Documenting life in the era of climate change: Huang Hsin-yao’s Nimbus and Taivalu

Abstract

What can the poetic or experimental mode of documentary contribute to the discourses of the New Taiwan Documentaries, particularly the ones that address everyday eco-disasters in the Pacific Rim during the climate change era? In this article, I use Huang Hsin-yao’s Daishui yun (Nimbus) (2009) and Shenmei zhi dao (Taivalu: Taiwan vs. Tuvalu) (2010) as case studies of what I call ‘cli-fi ethnographic documentary’. These documentaries demonstrate that the employment of the poetic documentary mode, as a filmic strategy, provides a different outlet to address the tension, for example, between planetary suffering, eco-aesthetics, human psychological adaptability and environmental justice. Here the Taiwanese directors dare to imagine a broader, deep-time, more-than-human multispecies world, affect and aesthetics, while not eschewing the question of justice, accountability and causality.