The Construction Of "The Other"

Film festivals are not only an important cultural and business events, but also an active field for cultural officials, governments and international enterprises. On the one hand, film festivals open the door to the outside world for local audiences. They promote film cultures of the world, improve the film art aesthetic taste, cultivate viewing habits. On the other hand, they express the tendency of constructing national identity by using the relationship between film and ideology. The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival has a history of over30years since1980, the year it derived from Golden Horse Prize. It started to exhibit films from mainland China in early1990s. It helps Taiwan audiences to better understand film arts in mainland China as well as strengthens the local identity of "Taiwan life community" by constructing mainland China as "the other one".This article is focusing on the issue that how Golden Horse Film Festivals construct mainland films as the other one, and by collecting relevant written records, data, review reports, I finally draws the conclusion:Golden Horse Film Festival selects Chinese films characterized by Chinese unique feature, so as to construct mainland China as absolutely another one which is different from Taiwan, thus enhancing the Taiwan identity as "open-hearted" and "civilized" in comparision. These films highlight the aspect of bottom society, class contradictions and uncivilized civilizations in China. This kind of Taiwan identity is clearly a new one differs from "PRC" or "ROC", and it will gradually spread from film field to the Taiwan public, thus becoming an effective construction. However, this construction is a intolerance one which will make Taiwan and mainland go distant.