Taiwan Film Directors - (Film and Culture) by Emilie Yueh Yeh & Darrell William Davis (Paperback)

About the Book

Focusing on the work of four contemporary filmmakers -- Ang Lee, Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Tsai Ming-liang -- the authors explore how these filmmakers broke from tradition, creating a cinema that is both personal and insistent on examining Taiwan's complex history. Featuring stills, anecdotes, and close readings of films, the authors consider the influence of Hong Kong and martial arts films, directors' experiments with autobiography, the shifting fortunes of the Taiwanese film industry, and Taiwan cinema in the context of international cinema's aesthetics and business practices.

Book Synopsis

Focusing on the work of four contemporary filmmakers--Ang Lee, Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Tsai Ming-liang--the authors explore how these filmmakers broke from tradition, creating a cinema that is both personal and insistent on examining Taiwan's complex history. Featuring stills, anecdotes, and close readings of films, the authors consider the influence of Hong Kong and martial arts films, directors' experiments with autobiography, the shifting fortunes of the Taiwanese film industry, and Taiwan cinema in the context of international cinema's aesthetics and business practices.

Review Quotes

Taiwan Film Directors provides a much-needed, comprehensive history ofTaiwan cinema.--Alexander C. Y. Huang "The Journal of Asian Studies"

a veritable jewel for those interested in Taiwanese film culture and its domestic and international evolution.-- "Film-Philosophy"

A fine first chapter on Taiwan's film industry.--June Teufel Dreyer "Taipei Review"

A most welcome arrival on the scene for Asian Cinema as a whole, and is a book long over due.--James Udden "Film International"

Extremely valuable.--Yu-Jyuan Jian "Canadian Journal of Film Studies"

This book is a highly intelligent and welcome guide to the movement as whole, and to some of its major participants.--Bradley Winterton "Taipei times"

About the Author

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh is associate professor of cinema studies in the Department of Cinema-Television and associate director of the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. She is the author of Phantom of the Music: Song and Narration in Chinese-language Cinema and the coeditor of Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics.

Darrell William Davis is senior lecturer at the School of Theatre, Film, and Dance at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He is the author of Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film.