ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the existing literature of culture, democratisation and cinema in Taiwan and addresses the impact of democratisation on culture by using the development of Taiwan cinema as a case study. It discusses cultural democratisation on the island, a process whereby space and opportunities are expanded to produce and promote diverse cultural ideas. The chapter reviews the history of cinema in post-war Taiwan in order to demonstrate the changes through the years leading to the 1980s. It focuses on a number of filmmakers of Taiwan New Cinema and Post-New Cinema and explains how they challenged different boundaries and broadened the cultural horizon of a society under authoritarian rule for over four decades. In addition to changing the ways verbal and filmic languages are used in movies, auteur filmmakers of New Cinema and Post-New Cinema have expanded cultural frontiers in Taiwan cinema in three areas: poetics of (auto)biography and Taiwan historiography, Youth films in Taiwan, and Avant-garde cinema.
