英文摘要 |
The thriving of documentary in Taiwan recent years, combining with life of common people, local memory and social issues has formed a special cultural landscape. This paper investigates The Silver Hairpins by Hsiao Chu-chen (2000) and How High is the Mountain by Tan Shiang-chu (2002). These two films share some similarities: The main characters are both veterans retreated after 1949. They are both the directors’ father. While encountering the blunders in life and the familial affection, how do they “record”? And how do they interpret and represent?
The Silver Hairpins begins from finding her grandmother’s hairpins, tracing back the her father’s life history and shifts (derives) to her father and friends’ migration. With the interlace of photos (text/literature feature), military theme (sense of time) and the diegetic subtitle, composes the Diaspora of common people. Also, the close up and monologue on the red curtain scene, the discipline in the veterans’ home brings a huge visual impact. Tang’s How High is the Mountain focuses on childhood memory, as a kind of nostalgic imagination of the director. The film depicts the story belongs to his (own land) hsiang (Hu-nan) and chu (“Hsin-chu”) instead of the macro-history of the Diaspora in 1949.
Via the artistic performance of the shots, replicating the natural geographic space truly and poetically, Tang combines the landscape and home consciousness and creates the nostalgia of Tang. The director returns the shapes of those Diaspora from his personal point of view. The power of images induces us into their stories and brings a deeper thoughts on time and memory. The two directors swing between personal memory and nationalistic narrative. They not only convey their personal thinking process but presents the shared mental status of the Diaspora. |