Is revitalizing culture a beautiful dream? Objects, archives, and images of indigenous Taiwan in Hu Tai-Li’s documentary Returning Souls (2012)

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Returning Souls, directed by anthropologist Hu Tai-Li, expresses cultural revitalization sensuously, sensibly, and dialectically in documenting the repatriation of ancestral souls to the indigenous Taiwanese village Tafalong. The images in Returning, through montage, offer a way of accessing and representing the dialectical tensions of myth, indigeneity, historical reality, and secularization among the indigenous Tafalong people. In examining their autonomy and vitality, Hu presents a splintered world populated with fragmented histories and constructed through humor acts and interplays among ritual-images and myth-images. Moreover, she explores the image-spectator relation structure, using images to stimulate meanings relevant to her innermost concern for the indigenous Taiwanese through sensory experiences and embodied knowledge and materiality, toward regional aesthetics. In engagingly juxtaposing and interposing images, Hu’s radical cinematic deployments based on the historical enmeshment of the indigenous Taiwanese work toward ushering in new possibilities for archiving indigenous material in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous Taiwanese
• postcolonial studies
• cultural revitalization
• archive
• montage in documentary
• sensory ethnography
• cinematic embodiment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I sincerely appreciate the anonymous referees who reviewed this paper. Their insightful and constructive criticisms and suggestions have helped intensify my knowledge of the sensory in terms of what is involved in ethnographic filmmaking and the representation of the regional aesthetics.

2. Arguably, the shifting interest of Taiwan’s anthropological circle during 1980s can be understood through Hu’s research. In an interview, she explained that her research with members of indigenous, rural communities (1978, 1984), veteran-mainlanders (1990), and others is all based on social-political changes in Taiwan. In her fieldwork, Hu aims to probe the reality of the social structure in Taiwan, particularly in terms of who and what are excluded from the official mode (1991a, 196–197).

3. Quoted from “Songs of Pastaay: Anthropological Image Thinking,” China Times Supplement, November 26 1988; Reprinted in Burning Melancholy (1991a).

4. Return received several awards including the 2012, Jean Rouch International Ethnographic Film Festival in France “Special Mention” for the “Intangible Cultural Heritage Award” and the 2013 World Fest-Houston USA Gold Remi Award in the Ethnic/Cultural category.

5. At that point in the film, Hu was convener of the museum committee at the Institute (Hu 2017, 5).

6. The architect Chijiiwa Suketaro (1897–1991) made a significant contribution to the conservation of Taiwan’s indigenous assets. It began with his interest in mountain hiking, but he then developed an interest in remote indigenous villages. Not because he wanted to sightsee, but because measuring the Taiwan indigenous houses with his profession. He left valuable notes, sketches, photographs, and floorplans. The Kakita’an house was also recorded (Chijiiwa 1988, 66–67).

7. That the house be slated for the public use was proposed by the Committee for Preservation of Historic, Scenic, and Natural Monuments of Taiwan in the Japanese colonial period, recorded by Utsurikawa (Utsurikawa 1936, 69–71).

8. Hu mentions in her article that reproducing decrepit ritual objects is common in indigenous cultures and that the duplications would be sacred as long as the rituals were applied (2017, 7). Liu’s suggestion is recorded in Hu’s summary of interview (2017, 13).

9. Not only in the film, but also in one of discussions, we can sense Hu’s determinedness with standing alongside the young Tafalongers and the Kakita’an family. She said, “during the filmmaking, I am not an observer without engaging. When I saw young Tafalongers trying to approach their ancestors, to rebuild a house where rituals used to be performed, and where the souls of the ancestors lived and protected, I was moved by their pure minds and a hope that their dream comes true. That’s why I stand alongside these youngsters and the Kakita’an family. My role is their companion and a facilitator” (Hu 2012, 41). Thank you for the anonymous reviewer’s suggestion. The translation is quoted from the anonymous reviewer with a few supplements from the present author.