國立陽明交通大學人文與社會科學院

講題：When Sympathy Hesitates: An Empathetic Understanding of Cinematic Slowness in
Stray Dogs (2013)
講者：Dr. Nick Hui-han Chen ( PhD in Film Studies, University of Birmingham)
主持人：勞維俊 (國立陽明交通大學視覺文化研究所副教授)
活動時間：113年5月9日(四) 下午2:00-5:00
線上演講連結：https://meet.google.com/itx-eccj-dtx
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演講資訊：
Abstract:
With its minimalist narrative and long durational recordings of a family living on the margins of
modern society and drifting around deserted urban spaces in Taiwan, Stray Dogs (Jiaoyou, Tsai
Ming-liang, 2013) provides a productive reading of cinematic slowness and a critique of the
globalising domination of capitalism and neoliberalism in a locally and culturally specific context.
This paper will use Stray Dogs as a case study to explore how slow cinema encompasses both a
narrative that requires the audience’s sympathetic and intellectual understanding and a durational
perception of time that calls for empathy and intuition. We will look at the film’s temporal
illegibility and radical use of long takes through an analysis of Gilles Deleuze’s formulation of
‘peaks of present’ and ‘sheets of past’. Moreover, I will repurpose this Deleuzian reading, through a
study of David Martin-Jones’ idea of ‘a hesitant cinematic ethics’, as a moment of hesitation that
leads to an act of resistance – a resistance against the ongoing capitalist and neoliberal
standardisation, rationalisation and homogenisation of time’s, or more specifically duration’s,
heterogenous nature. By exploring the potential of ethical hesitation and political resistance,
underscored by slow aesthetics such as the use of long takes, this paper aims to make the case for a
specific and unique understanding of cinematic slowness as a philosophical signifier of empathy.

Speaker’s Bio:
An independent scholar, Nick Chen is awarded his PhD in Film Studies by the University of
Birmingham. He is currently working on his first monograph based on his doctoral thesis on slow
cinema. His recent journal articles can be found in Film-Philosophy and Deleuze and Guattari
Studies, both published by Edinburgh University Press.
Essential readings:

David Martin-Jones (2019). Cinema Against Doublethink: Ethical Encounters with the Lost Pasts
of World History. Routledge. Chapter 2 (pp. 63–88).
Gilles Deleuze (1985/1997). Cinema 2: The time-image. (H. Tomlinson & R. Galeta, Trans.).
University of Minnesota Press. Chapter 5 (pp. 98–125).
Stray Dogs 郊遊 (2013) Dir. Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮.

Recommended readings:
Bergson, Henri (1946/2007) The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by
Mabelle L. Andison. New York: Dover Publication. Chapter 4 (pp. 125–151).
Hui-Han Chen (2023) ‘When Sympathy Hesitates: An Empathetic Understanding of Cinematic
Slowness in Stray Dogs’, Film-Philosophy, 27 (3).
Louis Lo (2019) ‘Enduring the Long Take: Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs and the Dialectical
Image’, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 21 (5).
Song Hwee Lim (2014). Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness. University of Hawai’i Press.
Introduction (pp. 1–10).
Tiago de Luca & Nuno Barradas Jorge (Eds.) (2016). Slow Cinema. Edinburgh University Press.
Introduction (pp. 1–21).