Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island / Edition 1

by Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, Darrell William Davis

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231128995
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	07/06/2005
Series:	Film and Culture Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

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.

What People are Saying About This

Rey Chow

With a sumptuous fund of historical details and formal insights, this landmark study of Taiwan film directors articulates questions of cultural production in ways that resonate well beyond the Asia Pacific. A superb resource both for the general reader and for the specialist.

— Rey Chow, Brown University, author of Primitive Passions, Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema

J. Hoberman

Taiwan is home to some of today's finest working filmmakers -- and in the case of Hou Hsiao-hsien, one the finest ever. Darrell Davis and Emilie Yeh's thoughtful study of the Taiwan New Cinema could not be more welcome.

— J. Hoberman, film critic The Village Voice

Sheldon Lu

In this groundbreaking work, Davis and Yeh at once offer the reader something illuminating in theoretical engagement, erudite in historical delineation, and lucid in writing style. It is a must-read.

— Sheldon Lu, University of California, Davis, coeditor of Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics

David Bordwell

Taiwanese cinema, remarkably creative for twenty-five years, receivesits due in this stimulating book. Elegantly blending cultural historyand film analysis, Yeh and Davis shed new light on the extraordinaryachievements of Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, Ang Lee,and other renowned directors. Taiwan Film Directors is a sensitive andprobing introduction to one of the world's most exciting cinematictraditions.

— David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging

Editorial Reviews

A fine first chapter on Taiwan's film industry.

Taipei Review - June Teufel Dreyer

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

Film-Philosophy

This book is a highly intelligent and welcome guide to the movement as whole, and to some of its major participants.

Taipei times - Bradley Winterton

Taiwan Film Directors provides a much-needed, comprehensive history ofTaiwan cinema.

The Journal of Asian Studies - Alexander C. Y. Huang

Extremely valuable.

Canadian Journal of Film Studies - Yu-Jyuan Jian

A most welcome arrival on the scene for Asian Cinema as a whole, and is a book long over due.

Film International - James Udden

A fine first chapter on Taiwan's film industry.

— June Teufel Dreyer

Taipei Review

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

Taiwan Film Directors provides a much-needed, comprehensive history ofTaiwan cinema.

— Alexander C. Y. Huang

The Journal of Asian Studies

Extremely valuable.

— Yu-Jyuan Jian

Canadian Journal of Film Studies

A most welcome arrival on the scene for Asian Cinema as a whole, and is a book long over due.

— James Udden

Film International