ABSTRACT
In the case of Cape No.7 and Kano, the portrayal of the relationship between the Taiwanese colonised and the Japanese colonisers is of special interest to film critics. Seediq Bale escapes criticism in this vein because of its focus on an indigenous uprising against Japanese colonisers in the infamous Wushe Incident. Rather than seeing the graphic violence of the film as the director's indulgence or inept narrativisation of a complicated historical story, this chapter proposes to analyse three visual embodiments of violence with an eye to the problematic of indigenous historiography. The first visual image chosen for analysis is a photo taken in celebration of the Japanese successful retaliation. The second is the massacre scene in Seediq Bale. The third is the fighting between the divided Seediq tribes during the Wushe Incident. The intricate interplay between different Seediq perspectives as dramatised through the audiovisual structuring of the massacre scene thus opens up a historiographical space of complex cultural negotiations.
