Identities in Motion: Immigrant Representation in Sinophone Cinemas

This dissertation investigates different types of immigrant representations in Sinophone cinema, including both inter-Asia representations and relationships with the world. The research analyzes the way in which immigrant cinematic representation intervenes with the issue of national identity in Sinophone communities, primarily during 2000-2020. My primary focus is on the way cinema as a medium represents immigrants, reshapes the imagination about these immigrants, and also the way this process interacts with nation and society. The title of the dissertation “Identities in Motion” reflects the way identities shift in a rapidly changing world. The research explicates our understanding of Asian studies through contemplation of immigrant representations’ mobility and immobility. Seen in this light, I consider not only the heterogeneous aspects of Asia, but also the connections between different locations in Asia and the world.This dissertation focuses on four different immigrant articulations. To place each Sinophone immigrant cinema as a site of complex cultural practices, my dissertation shows how cinema as a medium presents immigrants from different perspectives. Each of these four cases I select has unique contexts but all together posits questions about the concept of nations, identities, and the existing discrimination against immigrant groups. The first chapter examines two films: Ho Wi Ding’s Pinoy Sunday (2009) and Tseng Ying-ting’s Ye-Zai (2012), presenting the groups of “migrant workers” (waiji yigong) in Taiwan. The second chapter examines Cheng Yu-Chieh’s My Little Honey Moon (2012), a film that centers on the subject of new immigrant women which challenges the conventional Xiangtu (nativist) concept. This chapter rethinks Xiangtu in a transnational relationship between Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Chapter three examines Midi Z’s filmmaking, which highlights a special visualization of Sinophone Burma’s landscape in providing precious viewpoints for the world to understand Sinophone Burmese. Chapter four focuses on the spatiality depicted within The Receptionist (2017) and attends to the ways in which this film explores how female immigrants interact with the spatiality as they navigate London. Through the analysis of these films, this dissertation contributes to the developing category of immigrant cinemas and generates an opportunity to rethink the issues of nation, gender, and identities