This Moment, Back then: retro imaginary, nostalgia and memories in contemporary Taiwan visual culture

Abstract

Many recent, successful – in terms of selling, but also in terms of diffusion and international
visibility – works of Taiwanese popular culture dwell in a problematic form of nostalgia. This paper
will contextualise and analyse two films that confirm the “retro-trend” in 2015 and 2016, each of
them resonating with a diffuse nostalgic atmosphere: Wo de shaonü shidai/Our Times (Chen, 2015)
and Women de nashi cike쐠/The Moment (Yang, 2016). The former is a fiction film situated in the
nighties; the latter – which is accompanied by a book by the same author published the same year
– is a documentary celebrating the 50s anniversary of Golden Horse Film Festival. While engaging
different forms of retro imaginary, compelling the spectators to go back to Taiwan recent past,
asking audience to read the “past within us” and evaluating the representation’s “truthfulness to
history”, these films engage a specific form of historiographical thinking. Our Times and The Moment
are powerful nostalgia inducing contemporary movies that enhance dramatically the contemporary
construction of a “taiwanesness” (a collective memory, a common experience) based on personal
memory and shared cultural experience – and their specific combination in the perception of
contemporary spectators