Cosmopolitan Taiwan: screening of the documentary film Le Moulin and conferences around the film, April 12 in Bordeaux (UBM/La MÉCA) and April 14 in Paris (Inalco)

Organizers: Tan-Ying Chou and Angel Pino (UBM/Plurielles), Isabelle Rabut (Inalco/IFRAE)

In 1933, Yang Chi-chang, who had returned from Japan the previous year, created in Tainan, with a few other young Taiwanese intellectuals (Li Zhang-rui, Lin Xiu-er, Zhang Liang-dian), the Moulin Poetic Society ( Fengche shishe ), which will publish a magazine of the same name. They created, in Japanese, poetry of surrealist inspiration, while participating in the debates of the time on the future of Taiwan literature.

Even if it remains marginal compared to the whole of Taiwanese literature of the 1930s and 1940s, more anchored in social reality, this movement testifies to the desire for renewal and the cosmopolitan spirit which then animated young writers from the island. The film particularly highlights its links with the Japanese surrealism of Nishiwaki Junzaburō or with European artists like Cocteau or Dali.

Interspersed with archive images that take us from Tokyo to André Breton's Paris, the film follows the group through the war years and until the return of Taiwan to the fold of the Republic of China. Several of its members were imprisoned during the white terror which followed the event of February 28, 1947; one of them, Li Zhang-rui, was even executed.

Designed in an experimental and symbolist style which subtly echoes the aesthetics of the Moulin poetic movement, this documentary film of rare formal requirements has been rewarded on several occasions. He notably won the prize for best documentary at the 53rd ^Golden Horse Awards (2016).

Original title: 日曜日式散步者Nichiyōbi no sanpo-sha (The Sunday Stroller)

Film language: Japanese with Chinese and French subtitles.

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Program for the day of April 12, in Bordeaux

9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: MSH Bordeaux, Jean Borde room

Chen Yun-Yuan (National Taipei University of Education), “Imperial Frontier and Aesthetic Avant-garde: The Local and Global Significance of the Windmill Poetic Society” (in Chinese with translation)

Guillaume Muller (UBM), “Colonies and avant-gardes in Japanese literature”

Valéry Hugotte (UBM), “Surrealism: a practice of poetry”

Afternoon at the ALCA Auditorium – La MÉCA, 5 Corto Maltese square, Quai de Paludate

 Free entry subject to availability

Reservation: tan-ying.chou@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr

 2:30 p.m.: Meeting with director Huang Ya-Li

3 p.m.: screening of the film

Program for April 14 in Paris

9 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Inalco, auditorium (PLC, 65 rue des Grands Moulins)

Chen Yun-Yuan (National Taipei University of Education), “Who lit the first spark?” The multiple routes of diffusion of Taiwanese modernism »

Chen Shuo-wen (National Chengchi University, Taipei), “Liu Na'ou, cosmopolitan writer”

Cécile Sakai (Paris Cité University), “The surrealist scene in Japan: appropriation – recreation 1920-1930”

Afternoon: PLC auditorium

1:30 p.m.: Meeting with director Huang Ya-Li

2 p.m.: screening of the film