台灣自然導向影片（2004-2009）：荒野、科技與環境想像

Abstract

With the bourgeoning of nature film festivals around the world within these ten years in scale, scope and impact, nature-oriented films are developing beyond their original scope of wildlife or wilderness, and spreading to related fields concerning diverse issues of toxic pollution, environmental justice, crisis of the environment and the relationship between human beings and non-human beings. This dissertation approaches nature-oriented films from the perspective of ecocriticism so as to examine how “nature” is visually represented in “nature-oriented films,” “environmental films,” and “green screens,” and how such visual representation has played the role of an alternative nature as both a prediscursive entity as well as a culture-constructed text. The genres of nature-oriented films are more and more inclusive of diverse methods of representation, such as incorporating scientific knowledge and technological skills. Its motifs include wildlife ecology, the existence of the wilderness, environmental risks, the conflicts between traditional and modern ways of life, scientific education, environmental imagination, the concern for endangered species, and city problems. Two notions need to be emphasized in reading nature films. One is to treat nature per se as an autonomous actor, while all the animals, plants and organic beings are playing the main characters; in comparison, human beings play more the roles of beholders or spectators. Furthermore, the role of film is significant in the way it acts as mediator to connect nature as the main character on the one hand and human beings as the co-constructor of nature on the other hand. The audiences are participating in the process of representation, imagination, and creation of an alternative identity of nature through film watching. Certain films of the 3rd Green Screen Internationales Naturfilmfestival, the 5th Darser Naturfilmfestival, the 8th NaturVision Internationales Natur-und Tierfilmfestival, which were held in Germany in 2009, the 15th Festival Nature Namur in Belgium in 2009, the 7th Matsalu Nature Film Festival in Estonia in 2009, and the 27e Festival International Du Film D’Environnement in Paris, France in 2009, and the Green International Film Festival of Taiwan (G.I.F.T.) since its initiation in 2004 will be put into comparison in this dissertation to examine the play of “nature.” Some films that can be considered as new wave “nature-oriented films” of Taiwan, which are supposed to be distinguished from the conventional wildlife films are analyzed in depth: Plant Wars, Bird Without Borders, and Spirits of Orchid Island. Furthermore, I will use the term “traditional environmental films” to distinguish these from the “environmental films” I discuss in chapter three, in which two “environmental films” Let It Be and Gift of Life are examined.