2 - Floating Light and Shadows: Huang Yu-shan's Chronicles of Modern Taiwan

Summary

“For me and my creative life, southern Taiwan is not just the earthly mother, but the homeland of my heart.”

—Huang Yu-shan

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, protagonist Hsiu-hsiu, an art conservationist from Tainan, pays respect 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.