Documentary power: Women documentary filmmakers and new subjectivities in contemporary Taiwan

Abstract

This essay discusses how documentary filmmaking opens up a space for women to intervene in contemporary debates on the question of subjectivity in Taiwan. The argument is fleshed out with two case studies: a film by an indigenous woman documentary filmmaker and the other by a middle-class young mother trying to establish herself as a professional artist/scholar in the age of media technology. With its focus on the ethical response to the marginalized other in the indigenous community as the thematic concern, Si-Manirei's And Deliver Us from the Evil (2001) intervenes in contemporary indigenous movement in Taiwan by breaking new ground in thinking about the constitution of indigenous subjectivity. Somewhere Over the Cloud (2008), on the other hand, addresses the ambiguous impact of media technology on the constitution of subjectivity in a world of transnational image/labour flows. Though very different in their concerns and narrative styles, the two films by Taiwanese women filmmakers not only open up new dimensions in thinking about the gender politics in documentary filmmaking but also illustrates the impact of media technology on the everyday life as well as the professional space of women from different ethnic backgrounds.

Acknowledgements

The research drawn on in this article was made possible by the research grants from the Research Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences at National Chung-hsing University and the National Science Council of Taiwan. I would like to thank Chaoyang Liao, Jiannguan Lin, Yulin Lee for their stimulating dialogues and film directors Mei-ling Hsiao and Si-Manirei for sharing with them their most intimate thoughts in making the films. I am also grateful to National Chung-hsing University for providing a wonderful intellectual environment for nurturing fruitful inter-disciplinary exchanges.