台灣切片｜真實的呢喃：1990s以降的女性私電影

紀錄片學者Michael RENOV曾指出，個人紀錄片的發展，受到女性主義「個人的即政治的（the personal is political）」理念的影響。回到台灣紀錄片的脈絡，1990年代，開始有許多女性創作者，也以個人的口吻與語彙，採取「個人電影（personal cinema）」的姿態，訴說在「大寫歷史／他的歷史（HIStory）」的敘事傳統下曾被壓抑、被忽略的各種故事。

本單元以回顧性的視角，爬梳與揀選自1990年代以降開始出現的女性私電影，探索「個人的即政治的」概念於紀錄片中的實踐。這些作品擁抱生命敘事，藉著具反身性的創作觀點，切入身體、情慾、情感、家庭關係與成長經驗等面向，深刻地描繪出一個女性所面對的真實世界，也顯影結構所加諸在女性身上的種種框架。

代表圖片

The River

Director HSU Ya-ting, along with her husband Geoffrey HUGHES, explores childbirth and the physical and emotional toll that childbirth took on her personally. She uses her body as a canvas, providing viewers with a most intimate view of what the female body is subjected to when bringing a pregnancy to term.

Spectrum of Nostalgia

In T. S. ELIOT’s rendition, ‘What might have been is an abstraction remaining a perpetual possibility only in a world of speculation.’ When looking into the past, the filmmaker finds her memories fading and her past self on the verge of vanishing. Through the usage of family's archival materials, she aims to explore the relationship between one’s being, body, memory, imagery and death.

Avoiding Vision

One day, when she brushes her teeth, she sees a total stranger in the mirror. Three years ago, she decided to get surgery to put her crooked jaw back where it should be. This is a story about a person who does not like her body and decides to take action.

Hard Good Life 2

Ever since the filmmaker learned how to hold a camera, she had gazed at her father through the lens all the time. After her father got cancer, they went through all the hardship together. Their unbreakable bonds supported them to the very last moment.

Hard Good Life

A quiet daily life of a father recorded by his daughter, filled with ordinary moments of extraordinary emotion and subtle interactions, despite minimal dialogue conducted between them.

Bloody Words

How do you feel when menstruation is regarded as ‘dirty’? Through various personal experiences of menstruation, the film explores how prejudice and stereotypes impact on the way women deal with their menstrual cycles and bodies.

My Homework

Director TSENG occasionally began to record the daily life of her mother, out of the need of completing her documentary assignment at school. The films presents a mother's persistence when facing difficulties and her love for her children. In the meantime, interactions and conversations between mother and daughter are revealed spontaneously.

Taiwan Spectrum｜Triviality that Speaks Volumes: Personal Cinema of Female Directors Since the 1990s

Documentary theorist Michael RENOV once reflected upon the importance of the feminist movement in creating new forms of documentary that investigate the subjectivity and identity of the filmmaker. Indeed, many female filmmakers in Taiwan began to adopt the idea of ‘personal cinema’ in the 1990s, telling their personal stories suppressed or neglected in the tradition of ‘HIStory’ narrative.

From a retrospective viewpoint, this program attempts to re-examine how the idea of ‘the personal is political’ was realised through documentary practice. With self-reflective tone, these works contemplate on the idea of body, desire, emotion, family and experience of growing up, while unveiling various types of restraints imposed on women by the society.