Cinema and history: critical reflections

Abstract

Hou Hsiao‐Hsien was invited to Singapore to talk about himself. In the speech, he focused on talking about his family background, his childhood memories, life experiences and how these experiences affected his life, and also how he made his films. Furthermore, as Taiwan had gone through many drastic political and economic changes, especially after the lifting of Martial Law, these conditions influenced Hou’s life and his films, too. That is, Hou’s films presented not only the changes in a rapidly urbanizing rural society, but also the important events of Taiwan’s history. At the end of the speech, Hou also mentioned that realizing the importance of social responsibilities, he would like to get more involved in the public sphere in order to make a difference in society.     

Piracy,Geoblocking, and Australian Access to Niche Independent Cinema

Online audiovisual piracy cannot be properly understood if divorced from its context. This article uses the availability of lesbian-focused films in Australia as a lens through which to consider the relationship between online audiovisual piracy and industry geoblocking practices. It is argued that artificial control through internet geoblocking can limit potential global sales by restricting universal availability of certain films. Anti-piracy discourses around lost sales and reduced profits for film industries are complicated by piracy contexts where there is no mechanism for viewers to make legal online purchases. When looking beyond Hollywood, the diverse purposes of independent and minority filmmakers provide a more complex understanding of piracy overall. This article proposes a more nuanced approach to online film piracy that emphasizes context, taking into consideration that pirate culture is formed by an extensive but inchoate network of individuals with diffuse motivations that have differential impacts upon the industry.     

Majority group opposition to minority political entitlements: The Social Dominance Paradox

We propose and test the Social Dominance Paradox of majority opposition to minority political entitlement in a national sample of the European majority group in New Zealand (N = 4628). The paradox arises because for the majority ethnic group, Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) should simultaneously and differentially predict support for, and resistance to, minority political interests through opposing ideological mechanisms: Color-Blind Ideology (subjectively egalitarian ideology which functions to maintain inequality by de-emphasising group membership) and Ethnic System Justification (which recognises ethnicity and asserts that ethnic relations are fair). We argue that for the majority group, SDO should predict increased ethnic group salience, and should thus predict decreased Color-Blindness. However, SDO should also lead people to view existing hierarchical arrangements between ethnic groups as legitimate, leading to increased Ethnic System Justification. These dual ideologies should in turn both predict opposition to minority political entitlements. Predictions were supported, and occurred in addition to the strong direct effect of SDO on opposition to minority political entitlement. These findings provide an important, and theoretically predicted, paradox evident for those high in SDO; and emphasise the subtlety and explanatory power of Social Dominance Theory for understanding support for minority political entitlement.     

龙义的衍变

中国在六七千年之前,就已经产生了对龙的崇拜。1987年下半年,考古工作者在河南省濮阳市西水坡村发掘出一处仰韶文化遗址,从中发现了三组用蚌壳摆成的龙虎图案。其中一幅中的龙,身长1.78米,像一条大虫,有如蟒之身、如兽之足。经过碳14测定,其年代距今已有6000多年的历史。1994年6月至1995年1月,考古工作者又在辽宁省阜新县查海村进行原始