 Greetings. Welcome to the Taiwan Post-New Wave Cinema series. I'm Biuzhang, Deputy Director of SOA's Centre of Taiwan Studies. Today's roundtable is one of the highlights of this series. We at the centre are very excited about this rare occasion to have six leading film scholars to examine and explore Taiwan's cinematic development of the last 30 years. When we planned the series early this year, we only had a vague idea of what we would do. However, the goal has always been very clear. We want to find out what happened after the cinematic turning point of Taiwan's new wave cinema. There has been abundant academic research on Taiwan's new wave and also the important authors associated with it. And yet, little academic attention has been given to what has followed. Our focus is to map this less-noticed cinematic landscape, examining the aesthetics of new Taiwanese films and introduce new directors whose names might not be widely known to audiences outside of Taiwan. The roundtable discussion today is a starting point from which to trace the trajectory of the new era and bring attention to the younger generation directors. We are honoured to have six leading film scholars on the panel who bring their critical insights and expertise to this intellectual investigation. May I introduce these six panelists in alphabetical order? So first, Professor Chris Berry, just show up here. He is Professor of Film Studies at King's College London. Second is Dr. Chen Bingquan, a former director of the Taiwan Film Institute and currently the Director of Cultural Division Taipei Representative's Office in the UK. Then next is Professor Robert Chen, Chen Ruxiu. He is Professor at the Department of Radio and Television, National Zhengzhi University, Taiwan. Dr. Wafa Guimani, I'm not sure she's here just yet. She is Curator at the Cinematheque Française and Professor Songhui Lim. He is Professor of Culture Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Then last but not the least, Dr. Corado Neri. He is Associate Professor at the Jean Moulin University, Lyon III. Thank you all for joining us today. It's a great pleasure to have you here. I would also like to just quickly go through the eight areas of enquiries that we propose to consider in the session. The first, the starting point is the basic question, right? What is Taiwan Post-New Wave Cinema? How do we define it? Is there a particular style, a prevalent genre, a shared concern, or a prominent subject matter? Or is it defined by important authors, a period-specific era, the revolutionary development in technology, for example, the availability of high-definition digital cameras, or a particular aesthetic style? Then we move on to the issue of who. Who are Taiwanese Post-New Wave directors? Can they be defined as a group, just like the New Wave? Then we are also interested in identifying the continuities and ruptures between the New Wave Cinema and the Post-New Wave. This then leads us to consider the issue of terminology. I know it might be a little bit problematic. Should it be labeled as Taiwan's Post-New Cinema or Post-New Wave Cinema, or something else to specify the differences between the transition and the transformation? We are not saying it is definitely called Post-New Wave Cinema. It is just a kind of inquiry. How about documentary? Should documentary be included? And in terms of aesthetics, are there any commonalities between the younger directors, for example, in their cinematography, their styles, genre, subject matters, acting, artistic influences, and so on? Lastly, do the Post-New Wave Cinema deal with particular subject matter that were not dealt with previously? Or they did actually deal with similar things, but in a very different manner? We will start the discussion with an exploration of the term, Post-New Wave, by Song Hui and Wafa, if she arrives, then move on to consider the characteristics of these films, from directors, genres, to subject matter. That's being tackled by Bing Quan, Corrado, and Robert. And concluded discussion with Global Perspective by Chris. Before we formally start the talk, I know, as usual, I would like to thank our funder, the Minister of Culture, Taiwan, and the Cultural Division at the TRO in the UK, and our gratitude to the great support of the Taiwan Film Institute. Without their generous funding and continuous backing, it would not have been possible for us to launch such ambitious project. Please be aware this session is recorded. I will appreciate that if you can turn off your video and audio functions. We will start to take questions 30 minutes into the session. Our assistant curator, Shaoyi, will inform you when the chat function is open, so please be aware you can always post your question there. Could you please post only one question at a time? No more than two in total, and keep them succinct and please relevant to the theme, and show you our collated questions and present them to the panelists. After all this, without further ado, Song Hui, the floor is yours. So let me just use 30 seconds to just make everything work, so I need to find Song Hui first. Ah, okay, so I'm going to spotlight you, but not yet. Okay. I'm going to upload your PowerPoint, okay? Please, Song Hui, it's up to you. Okay, thank you, Piyu. All right, I'm going to speak very quickly, and I'm also built because I've got a lot to cover, and I'm also going to use quite a bit of Chinese materials, so apologies to those of you who don't speak Chinese. Okay, so the question I'm going to address today at this roundtable is what is Taiwan's post-new wave or new cinema? And I suggest that this is a question about film historiography, that is to say who gets to decide what to write about film history. So I will start by tracing the discourse of the post-new wave and say a bit about the context of its emergence. I will then distinguish between two texts. One is a more conceptual theoretical or ideological take of the term, and the other is a more empirical take. And I'll end with my own take on the term, which is to argue that post-new wave period actually signals an effective turn in Taiwan cinema. Okay, so to go back to historical period, actually, Taiwan new cinema was already declared dead as early as in the publication in 1991 called Xin Dian Yin Zhi, the death of new cinema. And three years later, the same editors produced an ad book called Xin Dian Yin Zhi Wai or Hau, so beyond or after new cinema. So the idea that the Taiwan new wave cinema is dead was already there in the early 1990s. But the specific term, post-new cinema, Hau Xin Dian Yin, really only emerged after 2008 and specifically in relation to the film by Wei De Sheng called Cape No. 7, Kai Jiao Qi Hao. And I actually wrote quite a bit about this in an article published in 2013. I can share this bibliographical source later if anyone is interested in looking at that. So this discourse first appeared very formally at an academic conference organized by academia cynical in 2010, but it has also caught the attention of critics more generally. And I want to begin by saying that the prefix post, because you're talking about post-new wave or post-new cinema, the prefix post represents what Kwame Anthony Appier calls a space clearing gesture. Because when you say post, what you mean is that the thing that comes after the hyphen is over. We are moving on and we are moving beyond. So in this discourse of post-new wave, what I can distinguish is that there's a gesture that they tend to argue that the post-new wave period has moved on from the transnational self-power of auto-led art cinema to the domestic people power of audience and those popular cinema. So this is the main thrust of the argument that I can distinguish from the post-new wave discourse. And the evidence of this comes, I'm actually going to skip this one. That's like the evidence of this comes from the box office miracle of Cape number seven. So for those of you who don't know, the film took in 530 million new Taiwan dollar in Taiwan that year. So it was the top-grossing film in 2008 beating all the Hollywood blockbusters. And it also was the second highest-grossing film in Taiwan's box office history at that point in 2008. And it was also the all-time box office record for domestic film and was double that of his closest rival, which was Ang Lee's last caution. So and to put this in more context, Cape number seven with his box office success pushed the market share of domestic films in Taipei over the 10% mark for the first time in decades. If you look at the figures for the 12 years preceding it, and that's where the box office intake records are available publicly, they typically hover around the 1 to 2% mark, sometimes even as low and pathetic as 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4%. And the exceptions were in the year 2000 when Coaching Tiger Hit and Dragon helped to push it to 4.65%, and in 2007 when Ang Lee's last caution helped to push it to 7.38%. But Kingdom 7 was the first film that helped to push the domestic film's market share to over 10%. So this is the evidence for the arguments that we have reached a post-new wave era because the audience have turned towards the more popular film genres and are supporting local films. But how accurate is this? I've compiled a table here. So if you look at 2008, Cape number seven did help to push the domestic market share of the domestic films to over 10%, but it dropped back down to the very low 2.3% the following year and then went up a bit more to 7.31% in 2010. So between 2011 and 2015, those were the five years when the domestic film's market share went over the 10% mark, but they have dropped back down to under 10% in the three recent years, whose records I can find. So empirically, how accurate is this? I'm throwing a question mark as to whether post-new wave really signals a resurgence of popular cinema and an audience supporting local films. I'm putting the question mark there. Another way of trying to understand the post-new wave era is by genre and I know that some speakers will be talking about this later, so I'm not going to touch it, but there are 556 films from that table from 2008 to 2018. So how does one actually categorise films by genre? It's a challenge that I won't venture, but will lead to other speakers. So finally, very quickly, my own take. So out of this body of films, over 500 films, I have detected a trend that I find is a prominent trend. It's what we call Xiaoqingxin or little freshness. And I basically argue that the shift from the new wave period to the post-new wave period is a change in the structure of feeling, like what Raymond Williams called structure of feeling. From the more loaded, heavy historical sentiments to a kind of light, fluffy structure of feeling which is called little freshness. And this actually has a lot of context behind it which I don't have time to go into, but you are more than welcome to check out the article that published in 2019, which covers this area. And finally, one final point just to be provocative. If you want to talk about the really popular Taiwan cinema, there is a body of films that, as far as I'm aware, no film historiography has really written about them very seriously. And this is the comedy films starring Zhu Ge Liang for those of you who know this Taiwanese comedian. He has starred in at least five films since 2011 that have all broken the Holy Grail of Box Office record, which is the EE Taipei, like 100 million new Taiwan dollar mark. And yet, as far as I know, nobody has actually talked about how do we deal with this body of films in relation to Taiwan film history or film historiography. So I thought I'll just throw that out and just finally to pluck my book. So I'm currently wrapping up a book manuscript called Taiwan Cinema as Soft Power, and if I finish it around Christmas time, hopefully it will come out, it will be published by 2022 and it's forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Okay, thank you for your attention and I look forward to discussion later. Thank you. Fantastic. So I won't have any PowerPoint. I'm not as organized as Professor Lim. And thank you, Professor Lim, and be you for what you said before. It did. When you wrote this topic I was really interested but also because I had a lot of questions because what we just heard from Professor Lim introduction is that there is a kind of big difference of what is thought as being post-new cinema in Taiwan, which is I think most of the time, it appeared because of cap number seven. So it was more something in term of popular success rather than film aesthetics. And I think that was a big difference with what was happening before. And for me and I think maybe for you, maybe you can tell more a little more about it. For me it was just a kind of strange way of defining like in the West we only see Taiwan cinema as Taiwan news cinema and then we ignore what's coming afterwards. And for example in France, I don't know in other countries, but we are completely limited to these new waves directors, which are for France, Hoshia Oshien and Simon Young and Edward Young when he was alive. And when we see new directors from Taiwan's cinema, they have to be linked to this new cinema. So when a Taiwanese film is distributed like Phonon Mayoni, Nopuedo Bibi Fisinti for example by Leon Dai, I was asked to do the introduction and really I was asked to link the film to Taiwan news cinema. It was something very important for the distributor for example and for the French audience. Like the French audience has to be reminded like Taiwan cinema is still in this new cinema tradition. And when films are not in this tradition, it's like confusing for our critics. And I think also for our researcher, there might be a big difference I think also in France and in English speaking countries and Asia of course, because as you may know or not, people working on Taiwan cinema, I'm not saying on Chinese cinema, most of the time do not speak Chinese. So there is a kind of linguistic limitation too, I think to do that. So they are focused in France, we are really focused on Taiwan news cinema because that's how the film that has been distributed in France and that are accessible to us. So that's why there is this kind of limit and we see the same limit in terms of film programming in festivals. You will see that most of the Taiwanese films that are shown in festivals now, well, we don't have so many and there was a kind of a shift from this all you have Hoshiaoshien or Tsai Mingliang being chosen in big festivals like they know they can go to Cannes or Venice. Or there is a shift and I think Corrado and or even Professor Chen are going to speak about that. For example, Zhong Meng Hong was invited with parking in 2005 I think. At Directors Fortnight and it was a new genre. So we see that now Taiwanese cinema when it is selected in festivals it's more into Zhong Festival and there is a shift of all its genre films so fantastic film festivals or kind of things or it's in more documentaries now and short films. Now it's as if the Taiwan liveness in creation is not so much now for festival into the feature films but for the short films and the documentary. So I think we have this shift here about like the post-new cinema that is for me more a convenient term to make a difference but does not have a real definition in terms of aesthetics or being a group or anything it's more like yes being in a position or just after another period after all the masters of the 80s. So yeah that was my few questions and comments like should we just see Taiwan post-new cinema just as a chronological definition or yes I think other people are going to answer in terms of maybe aesthetics and genre and particularities for that but for festival we can see that until now it's not really relevant because most of the young directors except for the genre directors find how to find a place in festivals and even more in big festivals even if they try. Thank you. Oh thank you very much. Okay thanks Wafa. It's really interesting to hear from a very different perspective especially from French. You guys are the inventor of new ways isn't it? So everyone was using that term to indicate certain kind of change and revolutionary sort of cinema making. So yes thank you very much it's great. Our next speaker is Dr Chen Bingquan. Bingquan is over to you. Okay thank you Biyu and for my presentation very many presentations this afternoon I would like to share some kind of my personal observation while I was working and talking about the characteristics of the film directors after the Taiwan new cinema era. So while I was working as the director of the Taiwan Film Institute which was now become the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute one of my aim was to promote Taiwanese films within international markets and we aim to promote a variety of films whether they be mainstream movies or cinema classics such as Taiwanese language cinema Taiyupian the martial arts films or the melodramas of the 1970s and the 1980s. In order to promote our products we set up the Taiwan cinema pavilion in Busan in Berlin and Kona where film festival programmers foreign investors or contributors could come and learn more about the films that they were interested in they had the opportunity to meet people who would be involved with the film's production and also film agents from Taiwan and many of these business relationships were also genuine friendships just like where I met Wafa for most of my friends in the international film industry Taiwan's national cinema had fascinated them since the emergence of Taiwanese cinema in the 1980s however I always had the sense that while they are talking about contemporary Taiwanese film Taiwanese cinema itself was by Gong Yira having ended around 30 years ago and there was a generation of film directors who came after that who were in their 40s or 50s who were the pillars of current Taiwan cinema but these Taiwanese film lovers often still cherished Taiwanese cinema seeing it as a general paradigm of Taiwanese cinema as a whole these films which focused primarily on art history and were highly commanded in film competitions of course I'm not saying that it is negative for Taiwan to be known for its art house films it's possible that even though some Asian films may be produced for commercial reasons by the time they reached the eyes of Western moviegoers because of the different cultural context they might be seen as an art house film regardless I wonder why 30 years after Taiwanese cinema the contemporary appearance of Taiwanese films and their directors does not seem to be recognized by professionals outside of Taiwan widely or be discussed comprehensively by Taiwanese film professionals or even audiences nor did Taiwanese cinema ever seem to return to that golden era of the 1970s and 1980s in terms of box office revenue but can be argued that in the three decades of development after Taiwanese cinema there has been significant development in terms of the shape of the industry the aesthetics used and the authorship of films especially in the authorship of films compared to previous generations which is Taiwan New Cinema maybe the definition of the post Taiwan New Cinema or Taiwan Post New Cinema generation is still vague though it is difficult to find reasons why these generations are not identified possibly it might be because the territories of the Taiwanese film circle Taiwan Dingquan might be a sector with boundaries that are blurred we do need more research to clarify whether or not we have certain historical category or generation that could be called Taiwan Post New Cinema or Post Taiwan New Cinema but for this conversation I would just like to share some of my observations and also can recall to Wafa or Professor Lim Song Hui now while there are issues in defining the territory of contemporary Taiwanese cinema that generation of directors now 40 or 50 years old they are not that really young when you are saying the relatively young generation in my perspective so in terms of the film history I suggest that there are three characteristics that make up these Taiwan Post New Cinema authors and could allow them to be seen as a collective group within the Taiwan film history context for starters many directors have had multiple careers after the 1980s Taiwan's domestic film industry faced a decline so the directors of the Post New Cinema period survived in the film industry by having multiple careers if we take Zhong Meng Hong for example he worked as director on advertisements in 2002 he established his own production company which produced television advertisement and music videos it could be it would be six years after in 2008 that when he would release his first debut film Parking Ting Che the film received numerous notice from international festivals and won the best screenplay award at the Taipei Film Festival in 2009 Zhong Meng Hong himself won best director now Zhong said in an interview that he ended his career in advertising after another film of his godspeed Ilu Shunfeng won the best feature length film award at the Golden Horse Awards in 2016 with he himself winning best director at the same award however that means that he was in the advertising industry for 14 years although he received so many very important film awards another example is Zheng Youjie this feature length debut to over Yan Zhichu won the million award at the Taipei Film Festival in 2006 and the film was nominated by at the Pusan and Tokyo International Film Festival too however Zheng has also worked as a director in television and advertising for many years he directed the television mini series Days We Star at the Sun in 2010 on that year we are in front of the front in addition, Lin Shuyu Ji-ran have also had diverse careers in advertising music videos and documentaries after their feature length film debuts established them in Taiwan's film circle secondly, many post-new cinema directors have used documentary making as their stepping stone using it to acquire the opportunity to make a feature length argued in previous research that the key characteristics of Taiwan independent documentaries in the early 2000s were the young filmmakers innovations in using digital home camera and personal computers with the subsequent low budget independent documentaries being their debut creations some of these documentaries earned a positive reputation and credibility meaning that these young filmmakers could then attract the investment or government subsidize they require to make feature length films for instance Huang Xinyao who directed Budapest which come out in 2017 was an established independent documentary maker and had been for most of his career before making his feature debut these documentaries have received many awards including at the Type 1 International documentary festival and Taipei Film Festival and Zhou Menghou who we just talked about previously the independent documentary Dr. Yi Shen in 2006 before he met his feature debut Ting Che he even won the best documentary award at Taipei Film Festival Hou Jiren also met several independent documentaries before his 2010 debut film One Day, You Yi Tian in 2003 he met his first documentary Star Dust 749 001 Qing Cheng 157 4001 what a name of the film which won the million award at the Taipei Film Festival his second documentary My 747 with a 747 drew international attention at the 2005 Busan International Film Festival and this documentary an element to the post-new cinema directors is very similar to my first argument regarding these directors having diverse or multi-careers and third and finally there is a struggle between artist creation and commercial achievement for those post-new cinema era directors a lot of research has been done regarding the commercial aspect of Taiwan cinema and the film industry at the time trying to work out why the industry deteriorated the way it did at the end of the new cinema period directors in the post-new cinema period therefore found themselves in a difficult situation they were given little in terms of opportunities from both private sector and the government supported film studios this meant that when they were given the chance to develop a feature length film they were faced with a struggle do they met artistic film which wins international acclaim similar to their precessors or should they make commercial successful film that please investors when it comes to the box office thereby securing more opportunities to make films this dilemma could be seen as an inherent characteristics of directors after Taiwan new cinema of course for the authors that come after the Taiwan new cinema era they may not have all these three characteristics that I have mentioned however if we view them as collective group for the perspective of Taiwan this film history then these characteristics become wider influence on a generation of filmmakers as a whole the authors that came after Taiwan new cinema definitely have their own voice different from the previous paradigm and have created a new face of Taiwan's contemporary film okay I know maybe time thank you very much it's great giving us an overview of the younger generation directors thank you so much Wing Chun thank you now we are going to move on to Korado Korado is over to you thank you can you hear me thank you I'd like to actually I wanted to participate with more a question than answer and especially focusing on well we've been mentioning horror movies or popular movies so now I'll send it on Laci again and horror movie as a question we find a particular strain of movie namely working on the horror genre and is it a characteristic or could be seen as a characteristic of the part of the Taiwan new post new cinema there is nothing new under the sun we know we've been working with many of you with Tai Yu Pien and we've been showing Bright from Hell or also in your great series now of the Taiwan new cinema event we've seen the documentary on the Heisei Hohidein so Black Society so I'm not saying that the horror or violence or genre movie are specifically of this new generation but yet I think there are some common elements and that the horror popular genre could be seen as one of the more maybe original or interesting in terms of soft power I'm very curious to read your book as soon as it's published as well as interrelation between art and box office and actually this question came also because I've got questions from my students for example they see a lot of things of new Taiwan cinema without knowing for sure Hosei Hosei and the other somewhere that would be my role as a feature but they see a lot of things on the Netflix for example which could be an interesting way also to analyze the diffusion of these new movies for a younger or global audience I am referring now to TV shows that have been shown in TV in Taiwan but are on the Netflix catalogue now Green Door, Nowhere Man or Victims Game which could be maybe the more closer to the horror genre but also it's just been released few days ago on the Netflix The Ghost Bridge near Guaiziao so trying to answer the student asking me so is it a new trend? I was running through my files and I found a conference a conference paper that I gave a few years ago and I'd like to read you the first lines of the abstract so I'll try not to to dwell too deep into it but I think it's interesting because in 2015 a paper about Tagalong, so Hong Yi Xiao Nui Hai and Tenants Downstairs and Feng Ke Adam Tui respectively between 2015 and 16 I read just few lines because there are some hints I think of trends that developed in the following years so the abstract of this horror new horror movies from Taiwan goes like this both level horror movies and here I think it's an important way to define and aim an audience soft power in the idea of acquiring soft power as well as local box office so back to my abstract they are Hong Yi Xiao Nui Hai they are nonetheless extremely different scope, ambition, distribution and aesthetic engagement the first is a small budget production while the second enjoyed a massive marketing campaign they both movies and here I underscore because well we see that Chen Wei Hao had a longer career they both engage the local market to be confronted with international counterparts and they both dialogue with repertoire which I use not to do too much tradition and literary production Hong Yi Xiao Nui Hai into folklore anxieties transferred in the multimedia, multi-screen surveillance contemporary world while tenants is an adaptation of the prolific media exposed to a bad up guidance curve the former treasure the lesson of J horror from the 90s the genre that was capable to create the global friendly by dwelling into specific local literary re-adapted to the new technology here the central idea comes from the very popular TV show Taiwan TV show about ghosts in the form of reportage the letter means that western classic like obviously the tenant by Polanski or the Japanese imaginary of the Nikatsu Roman porno including literary references like Kawabata, Tanikuzaki, Mishima Edo Gawarampo and the like so this stop reading the letter that goes a little longer but what I thought interesting in this 2015 kind of ancient article is that we can see something I think that has been reproduced both by this director and others in the following years namely I find some elements for example a shift from China what I mean I'm aware of the China and China politics I mean there's ostensibly not considering Chinese market these horror movies are not going to be exploited or screened officially in China so there is already an idea of not considering the mainland Chinese market and going towards the Pacific so Japan or South Korean I've already mentioned the references to the pink aga high brow and low brow literature J horror more specifically and Korea of course the huge massive production of Korean South Korean trailer and horror movie but also in terms maybe more of soft power Western just international interest these films are telling stories about transgression technology the omnipresence of CCTV video recording the invasion of social media into the private life so these strategy to face perceived threats of identity discontinuity I think many other authors or these I mentioned continued in the following years so one of the big question that we always find in defining the Xin Taiwanese whole Xin Taiwanese is do they create waves well to my knowledge to my knowledge was his only film as a director but it was an adaptation of Joe Badau who was prolific in his last written and produced movie was just released on Netflix so my students are seeing it but also his underrated monster Badau is so Giedensko is really going through the different declination of cinema genre including horror in this Badau it's about school hazing and monster zombie fantastic element I mentioned Hong Yi Xiao Nu Hai Chen Weihao has a very coherent stream of film including the series of Hong Yi Xiao Nu Hai who directed the first two but it's I think extremely interesting the third installment Ran Mian Yu a completely different story so the red frescoer disappears but there are more folklore related stories anxieties here this fish siren monster in the jungle so for Chen Weihao there has been a wave or a continuity a coherent aesthetic others and I'm going to my conclusion just to mention that Solicit our attention I think are a few zombie movies like the zombie 108 or I mentioned the bridge curse so that again dwell into the tradition probably an invented tradition but yet something with a local flavor but also high school and many through the trope of horror films that are repeated again I won't go back because we had a very interesting talk and Q&A especially about detention Fan Xiao who's again that is again the first movie the other horror genre reconstruct the unsighted and create visual metaphor for describing martial law repression on thought so a huge artistic young adult horror film cross media video games movie etc so an extremely contemporary movie but also very specifically Taiwanese dwelling in the story in the past of Taiwan and then just to end with a last title which I forgot the English name Tao Chu Li Fa Yuan get out of here get the hell out of here but the Chinese title Li Fa Yuan it's zombie pandemic zombie pandemic video game aesthetics satire of course of the political scene political debate widespread corruption mixed with a post modern spaghetti western zombie animated video game so this was the last title I want to mention but but well it seems to me that there is a one not the only one of course but one of the strain of this post new Taiwan could be in the and especially thank you so much it's a fascinating topic I don't think I ever watch any of those I highly recommend introduction I'm definitely going to look out for them thank you so now we have the next speaker is Professor Chen Robert it's over to you okay so yeah very nice to have you online right now I'm glad to be invited for this long-table discussion and following previous presentation I'd like to talk about my observations about some common characteristics of posting web directors and their film and then these are some summaries about the issues and also online I'm going to talk about first you can see from this slide three directors been introduced in this program we have Ho Ji Ran and Lin Su Yu a couple of few days later we will have Zheng You Jie with us and you can see they were all born in 1970s so it means that they grew up watching film made by new web directors Ho Xiaoxian, Edward Young etc in terms of their cinematic learning however the difference is that their growth was not overshadowed by the impact of Marshall Roe which existed from 1949 to 1987 therefore films made by posting web directors did not deal directly with taboo subjects such as White Arrow or February 28th incident of 1947 or the repression of the KMT regime so this leads to my second observation instead of dealing with heavy issues such as national identity of Taiwanese from the new web masters posting web directors started their filmmaking career with personal stories here I list three directors and also their first feature films in their filmmaking career and you can see the film made by Lin Su Yu wins of September it's about the love of baseball and also use romance and the other two first films made by directors Ho Xiaoxian and Zhen Youjie are fictional stories by them and my third observation and I think it's the most important one is that the way for the posting web directors to present their films is to replace Taipei with Taiwan as their story setting generally speaking new web directors shot Taipei as the center of the world Edward Young is a prominent example each of his films is about Taipei even for Ho Xiaoxian his films dealt with characters moving from countryside to Taipei such as the dust in the wind but on the other hand from this slide shooting location for posting web directors were anywhere but Taipei so we see from one day that the film was shot between there's a ferry boat between Gao Xiong and Kimmen and also wins of September was in Xinzu where Lin Su Yu the director took his high school education over there and also in Zhen Youjie's first film Do Over actually the location is not specified in the movie the trend of looking at Taiwan from now Taipei perspective actually started with the film Island Attitude this film is about a young man riding bike and circling around Taiwan and it's very interesting if you can see from the Taiwan's map on the right side of the screen the starting point for his journey is Gao Xiong the down south of Taiwan Island and then he then moves to east part of Taiwan and then going north and actually he didn't stop at Taipei he buys his Taipei as if Taipei does not exist in the film and starts going southbound and going back to Gao Xiong so this is a film that invokes a lot of young people in Taiwan and then they start walking around Taiwan they try to find a new way of looking at Taiwan and another film a lot of presenters have been talking about is cap number 7 of 2008 this film even set up the story at Hengchun the far south end of Taiwan and this slide shows a tourist map made by Hengchun city office to promote the tourism because in that year a lot of people, a lot of audience after watching cap number 7 they flocked to visit scenery places been appeared in cap number 7 because of this non-Taipei perspective I would like to introduce director Zhong Meng Hong as mentioned him and I believe this is one important director been absent from this program Zhong Meng Hong started his filmmaking career with documentary but he is also the first director for me who not only shot his films mostly outside of Taipei he also gives me an imagery of Taiwan that I have not seen before Taiwan becomes a new territory that for me also for a lot of audience that we need to explore once again after watching his films so I copy some scenes from his film Godspeed of 2016 and you can see them for yourself but before that we can compare some urban scenery from Terroriser by Edward Young on the left side is the beginning of the movie that is a lot of apartment house and very crowded spaces and with only two lanes roadside for the cars to drive through and on the right side is a gas tank in the middle of Taipei as if implying that Taipei is going to blow up any moment in this film so this is a Taipei scenery being portrayed in Terroriser and then on the other hand when we look at Godspeed we will find out scenes like this and Godspeed actually is a low movie so the film starts with a taxi driving away from Taipei and then goes all the way to the southern part of Taiwan like in Island Attitude so this imagery from this film is very on Taipei it's a new imagery and then you can see some other images too like this one the way he shows highway is the first of a kind I have seen in Taiwan cinema and also another angles of shooting highway is like this highway is in the middle of the rice field on both sides and then he also captures some places I have never been there actually it's in the middle part of Taiwan and then it's kind of exotic and very strange for me to find out that Taiwan has this kind of place and then also again around the same area we can find out there's a pond or lake on both sides of very narrowed and crowded road and also another scenery from Godspeed also, new to me and I believe it's also new to a lot of people and then another high angle shot to show the taxi in the middle of nowhere it's really difficult to find out or difficult to believe this is in Taiwan and this is the last picture and also actually the last shot from Godspeed and you find out after taxi comes to the in the middle of nowhere it's like the two characters two main characters in this film are nowhere to go and they really don't know how to go and I think I can look at it as a metaphor to in a way of replying the previous presenter's question about how are we going to define those posting wave cinema and also those posting wave directors it might be a signal from saying they are trying to figure out a new direction for Taiwan cinema so I really hope that later on probably we can have a more discussion about the possibility to find out a way for the Taiwan cinema thank you very much Robert it's so comprehensive and within the time frame it's amazing I was a bit worried about the 17 slices but there we go you're professional you did it okay I'm sure now is Chris Chris would you like to come alright so thank you very much um thank you David, Biu, Max, Shai everybody else for putting together this event which has made me think about a lot of things I suppose I want to make three comments about so-called post new wave as my contribution and I think maybe it's going to overlap a little bit with what some other people have said and I apologize if it does I try not to be too boring I think over the last couple of weeks and also today the first thing I want to say is that I'm very struck by the continuing power of Taiwan new cinema and Taiwanese new wave you know even the naming of this event the naming of this group of filmmakers and so on on one level it declares it's over but on another level because we're still calling it post new wave new wave is still here it's still the constant frame of reference that is being used and I think although you know we are trying very hard to find some common characteristics and say what this new thing is maybe we're not very clear and I was very moved listening to some of the directors Q&As to realize how strong the aura of the Taiwanese new wave directors continue to be last week for example when Tom Lin sorry Lin Shui was remembering Ho Xiaoxian working on the editing of younger directors films including his own films I thought that was a very interesting little account he gave and it testifies on one level to how you know Taiwan cinema is quite a small scene but also the incredible reverence people have for that earlier generation and I was also very when he said near the beginning of his talk about sitting around with his friends in the same generation and asking themselves are they in the circle or not are they actually filmmaking people or not yet and I thought that was very interesting again suggesting this power that the image of the Taiwan new cinema filmmakers have and of course the next thing to talk about is the way in which the Taiwan new cinema model is powerfully informed by autism so I guess the second point I want to ask is do we have to think always in terms of autism and of course already we've had the question of genre being raised this afternoon I think that there's no question that the Otur model is a useful one and that's we saw that also last week with Dr. presentation where she really did a great job of using the idea of the Otur and their signatures and that sort of idea to enable us to get a deeper understanding of filmmakers and Professor Chen just now I think also highlighting some really important stylistic and thematic characteristics but I think we also need to recognize that the production system itself has changed and maybe to get a really better understanding of what's going on these days we need to focus on that a little bit we're aware that in the 60s and 70s it was a classical studio based industry a commercial industry and so the way of classifying films in that period would very much be in terms of genre and then as people have pointed out in the 80s with the death of the commercial industry and the growth of incentives the government wanting recognition internationally and giving prize money for winning awards in international film festivals of course because international film festivals want oturs you get the development of an otur cinema but those eras are over and what do we have now what is the political economy if you will how any film making today and this is really where we come to the term I suggested as a kind of title for my talk when BU asked me for a title which is the cinemas of small nations under globalization globalization so first of all let me acknowledge that this idea of small nations has been circulating for a while now and as something mentioned earlier and I was going to mention it too and I thought shall I make a slide but I didn't need to because we did already and he has this chapter called Taiwan New Cinema Small Nation with Soft Power and so this idea of the power dynamics of small nations has already been used to talk about Taiwan New Cinema but what about the post new cinema era and probably the most important work is by the Danish scholar Mette Hjort who works at Lingnan in Hong Kong and wrote a book called Small Nation Global Power The New Danish Cinema already 15 years ago and so I think she is the pioneer in thinking about the impact of small nations cinema and globalization and I think when we talk about globalization we are talking about the dominance of the nation state giving way to a more multi-layered complex diffuse system and this system works through a global regional level a national level and then also a local level and I think we need to begin to focus a bit more on understanding how that system works if we want to think about the post TNC era or whatever we want to call it and how Taiwan cinema is in that era so let me give a few just a few examples from those different levels I think if we are talking about a global level of course the international film festival network continues to operate, continue to operate for for art cinema and so someone like midi z is someone who gets very much discovered and circulated on that level but it is also there these days in the art world the actual gallery art world no contemporary art exhibition today is complete without moving image works and that is where obviously as we all know Simon Young has found and a new way of working but also other filmmakers Zero Joe for example has made gallery works as well and I'm sure there are many others then the regional level I think the horror movies that Corrado was talking about participate in a kind of Asian horror phenomenon and that phenomenon that brand is one that marks a certain kind of regional grouping and circulation and it's also a way of marketing the films globally perhaps Asian queer romances which Taiwan is also a major producer of maybe that's also a kind of regional genre it's a question I'm not sure the national level also continues to operate and in commercial cinema I think one of the interesting things about small nations is the audiences in small nations still very much want local stories told and as a result each of them is able to sustain one or two major commercial filmmakers who make big box office hits but box office hits that don't usually circulate beyond that national or quasi national territory and in Taiwan I guess that's Wei Dosheng in Hong Kong these days perhaps it's someone like Johnny Toe in Singapore for a long time it was Jack Neo sadly here in the UK we don't have a filmmaker like that at the moment and the national also operates through various government funding schemes for short films, documentaries and so on often operated at arms length through independent funding bodies and then finally a local level, well for example last week we also heard Tom Lin talk about how city based funding from Gao Xiong in other cities led him to set his films or see certain sequences in his films in certain cities so you can see how the local level and the desire to bring film production to cities and to create an image for those cities through cinema shapes filmmaking as well in certain ways so finally if we're going to consider Taiwan under this framework of cinema of small nations under globalization is there anything special to say about the way that model operates in Taiwan I'm not sure I think there's probably a lot more research to be done but there's one thing that I have noticed and I think a lot of the things that the other speakers have been saying this afternoon and drawing attention to sort of resonates with that and that is that of course at one time the Taiwan news cinema was criticized for allegedly not being connected enough to Taiwanese audiences but I think that with the post news cinema the main feature is whether in terms of popular film whether it's in terms of documentaries films that are directed towards a certain audience like indigenous films or whether it's queer cinema or whatever the filmmakers and the films are very much focused on engaging with various different Taiwan audiences thank you very much thank you very much Chris it's such amazing areas of fantastic talks here may I ask our panelists to switch on your video and audio then we can start taking questions I won't deprive the audience with all the time because we have limited time so could Xiao Yi come in and take over the Q&A session ok so maybe I'll read out the question first so this is a question from audience to Professor Lim so he would like to know why the box office poisoned this course in Taiwan new cinema has shifted to the box office saviour discourse in post new wave cinema and this might be related to Bing Chun's point of some of the post new cinema directors having diverse and multiple careers ok Song Hui want me to show it now or later well if you want me to reply now then please ok yes I have to wait a little bit ok sure I can always start talking yes please do sure thanks to me for the question I think the box office saviour discourse which is Wei Dersheng is used precisely to attack the box office poison this course that is about the new cinema people so let me show you this slide which I skipped earlier and again I apologize it's only Chinese so in the 1980s the supporters of the new wave movement were attacking the generation of filmmakers that came before them claiming that their films have led Taiwan film industry into a no end road and later the detractors of new cinema the people who attack new cinema use exactly the same term of cow dissect claiming that the new cinema has taken Taiwan film industry or Taiwan cinema into the cow dissect of art cinema so you can see here that the discourse is the same but the target is different so what this tells us is actually how such discourses are like I said earlier it's an ideological battle it's about discursive power it's about who gets to say or define film historiography in whose terms so it's not so much whether these things are empirically proven as I have shown in my other slide that the box of this market share is actually not as huge as is being claimed but yet this myth of Wei Dersheng being the saviour of Taiwan cinema somehow lives on in the discourse of post-Taiwan cinema so this is my response to the question and if I may actually do you want me to stop here can I ask a question in response to the presentations or make a comment in response to the presentations earlier BU yes okay because I don't think there are that many questions yet so I can't pose a question or make a comment myself if that is fine yes okay so just very quickly kind of in response to Wafa, Peking Chen and Chris Berry all touch the point of the film festival market authorship is the currency but as we all know films the question is how do Taiwanese films travel abroad the three things that usually travel or three things in which films are categorized one is author the second one is genre and the third one is stars and as we know Taiwan did have regional film stars in the 70s like Richard Nien right and all these other stars but now there are no recognizable so-called film stars right from Taiwan really so you're down to genre or authors and my understanding is that and you feel free to disagree authors travel better at the international level and genres can travel at the international level but because the Taiwan genres are not as well known as the Wuxia and Kung Fu genres they travel better in the regional level so which is why I picked up this genre called Little Freshness which can be interpreted as a kind of campus movies and actually some of the actors that appeared in those movies have become really big stars regionally like Wang Da Lu who starred in Wuzhao Li Si Dai he became really really big in China so they do operate but at a different scale which is why my comments about the scaling down of soft power from the international scale in the new cinema period to the regional scale in the post-new cinema period. Okay I thought I'll add that comment to the discussion. Fantastic. Can I ask Xiao Yi to close the PowerPoint and I saw Wafa and Chris raised your hands but the questions to Song Hui and Ping Chen may we ask Ping Chen to come back to respond to it then we come back to Wafa and Chris please Ping Chen Okay thank you Be Yu. Yes I think for most of the film especially during the Taiwanese cinema era we see there are a lot of films that they can be shown or they bring international competition in the international film festival just right because the author not because the genre or perhaps we don't have started anymore however I think for those films probably for the directors of those films they are still trying to do something related to the genre or even make the box office successfully within the domestic film market in Taiwan so probably they see bring brought those films I mean those new cinema films or the post-new cinema films to the international competition as kind of the strategy for winning the attractions from the domestic film audiences in Taiwan or sometimes maybe outside Taiwan mostly inside Taiwan so I think it's quite a dilemma which I mentioned just like most of the new directors after Taiwanese cinema era they choose to different kinds of careers try to secure their professional career and also try to elaborate or try to touch different angles, aspects in terms of how to make the films in different approaches and be successful in the film market so I don't know whether I answered the Timmy Chan's question however that's kind of my observation in terms of the film industry between the Taiwanese cinema and also after the era of Taiwan new cinema, thank you thank you Robert can you switch on your video as well so the picture will be nicer sorry and Wafa would you like to come in first just a few things to answer maybe Professor Lim and I will talk like Pinchu and from my experience talking with all the directors who started their career in the 90s one told me that really in the 90s festival would just grab the film no matter what it was and we can see that in many festivals there are some kind of trains so sometimes it's Taiwan cinema it's going to miss sometimes South American cinema now we can see that Chinese cinema is very in fashion this artistic independent cinema is much more in fashion now and there is also on the one hand there is this train from the festival but also when you speak to some directors in Taiwan and who want the film to be taken in festivals the only festival they see is Cannes or maybe Venice or maybe Berlin but if you tell them well maybe you know Hoshiaoshan started in Nant and Midi-Z started in Nant and then it went to Cannes they just refused I've been talking to them and even working with some of them the strategy is Cannes or nothing and some of them do not have in mind what is made outside for example Adam Sway for the tenants downstairs he wanted Cannes or nothing and he had no idea of what was expected there and even great buddha plus they wanted Cannes they almost got there programmer the curator told me it was almost good but then there are some better films so I think there is this kind of attitude and you can see for some younger directors they try to attract the attention of festival using some you know magic words like produced by Hoshiaoshan or music by Lim Gyeong or using some actors like Jack Cao or Guelun Mei in the film to attract some attention from the curators and film programmers in festival because when you discuss with programmers they say oh yeah this film has been produced by or there is this actress for real especially in France I don't know outside France but I know that in France it's very important for programmers to all have names they can recognize or styles they can recognize if it's like you know Midi-Z it was okay because it was slow with long takes and minimalist so it was okay it was more or less like a Hoshiaoshan somehow or timing young somehow but when it's too different film programmers get completely lost and they don't know what it is about it's like no it's not a Taiwan cinema we know and that's why for example where I work at the French Cinema Tech it was okay to do a film retrospective a film of the 60s but impossible to do something about new directors for them it was too not something you can recognize enough it was too different from what French people are used to and a lot of audience always tell me that oh the film was okay but it's very different like John Zotti is okay because it's a little like new ways but the new directors now no impossible except yes for the genre films are okay and that's why now there is a bigger freedom I think in documentary film festival and they're really happy and curious about films so Taiwan films can have an opportunity or the kind of fantastic film festival which are also very open minded and so Taiwan cinema has an opportunity in genre films to be like somehow seen and promoted I don't know if I answered some question but yes he's in the middle he does a nice film but not recognizable enough for big festivals thank you Chris what I wanted to say actually is a bit similar to what Wafa was saying at the end there and I think one of the things we have to recognize is that just as everything else has been transformed by globalization the same is true for the film festival world where it used to be about international film festivals and their prizes and it was only about art cinema right now we have a situation where there are all these different circuits and there are circuits for fantastic film circuits for documentary film festivals circuits for LGBTQ film festivals women's film festivals you know you name it and so in fact although many Taiwan filmmakers really struggle to get into Cannes maybe they don't need to be so obsessed with Cannes there are many other ways if you want to go international and so I think that's and this is true for everybody not just filmmakers in Taiwan there are many many other opportunities nonetheless unfortunately it's still the case that if you want to be on the front page of the newspapers well maybe forget about the newspapers on the MSN website or whatever these you have to be win in Cannes right it's the only international film festival that you can guarantee will be reported globally every year but to think that that's the only film festival that's out there is a mistake yes may I also ask Corrado and Robert to come in on this because I think it's always a certain kind of miss that if it's a good film it definitely should be a box office poison and this is kind of really paradoxical way for example when Tom Lin was talking about this film which film was that it's actually talking about death it's not a popular Xenia flower Xenia flower so could you two also talk a little bit about this okay actually I would like to address this question from different perspectives because nowadays there's another actual new platform coming up which is OTT Netflix so nowadays I find out some new directors among I guess this globally phenomena that they would like to find a spot or get the opportunity to show their works there is a short film or a visual film with a website such as Netflix so if we follow tradition of trying to be recognized in those international film festivals that is because those new directors want to be have a spot in the in the film history but if they want to get some money or they want to have some kind of popularity probably they will go for the Netflix so I think especially in the current situation because of lockdown because of pandemic so I would believe more and more directors will pursue in this direction instead of following the old way of going to film festival to get recognized interesting I think you want to say something well I'm not exactly am I on? yes you are on actually I'm not sure I have an answer or I exactly pinned down the question but Robert you've been mentioning Netflix which is extremely interesting especially for one concern or my students are concerned in a European and pandemic context so Netflix is interesting but of course you're all very well aware that some movies are just selling rights to Netflix for example the new one is on Netflix so there are horror stuff bridge curse but also the the multiple prize winners Esan by Tomohon so that's where I was seeing all these categories maybe blurred up and Chris also reminded us that J horror or extreme horror right have been brands that actually were very helpful in order to diffuse horror or goer movies outside Asia so I think these channels might be interesting in making a difference between the only art can and popular streaming platform Wafa you raised your hand yeah just I wanted to add another problem that happened in the last few years it was before Netflix with that only small distributors were interested in Taiwan cinemas they were not the big ones that were not Hoshia Hoshien or Simon Liao even Simon Liao is hard but yeah the fees the right for the films I remember were really really high for the distributors like they were asking a huge amount of money no matter for distributors but also for festivals like every time a festival wanted to screen Taiwan cinema it was crazy it was huge I think it was another problem like as if Taiwan wanted to follow the Hong Kong example or the Japanese example but like yeah some maybe archived distributors can pay we are willing to pay for Japanese films that are going to be going to be expensive but you know more successful but Taiwan they try to use the same strategy but it didn't work the same because well it was not that successful anymore in France so it was just something to remember too like for this problem Vincen would you like to come in now yeah I would like to share some experience while I was working for Taiwan Film Institute as I just mentioned in my presentation we promote the classic titles of Taiwanese film as well including lighting sixties Taiwanese language film which is Taiyupian and also the melodramas between seventies to eighties or the Wuxia電影 the martial arts films so I would like to give you an example about the film festival or how the people in Taiwan obsessed of the film festival while we are promoting those classic masterpieces when we restored it the one of the king whose classic title Legend in the Mountain we thought actually this quite important film was well known by the public audiences in Taiwan so we don't need really to do a lot of promotion or something to reintroduce the film however for the young generation audiences in Taiwan or even not that young middle-aged audiences in Taiwan they can't really recognize this film properly so we still sent the film to Ghana to Cannes for the international film festival their classical title programs and luckily we won an award of the Legend in the Mountain was the best restored it classic film something then everyone realized that actually it was quite wonderful film no matter it's the classical restoration or actually original is a very very great film so as I say that probably is I don't know it's kind of obsession or conventional concept of how we recognize what is the good film or artist film or good piece of the director's work the film festival sometimes is just like a prize or sometimes just like the authority to really give a stamp or something on those really wonderful works so sometimes we just try to utilize the approach as a film festival is kind of a strategy to make the audience aware that actually these films are really wonderful thing wonderful works however I won't say it always works or however I won't say we always take that kind of approach for promoting those classic titles or even new films but it still works in some decree just like Wafa mentioned actually I think even some genre film if we do it properly in international film festival and we try to make the programmers who can select some genres even the classic titles still we can make those genre films kind of new life as a new film even there are the classical old movies so that's my kind of insight of reservation according to my previous experience really we still got quite a few questions because I know Don Lai is another our regular and he's amazing a PhD I think he has already graduated I will have to read out his question he said he would be keen to hear the panelists sort about the apparent divergence between Taiwanese films that are internationally recognized and those that are domestically recognized actually is relating to what we are talking about and he said especially the film awards for example Hou Xiaoxian's film continues to do well in both spheres but others doing well domestically do not seem to enter international duris considerations like Yang Ya to us films which one Golden Horses several times what other factors you think prevent the new fact new faces from Taiwanese cinemas like Yang to be recognized in the West who would like to go first how about Song Hui well indeed actually I found what Tom Lin said the other day really interesting he actually said their generation of filmmakers lack the ambition of the previous generation and I don't see that as a bad thing by the way it's just a different and he put it down actually to what Robert Chen was saying earlier about generation of difference because the other generation that didn't experience the martial arts period sorry martial law period not martial arts period martial law martial law period so they don't have the same range or resistance or axe to grind in the same way not the same fire in the belly but like I said which is why I really see this as an as an exchange it's a different structure of feeling it's about living the beautiful mundane daily life of Taiwan and and those things don't maybe don't translate as well are not what international film festivals are looking for yep so Chinese has a mismatch between the two ah great and Wafa actually this is your territory isn't it in fact I think that what just Ping Chen said and even Chris before there is this kind of you know of mirror reflection when a film goes to Taiwan to Cannes for example it becomes famous in Taiwan when Hoshia Oshin started his career it was still Taiwan news so he didn't have such a big pressure to you know the film was successful when he started in the early 80s and his film were going to not first and then in Venice in 1988 and afterwards to Cannes I think it was still a period where he could do the film he wanted and also they were like the festival liked the way he did film so he already has this aura and you know now Hoshia Oshin knows that if he does a film it's going to Cannes you know it's known like when you speak to directors they are like doing their film for Cannes like you know they calculate the time so it goes to this or that festival so they know that well Hoshia Oshin is already settled for Young Yatch I think Young Yatch is like this new generation like Tom Lin or John Yautier all this kind of directors maybe John Yautier might be a little different but they really have to tackle and struggle between what they want to do for films and what is what the production wants you have this for example with Xu Hanyang with Detention he had an idea of a film and he had to do something else well anyway and because festivals are now so formated Taiwan cinema must be slow with no maybe not so much music except for Lim Gyeong if you have duck cow it's even better you know like especially big festivals such as Cannes it's really hard to see new people except maybe in the director's fortnight or a certain regard but so those young directors when you see Young Yatch girlfriend boyfriend it's quite interesting because I remember discussing with him about the film he wanted to do which was much more political and when I saw the result and it was sentimental so there's always this discrepancy between what the directors want and what at the end is the result festival I think might feel that and also in Taiwan production goes to Taiwan with the actors they take pictures the film is not in Cannes but you know they take pictures in Cannes and then it's in the newspaper in Taiwan so it's a way of doing some advertisement somehow so I don't know thank you it's really good to get some insight from the insiders Robert also raised his hand I would like to follow what Chris just mentioned since we are Taiwan as a small nation we really need to find out the ways or the direction we are going forward so I think for the new web directors their mission is to have Taiwan being recognized internationally and on the other hand I believe the mission for those post-new web directors their mission is to bring back our domestic audience first since after 2008 Captain Number 7 this is a phenomenon and I believe that's one thing they learn from instead of from new web directors such as Ho Xiaoxian so they find out this is important for the domestic the national audience needs to have national audience that's what very important things right so because of different missions and then so right now they might be focusing on bringing back our domestic audience and on the other hand I just find out from Vincen's talk that actually those directors we have been talking about in terms of the posting web directors they are almost entering their middle age and I believe they are getting more and more mature and I believe they will be mature in terms of their film technique and no subject matters and eventually or hopefully will be recognized by film festivals in the long run yeah Vincen you want to say something yeah so please don't call them young directors anymore younger younger okay I think everyone is still quite younger relatively young young so I respond to Chris and Robert and Wafa I think for those younger generation directors they are still quite in kind of dilemma just like Robert said probably when they are getting mature actually they are more like to know where should they situate their own career no matter in the commercial side or the artistic side however I would like to give another example in terms of the documentary macking I think in documentary macking slightly or entirely is another story yeah for documentary macking we always see this kind of social engagement for making documentary try to establish kind of a national or domestic or social political establishment or discourse however in Taiwan in the past many years maybe after 2000s for some kind of production they have kind of direction which is they try to learn or try to analyze how to use a kind of language if we can say that film language or the image language to mimic the documentary that comes from outside Taiwan for instance National Geographic or Discovery Channel so it's very interesting because in the past many years we can see that in the territory of documentary macking for some independent documentary makers or for some production companies in terms of documentary macking they try to convert their own language in terms of film image into kind of global language if we may call that if we do have kind of global language and try to make their documentary more like the western style or specifically saying American style or even the BBC like documentaries so I think it's a little bit interesting or ironic for the film macking in general in Taiwan perhaps just like Robert mentioned in his presentation that for the post Taiwanese cinema era most of the directors they try to find out their own voice or try to show their own characteristics in different aspects however in documentary macking still now in Taiwan the independent documentary are quite strong and try to show their own voice but in some part of the documentary macking in Taiwan now they are trying to convert themselves becoming more western style or the style from outside Taiwan so that's some other different points yeah thank you I think oh ok I can also see I think we still got quite a few questions here however I know Corrado want to say something I'm so sorry I missed that no some not really random thoughts but questions for you and going back to what have been said I'm sorry this is kind of my we discuss about the specificity of Taiwan which is of course in the heart of everybody but don't you see there are so many parallels exactly with the new way or I'm sorry this is my personal Italian neorealism all these waves they all lasted 5, 10 years great maximum which doesn't mean that Tofo wasn't making movie until is that he's still doing video stuff and has just been said the experience history of Tami Lan José and they themselves specifically in the interview interesting Q&A that we had last day they talk about the urgency and maybe there is not that urgency anymore or that pressure or that moment in time that was particularly favorable for these new director I'm talking of course about José Auxián and Tami Lan etc. which have been stable and marker but then even if they do continue to make movies that parenthesis in history is finished, it's over and also to other question and I was reading the question about Yang Yache in the dialogue I mean all of us here and me myself first struggled to find a style or style or aesthetics for this new director so maybe one of the idea that is so difficult to level first it's also because they themselves switching from different jobs has been said to advertisement or popular switching from Cannes Film Festival because was it in Cannes or Berlin maybe his somewhere and they not fail but do we recognize a particular Chiangwei or avant-garde or revolutionary while that was much easier for the José Auxián Tami Lan, Yandecang etc. and one last thing that I think is very interesting like a full circle somehow David Lohman has been mentioned and actually I know I produce in French and Italian this useless language of small countries but I was probably working on some David Lohman stuff but then it's so interesting because we go back to the university because only university could really take David Lohman seriously even if it was a huge box office of success and Duval Yang is of course an Italian and I see this also for Italian comedy popular in the 60s right like after the nihilism ended somehow they appeal but they only appeal to a very specific local audience with local jokes in duendu to politics and the like otherwise we have to maybe get it back to the academy field like now we are watching the UPN film history dialogue among specialists because otherwise non-mediated I try with my entourage I try to just show David Lohman stuff and no I mean if you are interested specifically in Taiwan that's a big no okay I saw Chris and Song Hui both raised your hands who go first Chris this time okay yeah just to follow up on what Corrado was just saying I think it's very interesting to talk about the role of universities and here we are in them after all you know and how these kind of events and these kind of spaces provided kind of foothold for doing things and of course it's true you get a big award at a big festival you can get the films recognized but then what if you can't get the films into the festivals if you're not getting that recognition are there other ways to start to get people talking about it and of course with the Tai UPN the Taiwanese language cinema example some of you know that I spent many years trying to persuade people that will remain nameless that is supposed to be interested in popular Asian cinema and doing retrospectives of popular Asian cinema to show a few of these films and of course they always say they're interested but they never did it so in the end we'd start going into universities and we've done two what would you say iterations of the Taiwanese language cinema project the first one everything is universities when it comes to the second one oh you know five flavors festival would like to show the films other festivals would like to start showing the films so this is obviously another strategy even if it's not a prestigious you know strategy right or a high profile strategy but there's a kind of bottom up strategy as well that you can pursue thank you and Song Hui baby yes very briefly I have a okay a serious and a less serious take on the topic of David Lohman right the last serious take is that I know we have not talked about the relationship between film taste and class right which is obvious and the most serious take is that of course to teach these films you need to have accessibility and availability of them and that of course is where I think a lot of popular cinema may not be traveling as well because of that reason right but I would really love to hear Chris answer the second question by Timmy Chen if that is what the moderator would like to as well are you asking Chris so I finished addressing I'm just wondering whether there is time for Chris Barry to answer a question in the chat room posed by Timmy Chen but posed to Chris I would love to hear Chris answer exactly but I have to say because now in Hong Kong and in Taiwan is midnight so I would like Chris to answer very briefly if you can would that be okay Chris yeah okay so the question is how can Taiwan cinema reckon with the role of PRC censorship for example the popular TV series and also the boy called Golden Horse Awards you know I think one answer to that is every time the PRC does something like that it's a fantastic advertisement for Taiwan you know and I think and I actually think the Golden Horse Awards should make the most of that you know I mean if we're going to be forced back into a new cold war why not start using the discourse of freedom again right where is it free from censorship free to watch what you want to watch certainly not in the PRC right so I think there is that's the answer to that even though it may not be you know what people none of us want to go down that kind of road but you have to make use of it when you are a small country you have to use whatever little leverage you have and that is the lesson going right back to Taiwan new cinema right you look for the leverage you have when you're isolated fantastic Robert you are coming in I want to add quickly that actually that's what's happening in Taiwan right now because of lockdown and because of COVID-19 Taiwan I believe is the only place in the world that we can watch movie freely and nowadays right now is the Golden Horse Film Festival is going on and I believe that's very very good and a big advantage for Taiwan cinema thank you well on that note what an amazing afternoon we have here thank you so much you guys amazing and I can't believe two hours fly by just like this it can go on for another two hours I'm sure but it's very late especially for two of our panelists so I have to draw to a close I'm very sorry because you know if you want to stay on and have a chat you're welcome to but thank you very much especially for our six amazing panelists for such a wonderful and insightful discussion and may I ask our audience now switch on please switch on your audio and video put your hands together and thank our wonderful panelists please welcome I'm not sure they can switch it on I need to switch them all or you can just put a thank you or something in the chat I'm very sorry I didn't switch you guys out but don't forget tomorrow we have another lecture by Dr. another is of course Direct Q&A with Director so thank you guys it's amazing really amazing session thank you very much