A City of Sadness (1989) is a groundbreaking Taiwan film classic directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien. This research paper aims to comment on and contribute to academic discussions of the film by investigating the performance of Chinese poetics in Liao Ching-Song’s editing. Using an inverted sequence of the February 28 Incident as an example, this paper explores the film editor’s cultural discourse of Du Fu’s influence on his own Qi-Yun editing method that he employed to edit the sequence. Through dialogues between the ancient and the contemporary, poetics and narratives, subjectivity and objectivity, as well as the theories of Roman Jakobson, Wai-lim Yip, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and David Bordwell, this paper provides a fresh perspective for re-examining the once harshly criticised method of cinematic ellipses in the film, reaffirming the film’s aesthetic function of allowing audiences to re-access a past obliterated from modern Taiwanese history.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Berry, Michael (2014) 煮海時光:侯孝賢的光影記憶 [Boiling the Sea: Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Memories of Shadows and Light], Taipei: ink Publishing.
Bordwell, David (2016) ‘Five lessons from stealth poetics’, in Gary Bettinson and James Udden (eds), The Poetics of Chinese Cinema, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 15–28.
Chen, Jack W. (2020) ‘Foundings of home: On Du Fu and poetics success’, in Xiaofei Tian (ed.), Reading Du Fu: Nine Views, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 15–26.
Dudley, Andrew and Xiao, Jiwei (2019) ‘Poetics and the periphery: The journey of Kaili Blues’, Cineaste 44(3). Retrieved 22 June 2021 from https://www.cineaste.com/summer2019/poetics-and-periphery-journey-of-kaili-blues.
Frodon, Jean-Michel (2014) ‘Unexpected but fertile convergence’, in Richard Suchenski (ed.), Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Vienna: Austrian Film Museum, 75–86.
Hong, Guo-Juin (2011) Taiwan Cinema: A Contested Nation on Screen, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hsiao-Hsian, Hou (dir.) (1989) A City of Sadness [film]. Distributed by Era Group. Blu-ray Disc, 152 mins.
Jakobson, Roman (1959) ‘On linguistic aspects of translation’, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) (2000), The Translation Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, 113–118.
Lai, Tse-Han; Myers, Ramon H.; and Wei, Wou (1991) A Tragic Beginning: the Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Lee, Daw-Ming (2018) ‘The journey of Taiwan cinema: From Taiwan New Cinema to Post-New Cinema’, Taiwan Insight, 31 October. Retrieved 1 September 2022 from https://taiwaninsight.org/2018/10/31/the-journey-of-taiwan-cinema-from-taiwan-new-cinema-to-post-new-cinema/.
Martel, Yann (2003) Life of Pi, Boston, MA: Mariner Books.
Mei, Tsu-lin and Kao, Yu-kung (1968) ‘Tu Fu’s “Autumn Meditations”: An exercise in linguistic criticism’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 28: 44–80.
Nugent, Christopher M. B. (2020) ‘Sources of difficulty: Reading and understanding Du Fu’, in Xiaofei Tian (ed.), Reading Du Fu: Nine Views, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 111–128.
Owen, Stephen (1981) The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High Tang, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Pasolini, Pier Paolo (1976) ‘Cinema of poetry’, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods, Vol. 1, Berkeley: University of California Press, 542–558.
Rawnsley, Ming-yeh T. (2016) ‘Cultural democratization and Taiwan cinema’, in Gunter Schubert (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 373–388.
Reynaud, Bérénice (2002) A City of Sadness, London: British Film Institute.
Suchenski, Richard (ed.) (2014) Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Vienna: Austrian Film Museum.
Tian, Xiaofei (ed.) (2020) Reading Du Fu: Nine Views, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Udden, James (2018) No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2nd ed., Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Wang, David Der-Wei (2015) The Lyrical in Epic Time, New York: Columbia University Press.
Wang, Yu-Yen (2010) ‘穿越影像,還原純粹本質─剪接師廖慶松專訪’ [Perceiving through images, restoring the pure essence: An interview with the film editor Liao Ching-Song], 放映週報 [Funscreen], 2 July, No. 264. Retrieved 16 March 2020 from http://www.funscreen.com.tw/headline.asp?H_No=306.
Yip, June (2004) Envisioning Taiwan: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation in the Cultural Imaginary, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Yip, Wai-lim (1993) Diffusion of Distances, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Zhang, Jing-Pei (2009) 電影靈魂深度的溝通者: 廖慶松 [The Communicator in Depth with the Soul of Cinema: Liao, Ching-Song], Taipei: Art & Collection Group.
Zhang, Jing-Pei (2011) 凝望‧時代 [Staring at an Era], Taipei: Garden City.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 642 | 201 | 28 |
Full Text Views | 291 | 68 | 8 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 488 | 133 | 16 |
A City of Sadness (1989) is a groundbreaking Taiwan film classic directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien. This research paper aims to comment on and contribute to academic discussions of the film by investigating the performance of Chinese poetics in Liao Ching-Song’s editing. Using an inverted sequence of the February 28 Incident as an example, this paper explores the film editor’s cultural discourse of Du Fu’s influence on his own Qi-Yun editing method that he employed to edit the sequence. Through dialogues between the ancient and the contemporary, poetics and narratives, subjectivity and objectivity, as well as the theories of Roman Jakobson, Wai-lim Yip, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and David Bordwell, this paper provides a fresh perspective for re-examining the once harshly criticised method of cinematic ellipses in the film, reaffirming the film’s aesthetic function of allowing audiences to re-access a past obliterated from modern Taiwanese history.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 642 | 201 | 28 |
Full Text Views | 291 | 68 | 8 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 488 | 133 | 16 |