Mapping Taiwanese Cinema, 2008-20: Environments, Poetics, Practice

by Christopher Brown

Overview

What is the relationship between filmmaking and mapping? Accounting for the unique characteristics of Taiwan’s cinema from 2008 to 2020, this book examines how filmmakers have depicted and imagined the island’s diverse environments. Drawing on cinema, cartography, and cultural studies, Christopher Brown argues that by refocusing attention on how films are shaped through a process of construction, the tradition of film poetics enables us to think about Taiwanese cinema differently: as a form of mapping. Wide—ranging in scope and drawing on original interviews with contemporary filmmakers, the analysis appraises case studies including works of popular entertainment, genre cinema such as comedies and horror, films about indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ cinema, and arthouse work. By asking what it means to map an environment onscreen, the book offers new insights into a critically neglected, yet creatively dynamic, period in Taiwan’s film history

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474478281
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	12/31/2025
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Christopher Brown is Senior Lecturer in Filmmaking at the University of Sussex. A practitioner as well as a researcher, Chris has published work on contemporary Taiwanese film, practice—as—research, and American cinema.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on Romanisation

1. Mapping Taiwanese Cinema

2. You are Here

3. Back to the Woods

4. Indigenous Land and Sea

5. Love in a Designer City

6. House Style

7. Quiet Places

Conclusion

Bibliography

Filmography

Editorial Reviews

Christopher Brown analyzes Taiwanese cinema, 2008-2020, by way of well-curated mise en scène, soundtrack, and cartographic imaginary. Maps are defined as "instruments of power" and are meticulously traced through multiple scenes like Wordsworthian "spots of time," or Brown’s spots in space.

Sheng-mei Ma

Christopher Brown analyzes Taiwanese cinema, 2008—2020, by way of well—curated mise en scène, soundtrack, and cartographic imaginary. Maps are defined as "instruments of power" and are meticulously traced through multiple scenes like Wordsworthian "spots of time," or Brown’s spots in space.

Sheng—mei Ma

Mapping Taiwanese Cinema is an exciting breakthrough – the first book on Taiwanese cinema since 2008, with an original approach to cinema as not just including maps but itself a mapping technology, and combining analysis of poetics with the practices of filmmaking. A must—read.

Chris Berry