Chinese Cinema in a World of Flows

Midi Z, network aesthetics from below, and the cultural politics of Taiwanese subimperialism

“…Although the digital camera has facilitated the exchange of images, "enabling transnational filmmaking to take place at an unprecedented level", 44 Although Midi Z's genealogy of formal influence can be partly traced through his contact with Taiwan New Cinema, and Hou Hsiao-hsien in particular, it is important to note that the New Cinema style is not exclusive to Taiwanese art film. As James Tweedie argues in The Age of New Waves, what he understands as new wave aesthetics-a combination of location shooting and an emphasis on mise-en-scène, "a phenomenon of bodies, objects, and space recorded with the incomparable precision of the camera" 45 -emerges first in France, in the wake of the Marshall Plan, before expanding outwards on the back of Euro-American capital, industrialization, and the growth of youth-oriented consumer societies round the world. The almost simultaneous appearance of new waves in Taiwan and the PRC is therefore both a result of, and a response to, "Taiwan's incorporation into a global market in the 1980 and China's attempts to 'link tracks' (jiegui) with the world during its era of Reform and Opening".…”