The University of Nottingham's Taiwan Studies Programme in association with King's College London, Ministry of Culture, Taiwan, Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute presents an online discussion and film.

A podcast of this event can be found here.

Nostalgia Taiwan: Foolish Bride, Naïve bridegroom

HSIN Chi│1967│Taiwan│Taiwanese│ B&W │Org: 35mm │101min 

A besotted boyfriend (Shih Chun) and his girlfriend (Chin Mei) plan to marry with both their families’ blessings. Not until it’s time to formalize the engagement does it come to light that thirty years earlier the boy’s father and the girl’s mother were romantically linked. As new love blossoms, an old love is rekindled. This zany 1960s romantic comedy is living proof that Taiwan was turning out films every bit as hilarious as Sorry That I Fell in Love with You as far back as the 1960s!

Panel discussants include:

• Dr Chun-yi Lee, (Chair person) Director of The Taiwan Studies Programme, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
• Professor Chris Berry, Professor of Film Studies, King's College London
• Dr Wafa Ghermani,  La Cinémathèque française - Université Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle, Film and Audiovisual Studies

Panelist biographies

Dr Chun-Yi Lee is Associate Professor at school of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. She is also the director of Taiwan Studies Program at Nottingham. Chun-Yi's first book was published by Routledge in 2011: Taiwanese Business or Chinese Security Asset. The book is under Leiden Series in Modern East Asia History and Politics. Chun-Yi applied from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) with Prof. Andreas Bieler on the project, 'Globalisation, national transformation and workers' rights: An analysis of Chinese labour within the global economy' in 2010. This project successfully received the funding from the ESRC and started to operate from October 2011 till September 2014. In viewing the Chinese labour facing the challenge of industrial upgrading, Chun-yi applied a research project funded by Chiang-Ching-kuo (CCK) Foundation in Taiwan in relation to 'Chinese Investment in Taiwan: Challenge or Opportunity for Taiwan's Industrial Development'. This project has finished in December 2016. Currently, Chun-yi is working on a public policy research project, to compare Taiwan and UK government's strategies to counter Covid-19. Meanwhile Chun-yi is working her second monograph on the topic of 'China's New Normal: The Impact of China's Rise on the Global Political Economy'.

Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King's College London.  Among his publications are: (co-edited with Feii Lu) Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After (Hong Kong University Press, 2005); and (co-edited with Ming-Yeh Rawnsley) special issue of Journal of Chinese Cinemas on Taiwanese-language cinema 14, no. 2 (2020).

Wafa Ghermani holds a PhD from the Université Paris 3 – La Sorbonne Nouvelle in film studies. Her PhD focused on Taiwan cinema and National Identity from the Japanese colonial period to nowadays. She currently works at the Cinémathèque française and is a curator for many festivals and Taiwan film related events (, Le Cinéma de (mauvais) genre taiwanais, Vesoul International Asian Film Festival, Warsaw Five Flavours Film Festival, Rencontres du cinéma taiwanais in Paris...).Her recent contributions include the forwords of the translation of the script of A City of Sadness into French, « Le cinéma taiwanais : repenser la marginalité comme centralité », « 然的內在風景與性別張力：評潘壘《颱風》 in 電影欣實 Film Appreciation, «Exils: de la nostalgie à la reconquête du passé dans le cinéma ».

Talk Reflection by Heshen Xie PhD Candidate, Film and Television Studies, The University of Nottingham

Foolish Bride, Naïve Bridegroom (HSIN Chi, 1967) is a Taiwanese-language romantic comedy about a young couple pursuing the freedom of love. The panel started by Professor Chris Berry’s talk regarding how Taiwanese-language films (taiyupian) have developed and declined and the related scholarly research as well. Professor Berry also briefly introduced the project that aims to restore taiyupian and to conduct the screening tour around Europe. Dr Wafa Ghermani provided some information about how the film was produced and also mentioned the censorship system in Taiwan in the 1960s. During the Q & A session chaired Dr Chun-yi Lee by Dr and Dr Hongwei Bao, audiences enthusiastically engaged in the discussion about various topics. Regarding the screening per se, the audience focused on the aspects of the genre, female representations as well as the intriguing portrayal of the relationship between men and women. Moreover, the discussion of general taiyupian about censorship, distribution and the cinematic modernism of Taiwan interested participants most. This event was able to draw the attention to Taiwanese-language films and to enrich the understanding of Taiwan cinema and even East Asian cinema.

A podcast of this event can be found here.