La réception du cinéma à Taiwan sous domination coloniale japonaise : une « assimilation par confrontation »

Abstract

The question of how films—mainly Japanese but also Chinese, American and European—were received by the people of Taiwan between 1895 and 1945 is of particular interest due to the island being under colonial rule during this period. This paper seeks to illustrate how, during the colonial period, the Taiwanese did not reject otherness but rather assimilated it by way of a unique process I term “assimilation by confrontation”. This process saw the appearance of cinematographic events in which the colonised population appropriated such foreign productions. To rephrase, film reception in Taiwan during the colonial period was not that of a nation-­state but that of a colonised territory. I aim to explore how such a difference in film reception in a colonial context was possible.

Keywords

• Taiwan
• Japan
• Colonisation
• Cinema
• Assimilation