Millions of movie lovers around the world have experienced a range of emotions upon viewing Albert Lamorrise’s 1956 French classic Le Ballon Rouge (The Red Balloon). Many adulatory responses have been triggered but perhaps none other more clearly than Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon, France-Taiwan, 2007). Although lacking the fantastical interludes of the earlier film and filled with fewer flaneurial excursions through the alleyways of Paris, Hou’s feature-length work is no less compelling as a series of quotidian scenes concerning the interwoven themes of companionship, loneliness, memory, nostalgia, and the restorative power of art. Drawing upon phenomenological and memory-based studies of intercultural cinema, this chapter explores the relationship between recollections, references, and transnational film remakes, ultimately aiming to transnationalise (or “uproot”) nostalgia and show how twenty-first century cinephilia performs a similar cultural function to the remaking process.
The Nexus between Rural Household Livelihoods and Agricultural Functions: Evidence from China
