Intimate Temporalities: Affective Historiologies in Hou Hsiao-hsien's Dust in the Wind

Abstract

Abstract New Taiwanese Cinema emerged in the 1980s in the face of a commercial industry in crisis, a loosening political climate at the end of the Cold War, and on the eve of Taiwan's lifting of martial law. Departing from the romantic themed "healthy-realism" and state-prescribed melodramatic narratives that characterized its predecessors, this new wave of Taiwanese films brought to the screen stories of ordinary people and their experiences amidst Taiwan's socialeconomic changes.1 As one of the leaders of New Taiwanese Cinema, Hou Hsiao-hsien partook in the making of the anthology The Sandwich Man (Erzi de dawanou, 1983) which, together with In Our Time (Guangyin de gushi, 1982), launched and defined the movement.