Taiwanese-Language Cinema - (Edinburgh Studies in East Asian Film) by Chris Berry & Wafa Ghermani & Corrado Neri & Ming-Yeh Rawnsley (Paperback)

About the Book

Rethinks Taiwan's film history with new insights into its vibrant local-language popular cinema.

Book Synopsis

Taiwanese-Language Cinema: Rediscovered and Reconsidered presents diverse approaches to the vibrant commercial film industry known as Taiwanese-language cinema (taiyupian). After a long period of neglect, films are being restored and made available with subtitles.
Taiwanese-language cinema was a cycle of over 1,000 dramatic feature films produced between the mid-50s and early 70s in the local Minnanhua Chinese language most commonly spoken on the island, also known as "Taiwanese" (taiyu). The rediscovery of Taiwanese-language cinema is stimulating new scholarship, both in Chinese in Taiwan and in other languages, which challenges our conventional understandings of Taiwanese film history and opens up new approaches to the films themselves.
This volume includes a mix of new English-language scholarship material with key essays by Taiwanese scholars newly translated from Chinese for the volume.

Review Quotes

A tour-de-force transnational endeavour with original research by scholars from Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Europe, Taiwanese-Language Cinema: Rediscovered and Reconsidered offers illuminating analyses on taiyu pian, Taiwan's native cinema that flourished during the 1950s and 1960s. A definitive work on the new history of the lost and found film treasures from Taiwan.-- "Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, Lam Wong Yiu-Wah Chair Professor of Visual Studies, Lingnan University"

Here Taiwanese-language cinema finally receives the sustained scholarly attention it deserves, with leading global scholars offering insightful readings of both acknowledged classics and relatively forgotten films placed in the broader context of Taiwan's film industry, culture and society. An essential volume for those interested in Taiwan and Asian popular cinema.-- "Jason McGrath, University of Minnesota"

Provides a lively, wide-ranging and critically persuasive account of an under-researched period in Taiwan's film history and will surely help refocus critical attention on the island's rich history of popular entertainment cinema.--Christopher Brown "The China Quarterly"