A cinema of care: An exploration of Hsu Hui-Ju’s work
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
9:30 am to 11:00 am
- Venue
- Brunei Gallery SOAS
- Room
- BGLT
About this event
In the 2025 SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies Summer School, we are honoured to welcome Dr Chun-Chi Wang to share her insights on contemporary Taiwanese documentary, feminist film practices, and the evolving aesthetics of care.
Talk Abstract
This talk explores the work of Taiwanese documentary filmmaker Hsu Hui-Ju (許慧如), positioning her within the broader trajectory of women’s documentary filmmaking in Taiwan from the 1970s to the present. While early female directors often used the documentary form to critique patriarchal structures, Hsu’s films represent a shift toward what I frame as “a cinema of care.” Her work fosters relationships grounded in embodied attentiveness, mutual vulnerability, and emotional reciprocity.
Focusing on her two duologies—Hard Good Life and Hard Good Life 2, Temporary and The Tunnel—I will examine how Hsu employs techniques such as haptic visuality, reflective voiceover, and participatory performance to reconceive documentary filmmaking as a space of healing and relational transformation.
(image credit: Chinh Le Duc via Unsplash)
Speaker
Chun-Chi Wang
Chun-Chi is an associate professor in the Department of Filmmaking at the National Taipei University of the Arts. She previously served as chief executive officer of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute and was chairperson of both the Taiwan Women’s Film Association and the Women Make Waves Film Festival. Her research has been published in both Chinese and English in academic journals such as The Journal of Chinese Cinemas and The Journal of Art Studies, as well as in edited volumes including Thirty-two New Takes on Taiwan Cinema and The Routledge Handbook of East Asian Gender Studies.
