Even though the LGBTQIA+ movement was gaining momentum in Taiwan around the 90s, that still wasn’t an era when queers were socially accepted. However, it’s certain that gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer people did exist. Through cinema, we feel their very existence. It doesn’t matter that the stories depicted in these films are fictional. Somehow, they transform into amemory that’s not quite my own, but still resurfaces within me.
In one scene inWhere Is My Love?, ayoung gay man sits in adimly lit study, delicately holding acigarette between his fingers as he concentrates on his writing under the glow of abanker’s lamp. Another young man gazes at him wistfully. The camera captures each of them at eye level, aligning with their perspectives. Their gazes and expressions reach us across the screen and through time. Even if this is afictional story or comes from apast that doesn’t belong to me, queer memories continue to speak to us as nostalgia.
In Incidental Journey, an artist is captivated by afree-spirited and alluring woman standing by the riverside. From ashort distance, Hsiang finds herself sketching the woman. Framed by the stillness of the mountains, we watch the scene from afar, tracing the distance between the two. Ifelt as if this was alandscape Iwanted to remember. The film is, of course, afantasy, and I’ve never actually seen this place. ButIncidental Journey painted aquiet, inner landscape in me, like amemory Icarry in my mind. Perhaps watching films allows queers, each with their own histories and experiences, to create such pockets of memory within themselves.
Queer fantasies created by film blur the lines between past and present, disrupt the flow of time, and mix reality with fiction, ultimately constructing aromantic past for queer people. These films offer us something beyond mere visual stories. Through the characters’ pain, their joy, and the time they lived through, we can experience an imaginary history. This is the power of nostalgia that transcends time and space, allowing us to reaffirm our existence as queer individuals.