LRCCS Noon Lecture Series | Ethics, Identity and Sociality in Wuna Wu’s First-person Documentaries

Touted as a representative of the “Me” generation of documentary makers in 21st-century Taiwan, Wuna Wu has frequently appeared as both the filmmaker and a major social actor in her documentaries. This talk examines her first-person positioning in three prize-winning films: “Happy or Not” (2002), “Farewell 1999” (2003), and “Let’s Fall in Love” (2008). I argue that Wu has experimented with a broad variety of first-person positionings, which underscore the question of documentary ethics, the importance of mediation for self-identity, and the opportunities for building sociality and community through documentary.

Tze-lan Deborah Sang is Professor of Chinese Literature and Media Studies at Michigan State University. Among her major publications are “The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China” (2003), “Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries” (2012), and a forthcoming book on the “Modern Girl in Early 20th-century China.” She is currently at work on a study on Taiwanese women documentary makers as public intellectuals and innovative artists.

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