Diary film in America and in Taiwan: narrative, temporality, and changing technology

Lee, Ming-Yu (2015) Diary film in America and in Taiwan: narrative, temporality, and changing technology. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The diary film as a unique, personal, and private cinematic genre for a long time has not received its fair share of attention in academic research. This thesis therefore focuses mainly on the historical development, characteristics, and aesthetics of the diary film per se, conducting a critical dialogue between them in order to explore a field of study that should be clarified instead of staying ambiguous.

The discussion of this thesis can be divided into two parts: first, I pay specially attention to the historical context of the diary film in the 1950s to 1960s in America. Combing through different film theories regarding amateurism and different personal filmmaking approaches proposed by Marie Menken, Maya Deren, and Jonas Mekas, the first part of the thesis aims to locate the origins of the diary film. Moreover, with the discovering of the early historic material of the avant-garde film movement and the diary film in Taiwan, a transnational connection of the diary film between America and Taiwan has been established.

The second part of the thesis focuses on the analyses of the diary film texts from various filmmakers in America and in Taiwan across different periods of time: they include Jonas Mekas, Hollis Frampton, Saul Levine, George Kuchar, Shine Lin, and myself. By the close reading of these films, I provide concepts from different perspectives as analytic tools in the diary film research: the parenthetical structure of the voice-over and the image in the diary film, and the different modes of diary filmmaking (perceptive, retrospective, and access) in terms of temporality and technology.

To conclude, this thesis not only wishes to suggest forward-looking views on this marginal field, but also to reconstruct and reinvent the research of the diary film in Taiwan.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Diary Film, Video Diary, Jonas Mekas, Na'Ou Liu, Voice-Over, Taiwan avant-garde, Experimental Film, Personal Cinema
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Theatre Film and TV Studies
• Supervisor's Name: Lury, Professor Karen and Garwood, Dr. Ian
• Date of Award: 2015
• Depositing User: Mr Ming-Yu Lee
• Unique ID: glathesis:2015-6679
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 30 Sep 2015 14:59
• Last Modified: 06 Oct 2015 10:52
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/6679