Postcolonial film historiography in Taiwan and South Korea:: The Puppetmaster and Chihwaseon

This essay is concerned with the ways in which postcolonial historiography is inscribed in cinema. Two representative films of Taiwan and South Korea, The Puppetmaster by Hou Hsiao-Hsien(1) and Chihwaseon by Im Kwontaek are compared, not only to understand the working of de-colonization in the cinematic apparatus but also to understand the impact, effects of colonial history. The notion of postcolonial filmmaking as an alternative construction of the archive is evoked to locate film practice in the intersecting spaces of repository, historiography, cinematic representation and social memory. Hence, these two films are cited as instances of illuminating retrospection on fractured pasts, the almost-invisible archive and the future cinematically envisioned by suggesting a sustainable postcolonial episteme in the age of global spectatorship.