: The Cultural Geography of Sylvia Chang’s Melodrama.” In Lingzhen Wang (ed.), Chinese Women’s Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 88–110.

318 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Zhang, Zhen. “Transplanting Melodrama: Observations on the Emergence of Early Chinese Narrative Film.” In Yingjin Zhang (ed.), A Companion to Chinese Cinema. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 25–41. Zhang, Zhen. “Dream-Walking in Digital Wasteland: Observations on the Uses of Black and White in Independent Documentary.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6.3 (2012): 299–319. Zhang, Zhen. “Toward a Digital Political Mimesis: Aesthetic of Affect and Activist Video.” In Zhen Zhang and Angela Zito (eds.), DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent Film. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2015. 316–46. Zhang, Zhen. “From Sidewalk Realism to Spectral Romance: Yang Lina’s Beijing and Beyond.” In Minna Valjakka and Meiqin Wang (eds.), Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China: Urbanized Interface. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2018. 35–59. Zhang, Zhen. “Transnational Melodrama, Wenyi, and the Orphan Imagination.” In Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (eds.), Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 83–98. Zhang, Zhen and Ai Xiaoming. “From Academia to Xianchang: Feminism, Documentary Aesthetic and Social Movement.” Studies in Documentary Film (June 2017): 248–61. Zhang, Zhen and Jiehong Jiang. “Life in-between Screens: ‘The World, Two Meters Away.’” Translated, edited, and introduced by Ellen Y. Chang. Feminist Media Histories 7.1 (2021): 61–80. Zhou, Chenshu. Cinema off Screen: Movie Going in Socialist China. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2021. Zhuang, Jiayun. “Remembering and Reenacting Hunger: Caochangdi Workstation’s Minjian Memory Project.” TDR: The Drama Review 58.1 (Spring 2014): 118–40. Zito, Angela. “Writing in Water, or, Evanescence, Enchantment and Ethnography in a Chinese Park.” Visual Anthropology Review 30.1 (2014): 11–22. Zito, Angela. “The Act of Remembering, The Xianchang of Recording: The Folk/ Minjian Memory Project in China.” Film Quarterly 69.1 (Fall 2015): 20–35.

Bibliogr aphy

319

Selected Bibliography in Chinese Akiyama, Tamako 秋山珠子. “Chao jing – Zhongguo duli yingxiang de riben mailuo” (潮境—中国独立影像的日本脉络) [When Currents Collide: Chinese Independent Cinema and Japan] (中國獨立電影觀察) [Chinese Independent Cinema Observer] Special Issue on Sino-Japanese Connections in Independent Film Cultures 1989-2020, 1 (2021): 290–322. Chen, Feibao 陈飞宝. Taiwan dianying daoyan yishu (台湾电影导演艺术) [The Art of Taiwan Directors]. Taipei, Yatai, 1999. Hsieh, Jen-chang 謝仁昌. “Xingbie ni lü: duochong rentong de aodesai butu – fang You Jing” (性別逆旅：多重認同的奧德賽步徒——訪游靜) [Gender Reverse Travel: The Odyssey of Multiple Identifications—An interview with Yau Ching], Dianying xinshang (電影欣賞) 22.3 (Spring 2004). Hsieh, Li-fa 謝里法. Riju shidai Taiwan meishu yundong shi (日劇時代台灣美術 運動史) [A History of Taiwan Art Moments during Japanese Occupation Era]. Yishujia (藝術家) [Artist], Taipei, 1995. Huang, Chien-ye 黃建業. Renwen dianying de zhuixun (人文電影的追尋) [In Search of a Humanist Cinema]. Taipei, Yuanliu, 1990. Huang, Yu-shan 黄玉珊. “Nanyi xuepai jilupian zhi jueqi yu biaoxian tezheng” (南藝學派紀錄片之崛起與表現特徵) [The Rise and Characteristics of the tnnua School of Documentary]. “Liangan chuanbo xueshu yu shiwu yantaohui”, chaoyang keji daxue yu guoli tainan yishu xueyuan heban (“兩岸傳播學術與實 務研討會”, 朝陽科技大學與國立台南藝術學院合辦), June 7–11, 2004. Huang, Yu-shan 黄玉珊. Nanfang jishi zhi fushi guangying (dianying shu) (南方紀 事之浮世光影 (電影書) [The Strait Story ( film book)]. Taipei: Caogeng, 2005. Huang, Yu-shan 黄玉珊. “Weishenme yao pai Nanfang jishi” (為什麼要拍《南 方紀事》?) [Why Did I Want to Make The Strait Story], Nanfang jishi zhi fushi guangying (南方紀事之浮世光影) [The Strait Story], 2005. Huang, Yu-shan 黄玉珊. “Nüxing yingxiang zai Taiwan – nüxing dianying fazhan chutan” (女性影像在台湾——女性电影发展初探) [Female Screen Images in Taiwan—Exploring the Development of Women’s Cinema], July 2, 2008. http:// yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/post/26423556, originally published in Riben shehui wenxue yuekan (日本社會文學月刊) [Japan’s Social and Literary Monthly], March 2008. Huang, Yu-shan 黃玉珊. Taiying suiyue (台影歲月) [Days of Taiwan Film Studio]. Taipei: Yuanjing, 2022. Ke, Li 柯里 (Yu-shan Huang). Shi nian zhi yue (十年之約) [Rendezvous after a Decade]. Taiwan Chengxing publishing house, 1991. Lai, Shen-chon 賴賢宗. “Chaoyue fushi de yishu guanghua – Huang Yu-shan dianying Nanfang jishi zhi fushi guangying” (超越浮世的藝術光華—黃玉

320 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

珊電影《南方紀事之浮世光影》) [Artistic Light that Transcend the Floating World]. Ziyou shibao fukan (自由時報副刊) [Liberty Times Net], November 9, 2005. http://yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/post/26425574. Lai, Shen-chon 賴賢宗. “Taowang yu anju: Huang Yu-shan dianying Chatianshan zhi ge de xing si” (逃亡與安居:黃玉珊電影《插天山之歌》的省思) [Escape and Dwelling: Reflections on
Huang Yu-shan’s Song of Chatain Mountain. Ziyou shibao fukan (自由時報副刊) [Liberty Times Net], 2007. http://yushan133.pixnet.n et/ blog/post/28096500. Lan, Tzu-wei 藍祖蔚. “Shijian de changhe” (時間的長河) [Long River of Time]. Lanse dianyingmeng wangzhan (藍色電影夢網站) [Blue Cinema Dream website], October 12, 2012. http://4bluestones.biz/mtblog/2012/10/post-2536.html. Lee, Ching-Hui 李靖惠. Li Jinghui mianbao aiqing chuangzuo baogao (李靖 惠《麵包愛情》創作報告) [Report on the Creation of Money and Honey], typescript. Li, Cheuk-to 李焯桃 and Ernest Chan 陳志華 (eds.), Jiaodian yingren Zhang Aijia (焦點影人張艾嘉) [Sylvia Chang: Filmmaker in Focus.] Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (香港國際電影節協會), 2015. Li, Daoxin 李道新. “Chongjian zhuti xing yu chongxie dianying shi: yi Lu Xiaopeng de kuaguo dianying yanjiu yu huayu dianying lunshu wei zhongxin de fansi yu piping” (重建主体性与重写电影史：以鲁晓鹏的跨国电影研究与华语电影论 述为中心的反思与批评) [Re-constructing Subjectivity and Re-writing Cinema History: Reflections and Criticisms Centered on Lu Hsiao-peng’s Transnational Cinema Research and Chinese-language Cinema Discourse] Dangdai dianying (当代电影) [Contemporary Cinema] 8 (2014): 53–58. Liao, Chin-ku 廖錦桂. “Mianbao qingren shisan nian de jilu dengdai: daizhe mengxiang qicheng de yazhou muqin” (《麵包情人》十三年的纪录等待： 带着梦想启程的亚洲母亲) [Thirteen Years of Documenting and Waiting in Money and Honey: Mothers Who Set Sail with Dreams]. Xin xinwen (新新闻) [New News] No. 1335 (October 3, 2012): 106–09. Lin, Fangmei 林芳玫. Jiedu Qiong Yao aiqing wangguo (解讀瓊瑤愛情王國) [Interpreting Qiong Yao’s Kingdom of Love], Taipei: Commercial Press, 2006. Liu, Huiying 刘慧英. Nüquan, qimeng yu minzu guojia huayu (女权、启蒙与民族 国家话语) [Feminism, Enlightenment and Discourses of State-Nation]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 2013. Lu, Meijing 吕美静. “Fenghuangwang wenhua – zhuanfang daoyan Huang Yu-shan” (凤凰网文化—專訪導演黃玉珊) [Special Interview with Huang Yu-shan]. Fenghuangwang wenhua December 2, 2014. http://yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/ post/44283415-凤凰网文化—專訪導演黃玉珊. “Nüying xianchang“ 女影现场 [On the Scene of Women’s Ccinema]. Beijing Houlang fangying and Penghao luntan (北京·后浪放映 & 蓬蒿论坛) [Chinese Women’s

Bibliogr aphy

321

Film Festival, Beijing’s Next Wave Exhibition and Forum], November 23, 2014. http://yushan133.pixnet.net/blog/post/47042152. Ruan, Mei 阮梅. Shiji zhi tong: Zhongguo nongcun liushou ertong diaocha (世纪 之痛：中国农村留守儿童调查) [Pain of the Century: A Survey of Left-Behind Children in China’s Rural Areas]. Beijing: Renmin, 2008. Sek, Kei 石琪. “Yi rou ke gang: yinxiang Zhang Aijia” (“以柔克剛： 印象張艾嘉”) [Overcoming Hardness with Softness: Impressions on Sylvia Chang]. In Li Cheuk-to and Ernest Chan (eds.), Sylvia Chang, 2015. Shu, Yang and Kampnagel-Dramaturgie (eds.). Gonggong kongjian he geren yanjing – laizi Zhongguo de xin shijue (公共空间和个人眼睛－来自中国的新视觉) [Public Space and Personal Eyes – A New Vision in China]. Exhibition catalog. Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany, 2003. Sun, Sun-jong 孫松榮. “Kejianxing de biyu: duanping Huang Yu-shan de Chatianshan zhi ge” (可見性的比喻:短評黃玉珊的《插天山之歌》) [Visible Metaphor: A Brief Review of Huang Yu-shan’s Song of Chatain Mountain]. Fangying zhoubao (放映週報) [Screen Weekly]. November 2007. http://yushan133.pixnet.net/ blog/post/26425018. Sun, Weichuang 孫慰川. “Yi yingxiang ‘liyan’ – lun Taiwan nü daoyan Huang Yu-shan” (以影像“立言“– 論臺灣女導演黃玉珊) [Speaking through Images: On Taiwan Woman Director Huang Yu-shan]. Dianying yishu (電影藝術) [Film Art]. Beijing, China, no. 326, March 2009. Wang, Xiaolu 王小鲁. “Jingguan dianying yu zhaohuan meixue” (静观电影与召 唤美学) [Contemplative Cinema and the Aesthetic of Relations] Dianyingyishu (电影艺术) [Film Art] No. 5 (2012): 75–80. Wang, Xiaolu 王小鲁. “Zhuti jian xian – 20 nian Zhongguo duli dianying de guancha” (主体渐显– 20年中国独立电影的观察) [The Gradual Revelation of Subjectivity—Observations on 20 Years of Development in the Independent Documentary]. Dianyingyishu (电影艺术) [Film Art] No. 6 (2010): 72–78. Wang, Xiaolu 王小魯 and Yang Lina 杨荔纳. “Yang Lina: shi shenghuo rangwo biancheng le nüxingzhuyi zhe” (杨荔纳：是生活让我变成了女性主义者) [Yang Lina: Life Makes Me a Feminist]. Jintian (今天) [Today] No. 131 (2021): 110–27. Wang, Yinjie 王音洁. “Cong koushu lishi dao nüxing lishi xianchang” (从口述历 史到女性历史现场) [From Oral History to Feminist Historical Xianchang]. Special issue edited by Zhen Zhang. Zhongguo duli yingxiang (中国独立影 像) [Chinese Independent Cinema] No. 12. Beijing: Li Xianting Film Fund, 2013. Wang, Yinjie 王音洁. “Suanfa shidai de ‘zhiyan juchang’ – lun Wen Hui shenghuo wudao gongzuoshi zuopin” (算法时代的“直言剧场”—论文慧生活舞蹈工作 室作品) [On Parrhesia Theater in an Algorithmic Era—On Wen Hui and Her Living Dance Studio]. Juchang (剧场) [Drama], Journal of Central Academy of Drama, No. 4 (2021): 77–89.

322 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Wang, Yuemei 王月眉. “Bifang Zeng Jinyan – yi ge bianyuanren de Xianggang banian: ziyou yu kongju gongsheng” (筆訪曾金燕 — 一個邊緣人的香港八 年：自由與恐懼共生) [The Eight Years in Hong Kong for a Marginal Person: Freedom and Fear in Symbiosis]. Interview by Wang Yuemei, June 9–10, 2021. Xuci/wuxing (虚词/无形), 2021. http://p-articles.com/heteroglossia/2321.html?fb clid=IwAR07NRda6YwcngI5VEl7Izw5TsariWxIKf6d1Bq98DhNMj_lidyovaxgIXk. Wei, Shiyu 魏时煜 and Yang Yuanying 杨远婴. Nüxing de dianying: duihua Zhong Ri nü daoyan (女性的电影：对话中日女导演) [Women’s Film: Dialogues with Chinese and Japanese Female Directors]. Shanghai: Eastern China Normal University, 2009. Wen, Hai 文海. Fangzhu de ningshi – jianzheng Zhongguo duli jilupian (放逐的 凝視—見證中國獨立紀錄片) [The Exilic Gaze—Bearing Witness to Chinese Independent Documentary]. Taipei: Tendency Publishing, 2016. Xu, Xiayin. “Yuan zi minjian de gongmin yingxiang” (源自民间的公民影像) [Citizen Images from the Unoff icial Realm]. Changcheng yuebao (长城月报) [Great Wall Monthly], 2010. https://cdtnet2.info/chinese/2010/10/源自民间的公民影 像/ (no longer active). Yang, Tianyi. “Wo pai Laotou” (我拍《老头》) [How I filmed Old Men]. In Wu, Weici 吴蔚慈, Jilu yu tansuo: Dalu jilupian de fazhan yu koushu jilu 1990-2000 (纪录 与探索：大陆纪录片的发展与口述纪录1990-2000) [Recording and Exploring: The Development and Oral History of Documentary in the Mainland]. Taipei: Taipei National Film Archive, 2001. Yau, Ching 游静. Lingqi luzao (另起爐灶) [Building a New Stove—Ear Pain]. Diasporama. Hong Kong: Qingwen, 1996. Yau, Ching 游静. Haoyu: dianying juben ji pinglun (好郁：電影劇本及評論) [Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong: Script and Critical Essays] Hong Kong: Youth Literary Bookstore, 2002. Yau, Ching 游静. Xing/bie guangying: Xianggang dianying zhong de xing yu xingbie wenhua yanjiu (性/别光影：香港電影中的性與性別文化研究) [Sexing Shadows: Gender and Sexuality in Hong Kong Cinema.] Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics’ Society, 2005. Yau, Ching 游静. “New Year Resolution.” Bukeneng de jia (不可能的家) [The Impossible Home]. Hong Kong: Youth Literary Bookstore, 2000. Reprint by Hong Kong Dirty Press, 2017. Yau, Ching and Siu Yi Ky. Bukeneng de jia (不可能的家) [The Impossible Home]. Hong Kong: Youth Literary Bookstore, 2000. Reprint by Hong Kong Dirty Press, 2017. Ye, Jinzhong and James Murray et al. (eds.). Guanzhu liushou ertong – Zhongguo zhongxibu nongcun diqu laodongli waichu wugong dui liushou ertong de yingxiang (关注留守儿童—中国中西部农村地区劳动力外出务工对留守儿童的影响)

Bibliogr aphy

323

[Left-behind Children in Rural China]. Beijing Kexue wenxian chubanshe (北 京：社会科学文献出版社) [Beijing: Social Science Political Press], 2005. Yu, Shao-wen. “Kongjian zaixian yu zuqun rentong – lun 1985, Chatianshan zhi ge zhi lishi yu jiyi” (空間再現與族群認同 ──論《一八九五》、 《插天山之歌》 之歷史與記憶) [Spatial Representation and Ethnic Identity: The History and Memory in Blue Brave 1895 and The Song of Chatain Mountain], Donghai daxue wenxueyuan xuebao (東海大學文學院學報) [Tunghai Journal of Humanities] 52 (July 2011): 121–42. Zhang, Zhen 张真. “Dai shexiangjide nvren– dangdai Zhongguo nvxing jilupian yilan” (带摄像机的女人：当代中国女性纪录片一览) [Woman with a Video Camera – A Glimpse of the Contemporary Chinese Women Documentary Production]. (另眼观看: 海外学者评当代中国纪录片) [Reel China: A New Look at Contemporary Chinese Documentary]. Shanghai: Wenhui, 2006. Zhang, Zhen, and Ai Xiaoming. “Zhang Zhen duihua Ai Xiaoming: Cong xueyuan dao xianchang – nüxing zhuyi, jilu meixue, shehui yundong” (张真对话艾晓明： 从学院到现场－ 女性主义，纪录美学，社会运动‎ ) [Dialogue between Zhang Zhang and Ai Xiaoming: From Academia to Xianchang-Feminism, Documentary Aesthetic, Social Movement]. Nü zuozhe zhuanhao (女作者专号) [‎ Special Issue in Women Authors]. Dianying zuozhe (电影作者) [Filmauteur) 4 (2013): 156–80. Zhao, Jing 赵静. Wo shi nü daoyan (我是女导演) [I Am a Female Director] Hong Kong: Qianxun chubanshe, 2010. Zhao, Siyue 趙思樂. Tamen de zhengtu – zhiji, yuhui yu chongzhuang, Zhongguo nüxing de gongmin juexing zhilu (她們的征途—直擊、迂迴與衝撞，中國女 性的公民覺醒之路) [Their Journeys—Direct Attack, Detour and Collision, Chinese Women’s Road to Civil Awakening]. Taiwan: Xinbei baqi wenhua/ yuanzu wenhua shiye (台灣新北八旗文化/遠足文化事業), 2017. Zhu, Rikun 朱日坤 and Wan Xiaogang 万小刚. Duli jilu: Duihua Zhongguo xinrui daoyan (独立记录：对话中国新锐导演) [Independent Record: Dialogues with Emerging Chinese Filmmakers]. Beijing: Zhongguo minzu sheying yishu chubanshe, 2005.

Filmography 20 30 40 (2004), Sylvia Chang The 400 Blows (Les Quatre-cent coups, 1959), François Truffaut All About Ah Long (阿郎的故事, 1989), Jonnie To American Girl (美國女孩, 2021), Feng-yi Fiona Roan Angels Wear White (嘉年华, 2017), Vivian Qu The Arch (董夫人, 1969), Shu-Shuen Tang Autumn Tempest (落山風, 1988), Huang Yu-shan Bad Women of China (中华坏女人, 2021), He Xiaopei The Ballads of Grandmothers (阿嬤的戀歌, 2003), Lee Ching-hui Barbarian Invasion (野蠻人入侵, 2021), Tan Chui Mui The Beijing Ants (北京蚂蚁, 2014), Ryuji Otsuka Boat People (投奔怒海, 1982), Ann Hui Born in Beijing (京生, 2011), Ma Li A Borrowed Life (多桑, 1994), Wu Nien-jen Buddha Bless America (太平天国, 1996), Wu Nien-jen Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (流浪北京-最后的梦想者, 1991), Wu Wenguang Buried (淹埋, 2009), Wang Libo Burning Dreams (歌舞中國, 2003), Wayne Peng Chiang Ching-kao and Chiang Fong-liang (台湾政治档案─蒋经国与蒋方良, 1997), Huang Yu-shan China Behind (再見中國, 1974), Tang Shu-Shuen Citizens’ Investigation (公民调查, 2009), Ai Xiaoming City of Memories (思念之城, 2007), Jasmine Ching-hui Lee A City of Sadness (悲情城市, 1989), Hou Hsiao-hsien The Cloud in Her Room (她房间里的云, 2020), Zhenglu Xinyuan Come Home, My Child! (愛子歸來, 2022), Jasmine Ching-hui Lee Comrades, almost a Love Story (甜蜜蜜, 1996), Peter Ho-Sun Chan Concrete Clouds (乌云压顶, 2013), Chatametikool Lee Conjugal Affairs (新同居时代, 1994), Samson Chiu Leung-chun, Yonfan, Sylvia Chang The Crossing (过春天, 2018), Bai Xue Dancing with the Third Grandmother (和三奶奶跳舞, 2015), Wen Hui The Day on the Beach (海滩的一天, 1983), Edward Yang Diasporama: Dead Air (另起爐灶之耳仔痛, 1997), Yau Ching Disturbing the Peace (老妈蹄花, 2009), Ai Weiwei Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦, 1977), Lee Han-hsiang

326 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Drifting Petals (花果飄零, 2021), Clara Law Eat Drink Man Woman (饮食男女, 1994), Ang Lee Egg and Stone (鸡蛋和石头, 2012), Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka Eight Tales of Gold (八兩金, 1989), Mable Cheung Eleven Women (十一個女人, 1981), Edward Yang, Sylvia Chang, et al. Enemy of the State (国家的敌人, 2009), Ai Xiaoming The Epic of Central Plains (中原纪事, 2006), Ai Xiaoming and Hu Jie Evening News (晚間新聞, 1980), Mimi Lee Father and Son (父子情, 1981), Allen Fong Fear(less) and Dear (诚惶（不）诚恐，亲爱的, 2020), Anson Mak Female Architect Hsieu Ze-lan (世纪女性台湾风华─修泽兰, 2003), Huang Yu-shan Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (和风鸣, 2007), Wang Bing A Filmless Festival (沒有電影的電影節, 2015), Wang Wo Finding Oneself (搵自己, 2000), Yau Ching A First Farewell (第一次的离别, 2018), Wang Lina Floating (飘, 2003), Huang Weikai Flow (流, 1993), Yau Ching Flying in Darkness (暗夜飛行, 2011), Jasmine Ching-hui Lee The Foolish Bird (笨鸟2017), Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka Forbidden Voices: How to Start a Revolution with a Laptop (2012), Barbara Miller For Fun (找乐, 1993), Ning Ying The Forgotten: Reflections on Eastern Pond (池東紀事, 2006), Huang Yu-shan Full Moon in New York (人在紐約, 1990), Stanley Kwan Gaga (哈勇家, 2022), Laha Mebow Garden of Heaven: Fighting for Women’s Rights in China (天堂花园, 2005), Ai Xiaoming and Hu Jie Gift of Life (生命, 2003),Wu Yi-feng Girl’s School (女子學校, 1982), Mimi Lee Good Morning, Taipei (早安臺北, 1979), Lee Hsing Hidden Letters (女書, 2022), Violet Du Feng and Qing Zhao Hi, Mom (你好, 李焕英, 2021), Jia Ling Home Video (家庭录像, 2001), Yang Lina Hooligan Sparrow: A Champion for Girls’ and Women’s Rights in China (流氓燕, 2016), Nanfu Wang Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong (好郁, 2002), Yau Ching I’m Starving (我餓, 1998), Yau Ching In Our Time (光陰的故事, 1982), Edward Yang, Ko I-chen, Tao Te-chen, and Yi Chang In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul (寻找林昭的灵魂, 2004), Hu Jie Is There Anything Specific You Want Me to Tell You About? (你有什麼特別的要我 告訴你？, 1990), Yau Ching

Filmogr aphy

327

Jade Love (玉卿嫂 , 1984), Chang Yi Jiabiangou Elegy: Life and Death of the Rightists (夹边沟祭事, 2017), Ai Xiaoming The Journey of the Tiananmen Mothers (2009) June 30, 1997 (慶回歸, 1997), Yau Ching Juvenile Laborers Confined in Dabao (大堡小劳教, 2013), Xie Yihui Karamay (克拉玛依, 2010), Xu Xin Kuei-mei, A Woman (我这样过了一生 Wo zheyang guole yisheng, 1985), Chang Yi Lao An (老安, 2008), Yang Lina Legend of the Mountain (山中传奇, 1979), King Hu Lesbian Factory (T婆工廠, 2010), Susan Chen Let’s Dance Together (一起跳舞, 2007), Yang Lina A Letter from Taipei (四季如春的台北, 1982), Huang Yu-shan Letter from Taipei (青梅竹马, 1985), Edward Yang A Letter to A’ma (給阿嬤的一封信, 2021), Chen Hui-ling Listening to Third Grandma’s Stories (听三奶奶讲过去的故事, 2012), Wen Hui The Literary Route of Chon Chao-cheng (锺肇政文学路, 2006), Huang Yu-shan The Literary Vision of Yeh Shih Tao (叶石涛文学境, 2012), Huang Yu-shan Little Red Flowers (看上去很美, 2006), Zhang Yuan Longing for the Rain (春梦, 2013), Yang Lina Losing (失散, 2005), Zuo Yixiao Lost Course (迷航, 2020), Jill Li Love Conquers All (爱情征服一切, 2006), Tan Chui-mui Love Education (相亲相爱, 2017), Sylvia Chang The Loves of Lao An (老安, 2008), Yang Lina Luojia Village: Ren Dingqi and I (罗家屋：我和任定其, 2011), Luo Bing M*A*S*H (1979), Larry Gelbart Mama (妈妈和七天的时间, 2020), Li Dongmei Meishi Street (煤市街, 2006), Ou Ning Memories Look at Me (记忆望着我, 2012), Song Fang Memories of Military Villages (念念眷村, 2023), Huang Yu-shan Mildred Pierce (1945), Michael Curtiz Money and Honey (面包情人, 2011), Jasmine Ching-hui Lee MURDER and Murder (1996), Yvone Rainer Murmur of the Hearts (念念, 2015), Sylvia Chang My Dear Love (親親我的愛, 2008), Jasmine Ching-hui Lee My Edward Prince (金都, 2019), Norris Wong My Sister (我的姐姐, 2021), Yin Ruoxin Myth of Love (爱情神话, 2021), Shao Yihui Never Give Up (汪洋中的一條船, 1978), Hsing Lee Nightingale, Not the Only Voice (夜莺不是唯一的歌喉, 2010), Tang Danhong

328 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Night Scene (夜景, 2004), Cui Zi’en No Rule is Our Rule (沒有規則是我們的規則, 2022), Wen Hui and Eiko Otake Old Men (老头, 1999), Yang Lina One Child Nation (2019), Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang On the Beat (民警故事, 1995), Ning Ying The Other Bank (彼岸, 1995), Jiang Yue Our Children (我们的娃娃, 2009), Ai Xiaoming Our Story (我们的故事 Women de gushi, 2013), Yang Yang Outcry and Whisper (喊叫与絮语, 2020), Ai Xiaoming Oxhide (牛皮, 2005), Liu Jiayin Passion (最爱, 1986), Sylvia Chang Petition (上访, 2009), Zhao Liang Peony Birds (牡丹鳥, 1990), Huang Yu-shan The Petrel Returns (海燕, 1997), Huang Yu-shan The Pickpocket (小武, 1997), Jia Zhangke Platform (站台, 2001), Jia Zhangke A Poem to Liu Xia (致刘霞, 2015), Zeng Jinyan Posterity and Perplexity (碧云天, 1976), Lee Hsing Prisoners in the Freedom City (自由城的囚徒, 2007), Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan Privilege (1990), Yau Ching Pushing Hands (推手, 1991), Ang Lee Queer China, “Comrade” China (誌同志, 2009), Cui Zi’en The Red Violin (1998), François Girard Rice Rhapsody (海南鸡饭, 2004), Kenneth Bi River of Forgetting (忘川, 2009), Ai Xiaoming Rouge (胭脂扣, 1987), Stanley Kwan Run Papa Run (一个好爸爸, 2008), Sylvia Chang Satiated Village (吃饱的村子, 2011), Zou Xueping The Secret (疯劫, 1979), Ann Hui Send Me to the Clouds (送我上青云, 2019), Teng Congcong Sense and Sensibility (理智与情感, 1995), Ang Lee Shanghai Dreams (青红, 2005), Wang Xiaoshuai Siao Yu (少女小渔, 1995), Sylvia Chang Singing in the Wilderness (旷野歌声, 2021), Chen Dongnan Sisters of the World Unite (莎莎嘉嘉站起來, 1991), Sylvia Chang The Song of Chatain Mountain (插天山之歌, 2007), Huang Yu-shan Song of the Exile (客途秋恨, 1990), Ann Hui Sons (儿子, 1996), Zhang Yuan Soursweet (1988), Mike Newell Southern Night (夜夜, 2008), Huang Yu-shan

Filmogr aphy

329

Spring Cactus (真情狂愛, 1998), Huang Yu-shan Spring Song (春歌 aka. Mama! 妈妈！, 2022), Yang Lina Spring Tides (春潮, 2019), Yang Lina The Starving Village (饥饿的村子, 2010), Zou Xueping Stonewalling (石門, 2018), Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka Story of a Small Town (小城故事, 1979), Lee Hsing The Strait Story (南方紀事之浮世光影, 2005), Huang Yu-shan Street Angel ( 马路天使, 1937), Yuan Muzhi Summer Blur (汉南夏日, 2020), Han Shuai Taipei Story (青梅竹马, 1995), Edward Yang Taishi Village (太石村, 2005), Ai Xiaoming Taste of Life (百味人生, 2015), Huang Yu-shan Tempting Heart (心动, 1999), Sylvia Chang They are Not the Only Unhappy Couple (不快乐的不止一个, 2001), Wang Fen This Love of Mine (我的爱, 1986), Chang Yi Though I Am Gone (我虽死去, 2007), Hu Jie A Time to Live, A Time to Die (童年往事, 1985), Hou Hsiao-Hsien To Justify Bu Qinfu (还卜琴父以美丽, 2011), Wang Yunlong To Live Is Better Than to Die (好死不如赖活着, 2003), Chen Weijun Tonight Nobody Goes Home (今天不回家, 1996), Sylvia Chang Trace (痕迹, 2013), Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka Twin Bracelets (雙鐲, 1989), Huang Yu-shan Underground (地下, 2005), Huang Ji Unhappiness Does Stop at One (不快乐的不只一个, 2001), Wang Fen Unknown Pleasures (任逍遥, 2002), Jia Zhangke Unmarried Mothers (未婚妈妈, 1980), Mimi Lee Untold Herstory (流麻溝十五號, 2022), Zero Zhou The Vagina Monologues: Stories from China (阴道独白: 幕后故事, 2005), Hu Jie Video Letters (錄像書簡 1–3, 1993–4), Yau Ching Village Video Project (乡村影像计划, 2006–2007), Wu Wenguang et al. Vival Tonal: The Dance Age (跳舞時代, 2003), Kuo Chen-ti and Chen Wei-ssu Vive L’amour (爱情万岁, 1994), Tsai Ming-Liang The Warmth of the Orange Peel (橘子皮的温度, 2009), Huang Ji The Water Murmurs (海边升起一座悬崖, 2022), Chen Jianying We (我们, 2017), Huang Wenhai We Are Alive (壞孩子, 2010), Yau Ching We are the…of Communism (我们是共产主义的省略号, 2007), Cui Zi’en We the Workers (凶年之畔, 2017), Wenhai Wedding Banquet (喜宴, 1993), Ang Lee Where Is My Home? (家在何方, 1999), Jasmine Ching-hui Lee

330 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

White Ribbon (白丝带, 2004), Hu Jie Who Killed Our Children? (谁杀了我们的孩子？, 2008), Pan Jianlin and Zhang Lei Why Are the Flowers So Red? (花儿为什么这样红？, 2010), Ai Xiaoming Wild Grass (野草, 2009), Yang Lina The Wizard of Oz (1939), Victor Fleming Women of the Century: Hsu Shih-hsien (世纪女性台湾第一─许世贤, 2000), Huang Yu-shan Women/Workers: A tale of courage and leadership (2021), Wenhai and Zeng Jinyan Year without a Summer (无夏之年, 2010), Tan Chui-mui Yellow Earth (黄土地, 1984), Chen Kaige Yi Yi (一一, 2000), Edward Yang



List of figures

Fig. Introduction 1 Reunion at Beijing Independent Film Festival, August 2012 (from left to right, Wen Hui, Zeng Jinyan, author, Shi Tou, Wang Qi; seated, Ming Ming) [Author’s photo; photographed by Wang Yinjie]13 Fig. Introduction 2 Women Makes Waves International Film Festival (wmwiff), October 2015 (Huang Yu-shan, co-founder, front row left 2; Fan Ching, chairwoman of Taiwan Women’s Film Association at the time, from row left 3; Yang Lina, filmmaker from the prc, front row right 1; author front row right 2) [Courtesy of Taiwan Women’s Film Association]13 Fig.1.1 A painting of two intertwined hands suggesting intense erotic union (Passion, 1986)62 Fig.1.2 Two girlfriends rejoin their hands at long last (Passion, 1986)62 Fig.1.3 “These are the days when I missed you… Now I return them to you.” (Tempting Heart, 1999)65 Fig. 1.4 20, 30, 40: Cross-generational collaboration between three actresses and singers69 Figs. 1.5–7 Three women living in the same neighborhood experiencing an earthquake and its aftershocks71 Fig. 1.8 Tearful parting at the airport (20 30 40, 2004)73 Fig. 2.1 First Taiwan Women’s Visual Arts Festival, 1993. (Huang Yu-shan, forth from right in the back row) (Courtesy of Huang Yu-shan)84 Fig. 2.2 “Love birds” trapped in domesticity, Peony Birds (1990)90 Fig. 2.3 Mother and Daughter reconcile, Peony Birds (1990)90 Fig. 2.4 Spring Cactus (1998): Urban desert91 Fig. 2.5 Huang Ching-cheng’s self-portraiture in The Forgotten: Reflections on Eastern Pond (2005). Huang Yu-shan’s uncle, the artist died in the tragic sinking of Takachiho Maru in 1943.94 Fig. 2.6 In Tokyo. Li Kui-hsiang, pianist and Huan Ching-cheng’s wife, is also from Penghu.96 Fig. 2.7 The remaining head of a sculpture of Li Kui-hsiang. Its body sank during the shipwreck.96 Fig. 2.8 Hsiu-hsiu, the art curator/conservationist with a debilitating condition, “casts light on forgotten history.”98

332 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig. 2.9 Landscape as a “theatric field” in The Song of Chatain Mountain (2007)102 Fig.3.1 Old Men (1999) (Courtesy of Yang Lina)113 Fig. 3.2 Yang Lina filming in a park in Beijing, ca. 2007 (Courtesy of Yang Lina)119 Fig. 3.3 “Twilight Love”: Lao An and Xiao Wei in The Loves of Lao An (2008) (Courtesy of Yang Lina)120 Fig. 3.4. Longing for the Rain, 2013. Poster designed by Wang Wo.123 Fig. 3.5 A repressed middle-class woman lost in her “Spring dream” (Courtesy of Yang Lina)124 Fig. 3.6 A Daoist priest condemns the ghost (Courtesy of Yang Lina)127 Fig. 3.7 Praying with a sympathetic female spirit medium (Courtesy of Yang Lina)127 Fig. 3.8 “Talismanic Image”: A Miraculous Birth (Courtesy of Yang Lina)131 Fig. 4.1 Egg and Stone (2011). ©️yellow-green PI139 Fig. 4.2 A 24 hour internet Café as refuge (Foolish Bird, 2017). ©️yellow-green PI143 Fig. 4.3 The concealed xianchang : Honggui’s secret (Egg and Stone, 2011). ©️yellow-green PI146 Fig. 4.4 Honggui sits for a portrait by Baiyu: art-making as healing and bonding. ©️yellow-green PI147 Fig. 4.5 Honghui and Ah Jiu (Egg and Stone, 2011). ©️yellowgreen PI149 Fig. 4.6 Flashback trauma: reenacting the “scene of crime.” ©️yellow-green PI151 Fig. 4.7 Blood Bowel Sutra. ©️yellow-green PI154 Fig. 4.8 A home video on the road : Huang Ji breastfeeds Chihiro on the train. ©️yellow-green PI158 Fig. 4.9 Otsuka with Chihiro in a baby carrier at a local police station. ©️yellow-green PI159 Fig. 4.10 “Who cares about the Senkaku Islands?!” ©️yellowgreen PI162 Fig. 5.1 Skirt (1996). (Courtesy of Wen Hui)169 Fig. 5.2 Memory (2008), a “documentary theater” work. (Courtesy of Wen Hui)169 Fig. 5.3 The open stage: shooting Dancing with the Third Grandmother. (Courtesy of Wen Hui)170

List of figures

333

Fig. 5.4 First-personal plural: Wen Hui and Third Grandmother bond through storytelling, dancing and filming. (Courtesy of Wen Hui)178 Fig. 5.5 Third Grandmother’s “spicy-painful” stories178 Fig. 5.6 “Listening” to Third Grandmother through gestures and movements (Courtesy of Wen Hui)181 Fig. 5.7 “I’m following you”183 Fig. 5.8 “The Third Eye/I”183 Fig. 5.9 “When one is pained by heartache, dance will help.” (Courtesy of Wen Hui)185 Fig. 6.1 Money and Honey poster: An epic documentary melodrama of migrant labor and love. (Courtesy of Jasmine Ching-hui Lee)195 Fig. 6.2 Lolita (first left) and Arlene (front right) at a recruitment agency in Manila in 1998.203 Figs. 6.3–4 Suspended mourning, belated homecoming205 Figs. 6.5–6 Animated poem, “The Clock,” in Money and Honey206 Fig. 6.7 “Sowing and irrigating over Time”: Lolita and her children and grandchild by the river in their hometown in 2011.207 Fig. 6.8 The place of faith in Money and Honey: Marilyn prays at the church214 Fig. 6.9 “The world is the witness to our love…”: Reunion in the Philippines. (Courtesy of Jasmine Ching-hui Lee)216 Fig. 6.10 “Baby” and Lolita’s “homecoming” to Taiwan, 2012. (Courtesy of Jasmine Ching-hui Lee)217 Fig. 7.1 “Minor feelings”: Yau Ching in We Are Alive, “her most autobiographical work.”224 Fig. 7.2 Video Letters 1: “Dear Mona.” (Courtesy of Yau Ching)228 Fig. 7.3 Video Letters 2: “I’m not you.” (Courtesy of Yau Ching)228 Fig. 7.4 “Taste of Home:” Mother in the kitchen in Ho Yuk/Let’s Love Hong Kong. (Courtesy of Yau Ching)230 Fig.7.5 I’m Starving: Yau Ching on the set in Hell’s Kitchen. (Courtesy of Yau Ching)232 Figs. 7.6–8 Macau-Hong Kong-Sapporo: An Inter-Asian Video Workshop Project242 Fig.7.9 “Be water, my friend”: popular culture and film history as sources of healing246 Fig. 7.10 Recording a video letter for the future self (Courtesy of Yau Ching)247

334 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

Fig.8.1 Ai Xiaoming’s “naked” protest against child abuse, in solidarity with activist Ye Haiyan. (Courtesy of Zeng Jinyan and Ai Xiaoming)254 Fig. 8.2 Huang Shuhua seeks justice for her daughter. (Courtesy of Ai Xiaoming)266 Figs. 8.3–4 “It’s time to create feminist documentary films in China.”267 Figs. 8.5–8 “Against Phallic worship”: dialectic montage and superimposition editing calling for truth and justice.270 Fig. 8.9 Elder women guarding the evidence in the village office. (Photo by Huang Haitao, courtesy of Ai Xiaoming)271 Fig. 8.10 “I’m on your side”: Ai Xiaoming filming Three Days in Wukan Village. (Photo by Deng Chuanbin, courtesy of Ai Xiaoming)273 Figs. 8.11–12 Irish filmmaker Trish McAdam’s animation bridges women workers’ struggles across time and space.278 Figs. 8 13–15 Healing and transformation: video confession, performance, and documenting.282 Fig. 8.16 A homemade “film festival”: screening of Ai’s film and the gathering of friends and fellow activists in Ai Xiaoming’s apartment in Wuhan. (Courtesy of Zeng Jinyan and Wenhai)283 Fig. E.1 Poster for Barbarian Invasion, 2021. (Courtesy of Tan Chui Mui)291

Index #MeToo Movement 25, 163 20 30 40 (film) 53, 55, 57, 63, 68, 69, 73, 74, 76 abortion 151, 152, 155, 234, 281 activism 14, 38, 42, 173, 198, 199, 207, 251–255, 257, 260–265, 269, 271–276, 277, 279, 281, 283, 289 (see also sentimentalism; see also documentary practices) activist video 28, 251 adolescence 43, 63, 64, 88, 90, 143, 144, 147, 150, 152, 221, 223, 224, 241–243 Ai Xiaoming 12, 14, 19, 25, 28, 30, 31, 42, 43, 142, 199, 251–257, 261–268, 270–276, 281, 282 AIDS epidemic 256, 264 alienation 60, 63, 70, 121, 125, 142, 148, 156, 204, 225, 277 (see also heteronormativity; see also labor) alternative public sphere, the 24, 173 Ang Lee 12, 34, 51–55, 57, 75, 83, 86 animation 117, 147, 197, 201, 206, 208, 210, 251, 255, 276, 277 Ann Hui 21, 54, 56, 66, 293 anthropology 27, 72, 119, 163, 180, 197 archives 15, 19, 97, 108, 111, 139, 183 of the body 130, 171, 175 arthouse cinema 14, 17, 110, 198, 251, 279, 289, 290, 292 auteurism 12, 17, 19, 22, 23, 34, 54, 55, 81, 82, 85, 262 and criticism 52, 53, 75 authorship 18, 20–22, 24 Autumn Tempest (film) 86, 87, 89, 92 (see also “Trilogy of Erotic Desire”) Barbarian Invasion (film) 290, 293 Beijing Independent Film Festival (BIFF) 11, 15, 110, 137, 156, 186, 254, 290 bieguan 15 birds, as a film device 86, 87, 89, 92, 140, 210 Black and White Film Studio 83, 84, 86 Blood Bowl Sutra (text) 153, 154 “bodily inscriptions” 23 “body politic” 34 (see also feminism) body, the 57, 95, 101, 114, 117, 118, 130, 149, 154, 168, 182, 243, 254, 260 and gender 23, 125, 152, 155, 156, 186 as an archive 175, 179, 180, 182 and private space 148 and the state 163 (see also archives; see also memory) bourgeois ideology 24, 25, 61, 62, 118, 125, 173, 258

Buddhism 58, 88, 108, 109, 122, 127–130, 150, 153 bureaucracy 157, 160, 162, 163 camera 30, 33, 108, 114, 118, 121, 122, 151, 157, 159 as activism 273, 274 and compassion 43, 116, 131, 139 and the intimate-public 170, 171, 174, 180, 181, 184 and memorialization 97, 150, 181 (see also digital video) “candid speech” 168–170 Cantonese 17, 37, 38, 57, 63, 226, 230, 233, 234, 240, 243, 245 and colonization 239 contraception 234 capitalism 24, 25, 29, 39, 40, 89, 109, 111, 144, 157, 199, 200, 211, 212, 214, 231, 239, 243, 245, 259, 277, 290 (see also labor) care workers 192-194, 198, 200, 204, 213, 218, 232, 247 (see also Feima) Catholicism 55, 212, 213 censorship 14, 16, 25, 130, 132, 276, 290 Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC) 57, 84 childbirth 60, 101, 153, 178, 253 childhood 35, 99, 127, 160, 164, 179, 183, 212, 232, 233, 240, 241, 245 (see also archives) “Chinese Dream, the” 125, 126, 131 (see also class) Christianity 91, 199, 212, 213 “choreography of the everyday” 43, 167, 180 cinema vérité, 111, 163, 176, 201, 231, 262 cinematic metaphor 41, 72, 99, 101, 138, 235 cinematography 120, 125, 139, 152, 157 Citizens’ Investigation (film) 264, 275 citizenship 26, 161, 173, 243, 275 forced 102, 159 and media 257 class 23, 53, 81, 87, 101, 115, 124, 173, 179, 269 mobility 88, 209 (see also middle class, the) Cold War, the 12, 15, 17, 37, 39, 40, 44, 82, 88, 210, 232, 257, 258 collaborative documentary 43, 221, 247 colonialism 25, 29, 53, 95, 98, 100, 222–224, 230, 231, 239, 240 communicative action 172 communism 27, 39, 259, 263 “compassionate camera, the” 43, 107, 131, 139 Confucianism 29, 125 Conjugal Afffairs (film) 68

336 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

consumerism 112, 142 Covid-19 pandemic 17, 25, 44, 132, 164, 187, 287–292 cultural production 27, 37, 52, 140, 173, 258 Cultural Revolution, the 20, 40, 118, 122, 186, 233, 258, 263 culture politics 35, 42, 75, 85, 89, 239, 266 of the neo-Cold War 44, 287 dajian 169, 181, 182, 184 dance 14, 26, 168–171, 175, 182, 211, 269 (see also social dance) Dancing with the Third Grandmother (film) 168, 174, 180, 182, 184 depopulation 163 desertification 162 diaspora 16–18, 21, 23, 27, 80, 34, 69, 192, 208, 221, 225, 226, 232, 236, 239, 288, 289 Diasporama: Dead Air (film) 231, 236, 239, 241, 243, 246 digital video (DV) 43, 44, 108, 110, 111, 114, 116, 117, 118, 122, 125, 130, 131, 140, 156, 175, 182, 255, 256, 260–264, 276, 279 (see also camera; see also documentary practices) direct cinema 27, 111, 117, 201, 255, 256, 262 “documentary theater” 27, 168, 169, 186 domesticity 60, 90, 131, 200, 214 (see also motherhood) domestic sphere, the 16, 25, 30, 163, 171, 186, 200, 201, 218 “dream-walking” 125, 126 earthquakes 71–74, 84, 256, 264, 274 Egg and Stone (film) 14, 138, 139, 141, 143–146, 150, 152, 156–158, 163, 234 electoral rights 264, 271 emigration 237, 239, 241, 243 “emplacement” 81 eroticism 61, 88, 101, 109, 122, 125, 126, 128, 130 (see also dream-walking) ethnicity 23, 34, 37, 100, 102, 160, 172, 277 exile 226, 229, 233, 234, 248, 251, 254, 280 family 28, 29, 43, 52, 55, 58–60, 62, 66–68, 70, 74, 75, 87, 88, 93, 97, 101, 111, 125, 144, 146, 158–161, 172, 177, 184, 186, 192, 193, 205, 207, 211, 214, 215, 222, 232, 259, 288, 289 nuclear 43, 64, 111, 130, 137, 140, 160, 174 patrilineal 62, 74, 88, 127, 130, 146, 174 and siblings 55 (see also kinship) farming 101 Feima 192, 194, 200, 203, 211–214, 216–218 (see also care workers) female bonding 42, 63, 82, 86, 92, 103, 147, 177, 184, 186, 232 feminine writing 57 (see also “psychic interiority”)

feminism 12, 16, 21, 22, 25, 29–32, 34, 38–40, 75, 86, 91, 110, 173, 254 western conceptions of 17, 18, 21, 22, 40 (see also activism; see also “body politic”; see also Sinophone cine-feminism; see also transnationalism) “Feminist Tetralogy, the” 85, 86, 92, 103 feudalism 179, 222 film colorization 60, 61, 88, 95, 125, 181, 185, 227, 229 film editing 86, 87, 94, 114, 117, 122, 130, 175, 182, 201, 208, 209, 218, 227, 235, 236, 255, 256 film sets 60, 61, 88, 102 flashback (film device) 60, 66, 73, 145, 150, 280 Flow (film) 226, 231, 232, 235, 236, 238 Folk Memory Project, the 175, 176, 179, 182, 184 food 104, 155, 160, 203, 208, 214, 238, 273, 282 (see also rituals) free press 26, 173 ganxing 114 Garden in Heaven (film) 255, 256, 265 gender 20, 22, 28, 29, 33, 39, 43, 59, 60, 67, 72, 89, 101, 108, 109, 161–163, 172–174, 179, 186, 224, 226, 244, 289 studies of 27, 223, 248 politics of 37, 40, 57, 75, 85, 89, 180, 266 gender discrimination 34, 72, 264, 266, 290 gendered persona 109, 112, 131 generational relationships 28, 41, 69, 89, 104, 129 geography 51, 57, 63, 69, 80, 81, 92, 97, 110, 222 geological occurrences, as film motif 41, 65, 66, 68, 72, 80, 91, 104, 115, 128, 141, 151, 202, 281 (see also earthquakes) Global South, the 195, 198 globalization 17, 18, 22, 25, 26, 28, 33, 38, 54, 89, 115, 131, 138, 142, 145, 162, 163, 223, 287 gossip 30 grassroots happenings 25, 29, 160, 173, 256, 260, 272, 275 (see also activism) heteronormativity 60, 64, 66, 67, 73, 74, 89 (see also patriarchy; see also nuclear family, the) Hollywood 18, 20, 38, 52, 58, 61, 85, 89, 129, 289 home videos 43, 137, 140, 157, 159, 163, 170 homeland 43, 59, 72, 200, 229, 231, 235 Hong Kong 12, 14, 16, 17, 19–23, 25, 31, 34, 36, 40–43, 51, 53–56, 59, 61, 63–65, 67, 68, 74, 76, 83, 84, 88, 103, 126, 128, 138, 145, 221–223, 225–227, 229–231, 236–241, 243, 245, 246, 248, 252, 254, 277, 279–281, 287–289, 293, 295 Hou Hsiao-Hsien 12, 18, 36, 52–54, 59, 80, 91, 179 housewife, the 63, 109, 122, 202 (see also nuclear family, the)

Index

Huang Ji 12, 14, 25, 31, 37, 43, 137–144, 152, 156–158, 161–164, 185, 234 Huang Yu-shan 12, 16, 28, 30, 31, 37, 41, 42, 79, 93, 95, 97, 142 I’m Starving (film) 226, 229, 231, 237, 238 immigration 43, 191, 198, 225, 259 reverse 239, 248 independent documentary 15, 16, 27, 115, 117, 124, 126, 173, 255, 257, 266 indexicality 80 and Marxism 259, 260 individualism 26, 29, 41, 173, 258 (see also capitalism) individualization 42, 172, 245 (see also capitalism) industrialization 20, 88, 89, 157, 192, 277 intimacy 24, 27, 74, 145, 149, 151, 155, 163, 235 intimate-public commons 4, 12, 14, 76, 173, 174, 186, 187, 255, 283, 287 conception of 24-32 definition of 26 Jasmine Ching-hui Lee 12, 15, 28, 30, 31, 35, 37, 44, 84, 191–193, 196, 199, 201, 202, 204–218, 222, 231 Jia Zhangke 12, 18, 109, 125, 141, 274 judicial system, the 255, 264, 266 kinship 28, 29, 38, 43, 52, 55, 66, 67, 70, 74, 75, 88, 91, 97, 101, 150, 160, 161, 168, 174, 177, 186, 200, 216, 222, 232, 236, 277, 288 (see also activism) labor 28, 29, 38, 43, 193, 194, 198–203, 207, 208, 214, 217, 259, 269, 275, 276 conditions of 218, 233, 282 contracted 201, 203–205, 208, 212 export of 200, 212 (see also temporality) land reform 88, 179 language 12, 16, 17, 19, 29, 34–37, 52, 53, 55, 58, 75, 81, 84, 129, 153, 164, 171, 180, 209–211, 218, 234, 239, 240 body 130 laughter 15, 63, 120, 150, 151, 177, 180, 204, 210 left-behind children 43, 137–145, 148, 155, 156, 158, 163, 200, 234 Lesbian Factory (film) 15, 198, 199, 201, 218 lesbians 88, 200, 227, 261 Let’s Dance Together (film) 108, 117 lighting 99, 100, 101, 104, 145, 147, 151 Listening to Third Grandmother’s Stories (film) 168, 175–177, 180–182, 184–186 Longing for the Rain (film) 16, 108, 132, 154, 290 Maoism 35, 175, 233, 258, 260, 262 feminism in the aftermath of 39, 40 Mao Zedong 40, 139, 158

337 marriage 29, 57, 60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 88, 92, 122, 158, 160, 161, 163, 177, 186, 204, 238 melancholy 80, 111, 121, 248 as feminine 66, 73 melodrama 28, 29, 34, 42, 43, 51, 52, 58, 59, 62, 64, 72, 74, 86, 88, 194, 200, 201, 208, 209, 211–214, 218, 260, 269, 289 wenyi 42, 55, 56, 61, 73, 81 and maternity 27, 52, 68, 75, 197, 290 (see also realism) memory 75, 93, 97, 140, 171, 175, 176, 179, 180, 183, 185, 186, 192, 263, 282 (see also body, the) menstruation 140, 152, 153, 156, 178 (see also adolescence; see also sanitary pads; see also sexuality) metropolis 70, 144 middle-class, the 28, 60, 81, 109, 111, 122, 125, 126, 268, 290 migration 17, 35, 57, 91, 138, 139, 150, 157, 172, 192, 193, 197, 200, 212, 225, 233, 248, 289 digital 288 Mildred Pierce (film) 88, 89 minjian 27, 40, 126, 138 minjung 33 miscarriage 155, 234 mise-en-scène 58, 61, 68, 70, 81, 89, 92, 103, 125, 152, 171, 209 misogyny 152, 288 modern Taiwan art 79–81, 97 modernism 24, 28, 52, 59, 75, 86, 198, 257, 258 modernity 24, 25, 28, 128, 157, 194, 204, 211, 212 modernization 16, 20, 28, 40, 53, 82, 86, 88, 89, 162 Money and Honey (film) 15, 30, 43, 191–194, 198–201, 208, 209, 211, 212, 214, 218 motherhood 122, 200, 213, 215, 235, 290 mourning 35, 67, 177, 204, 213, 269, 275 (see also melodrama) MOUVE art movement 80, 98, 100 movie stardom 56, 57 music 26, 36, 55, 69, 91, 118, 197, 201, 208, 210, 211, 230, 245, 267–269 mutual aid 29, 109, 118, 150, 154, 236 narration 88, 89, 94, 142, 144, 152 national cinema model, the 14, 16, 21, 34, 52, 75 nationalism 21, 25, 26, 29, 37, 43, 59, 88, 126, 128, 129, 160, 163, 174, 197, 200, 245 and sentimentality 18, 26, 173 (see also transnationalism) Nationalist Party, the 12, 85 “natural image” 67 New Cinema, the (in Taiwan) 30, 41–43, 51–57, 81, 83, 85, 86 New Documentary Movement, the 84, 93, 114, 117, 180, 262, 274 New Taiwanese Documentary 195, 196

338 

Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

New Wave Cinema 11, 16, 19, 21, 23, 33, 34, 31, 42, 54, 56, 59, 74, 142, 291–293 New York 18, 30, 31, 41, 43, 55, 57, 83, 193, 221, 225, 226, 231–235, 237, 252, 259, Ning Ying 111, 112, 141 nuclear family, the 43, 111, 130, 140, 160, 174 Old Men (film) 108, 112, 115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 192, 244, 264 “one-child policy” 111 “Open Door” reform era, the 12 oral history 43, 94, 168, 175, 176, 178–180 Our Children (film) 142, 275 Outcry and Whisper (film) 255, 276–278, 281, 288 Passion (film) 53, 60, 63, 68, 74 parrhēsia 168, 262 patriarchy 16, 20, 28, 29, 35, 43, 56, 66, 86, 88, 89, 131, 161, 163, 177, 179, 198, 233, 254 patriotism 158, 160, 200 Penghu Islands 42, 79, 83, 84, 88, 93, 95, 97, 99 Peony Birds (film) 84, 86–89, 91, 92 (see also “Trilogy of Erotic Desire”) People’s Republic of China (PRC), the 12, 16, 22, 24, 25, 29, 31, 35, 38–41, 43, 51, 108–110, 132, 143, 179, 198, 199, 231, 240 photography 35, 93, 116, 150, 275, 277 poetry 104, 197, 201, 206, 208, 232, 237–239, police 15, 100, 235, 253, 263–265, 267, 269, 271–274, 276, 280, 281 pollution 142, 153 pop music 69, 245 popular media 24, 221, 257 postcolonial historiography 79 “Postcolonial Tetralogy, the” 85, 92, 103 pregnancy 60, 140, 152, 153, 157, 179, 234 propaganda 160, 258, 289 protest 88, 155, 199, 201, 253, 270, 279 “psychic interiority” 66, 211 queer experimental film 185, 221 queer identity 14, 43, 59, 67, 73, 199, 222, 226, 231, 246 and Sinophone cinema 27, 38, 59, 63, 88, 173, 185, 223–225, 244, 261 (see also sexuality) radicality 260 rape 33, 90, 143, 156 date rape 264–267 real estate 113, 115, 146, 230, 231 realism 25, 85, 89, 100, 108, 116, 125, 139, 150, 152, 172, 233, 257, 259 and melodrama 28, 42, 58, 59, 82, 11, 129, 212 (see also documentary)

Red Detachment of Women (film) 186 reenactment 93, 97, 151 refugees 233 religion 33, 110, 126, 131, 152–154, 191, 192, 211–213 Rene Liu Ruo-ying 57, 68 reproduction 153, 156, 157 revolution 37, 40, 120, 147, 191, 232, 257 rituals 26, 87, 97, 114, 118, 122, 126, 127, 152–156, 180, 269, 282 ruralism 88, 101, 102, 138–140, 142, 144, 146, 149, 152, 161, 177, 271 sanitary pads 152, 155 (see also menstruation) sentimentalism 28, 43, 52, 53, 61, 63, 66, 73, 74, 191, 197–200, 202, 208, 211, 212, 215, 217 sex 178, 180, 234, 266 politics of 26, 75, 110, 173, 180, 266, 269 sexual abuse 28, 138, 141, 143–145, 163, 253 sexuality 23, 25, 27, 33, 53, 144, 152, 156, 178, 186, 245 (see also queer identity) sex work 90, 142, 256 Siao Yu (film) 55, 57 Silence, as film device 64, 145, 150, 151, 228, 240, 243, 274 Sinophone cine-feminism 27, 37, 41, 76 framework of 29, 32 scope of 14, 24, 26, 34, 38 Sinophone, as a concept 27, 35-41 52, 57, 225 (see also language) Sinophone women’s cinema 44, 69, 287 conception of 19 Sinophone world cinema 24, 37, 42 dimensions of 12 sisterhood 28, 63, 191, 211, 216, 276 social dance 109, 112, 117–121, 268 social media 25, 253–255, 289 socialism 16, 22, 39, 109, 157, 172, 290 (see also feminism; see also realism) song 69, 191, 209–211, 215, 230, 231, 245 Song of the Exile (film) 66, 67 Southern Night (film) 103, 104 Spring Cactus (film) 85, 86, 89, 90, 92, 142 Spring Tide (film) 132, 289-293 state violence 251, 270, 272 Stonewalling (film) 140, 164 storytelling 43, 69, 73, 75, 86, 97, 157, 175, 178, 180–182, 211, 268 (see also oral history) stretch marks 140, 157, 158, 160 subjectivity 23, 28, 53, 97, 121, 124, 174, 222, 256–258, 273 of women 25, 66, 86, 88, 89, 103, 172 and the state 26, 35, 173, 243 Sylvia Chang 12, 16, 28, 30, 37, 42, 52, 54–59, 68, 69, 74, 75, 81, 86, 132, 197

339

Index

tactility of cinema 139, 140, 145, 148, 150, 155, 156, 163, 209, 228 (see also rituals) Tagalog 202, 208, 210 Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA) 82, 84, 103, 193 Taishi Village (film) 255, 256, 262, 264, 265, 269–271, 273, 276, Tang Shu-shuen 19, 237 temporality 29, 35, 38, 66, 74, 94, 97, 121, 125, 128–130, 181, 242 247, 260 of labor 200, 204–206 Tempting Heart (film) 53, 55, 57, 63, 66, 68, 69, 72, 74 The Foolish Bird (film) 139, 143, 144, 146 The Forgotten: Reflections on Eastern Pond (film), see also Postcolonial Tetralogy 80, 92, 93, 95, 97, 98 The Literary Route of Chon Chao-cheng (film), see also Postcolonial Tetralogy 92 The Loves of Lao An (film) 108 The Song of Chatain Mountain (film), see also Postcolonial Tetralogy 92, 101 The Strait Story (film), see also Postcolonial Tetralogy 79, 86, 92, 93, 97, 99–101, 104 The Warmth of the Orange Peel (film) 139 theater 23, 26, 28, 168, 170, 171, 182, 194, 243, 281 movie 287 Trace (film) 140, 157, 162, 163 trans-Asian method, framework of 32 trans-cultural cinema 137, 245 transnationalism 16, 19, 23, 32, 40, 43, 52, 53, 68, 89, 92, 140, 157, 158, 160, 163, 217, 260 and feminism 17, 18, 21, 22, 29 “Trilogy of Erotic Desire, the” 86 Tsai Ming-liang 12, 51–54, 59, 86 Twin Bracelets (film) 85, 88–90, 92 (see also “Trilogy of Erotic Desire”) unionization, of workers 25, 276 (see also labor) “urban contract” 111 Urban Generation cinema 41, 109–111, 141 urbanization 25, 28, 89, 91, 138, 142, 144, 162 postsocialist 107, 109, 116

VHS tapes 85 Video Letter (film) 236 vivification 117, 131 Wang Bing 12, 109, 274 water, as film motif 26, 41, 100, 128, 140, 141, 143, 154–156, 207, 233 (see also geological occurrences) We Are Alive (film) 43, 221, 223, 225, 231, 236, 241–243 Wen Hui 12, 25, 28, 30, 31, 43, 115, 167–170, 173–177, 179–182, 184–187, 192, 221 wenyipian 16, 52, 197 “woman’s films” 42, 51 (see also melodrama) “women and homeland” series 191 Women Make Waves International Film Festival (WMWIFF) 11, 16, 24, 34, 41, 42 Wong Kar-wai 12, 18 world cinema 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 24, 30, 31, 75, 164, 293 Xi Jinping 110 xianchang 109, 110, 112, 117, 118, 120, 122, 125, 129, 130, 142, 145, 148, 171, 182, 183, 258, 262, 268 Yang Lina 12, 16, 25, 28, 30, 31, 41, 43, 107, 110, 112, 113, 116, 120, 124, 129, 131, 132, 139, 142, 154, 172, 173, 192, 231, 245, 264, 289, 292 yang’ge 119, 120 Yau Ching 12, 19–21, 23, 28, 29, 31, 34, 37, 38, 41, 43, 221, 222–229, 231–245, 247, 248 Yvonne Rainer 226, 227 Zeng Jinyan 12, 19, 28, 31, 43, 44, 199, 251–256, 261, 262, 265, 276–282, 288 Zhang Yimou 12, 58 Zhang Yuan 12, 109, 112, 141 zhao 116 zhuanxing 118