Abstract
Abstract In 2008, Cape No. 7 sparked a series of reactions from the public about memories from the colonial era. The enthusiastic response attracted the author’s attention. The movie was released more than 60 years after the end of the war, but it still triggered many responses about memories of the colonial era. Compared with literature, there are relatively few movies that discuss Taiwan’s colonial history, and most of those that do appeared after the lifting of martial law. This phenomenon was due to the government’s political power in the film production system. Official restrictions began to be challenged during the New Wave Cinema period in the 1980s. Subjects of movies at this time were dominated by memories of individual growth, and the history and culture of Taiwanese local experience gradually appeared in the movies. The rating system for movies slowly relaxed only after the end of martial law. This created the conditions for the 1987 release of The Scarecrow, which was the first to explore the life and experiences of the Taiwanese common people during the colonial period. With the political freedoms that arrived after the end of martial law, the subjective position of cultural memory in Taiwanese film began to change, different historical experiences and memories emerged, and only then did the historical experience of Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule find room for discourse. This thesis selects 7 of the more representative movies from the period, between the lifting of martial law in 1987 and 2011, and discusses them in three chapters according to the dates of their release and with respect to the depiction of Japanese colonial rule in film and the differences and similarities in their subject matter, narratives, and modes of exposition. Through these 7 movies, the thesis explores the re-creation of the historical processes in the Japanese colonization of Taiwan, as well as the various manifestations and meanings of the colonial narratives and the sense of Taiwanese self-identification shaped in this re-creation process in the 20-odd years after the end of martial law. In addition to describing and analyzing the manifestations and characteristics of issues in colonial history in film from various periods after the end of martial law in Taiwan, the author also organizes and categorizes the development of narratives of Japanese colonial rule in modern Taiwanese film and its relationship with the collective emotions of the Taiwanese, the public historical memory, and the restatement of group history in the more than 20 years of longitudinal development. Key words: colonial experience, public memory, historical restatement, Taiwanese film