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

Summary

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. Both 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 film cultures interacted intensively after decades of Cold War divisions.