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The Pangcah people living in the urban area used to compete and win the dragon boat race every year, but only as hired agents in a festival event of the Han Taiwanese. In 1995, a team of Pangcah contestants decided to compete in the race under the names of their community and homeland, 'C'roh of Yuli, Hualien', striving for glory to honour their true origin.
"An Introduction to the Actual Condition of Taiwan" is the first film ever made in Taiwan. It was commissioned by the Japanese authorities to director Toyojirō Takamatsu (1872–1952) in 1907, twelve years after Japan occupied Taiwan, as a propaganda movie showing the progress of Taiwan under Japanese rule. The film is lost, but it is known from reviews in local newspapers that it featured a long staged scene of Japanese military repressing a revolt by Taiwanese indigenous people. The aboriginal theme reportedly occupied the longer part of the film. Others were devoted to depicting scenic locations, and the production of "exotic" goods such as bananas and coconuts. The film was criticized for presenting a romantic, exotic, and colonial view of Taiwan, ignoring its more modern industrial products and social problems.
On an ordinary morning, she brushes her teeth, but when she looks into her own image in the mirror, she sees totally a stranger. She had required a surgery three years ago to change her jaw. This is a story about a person who dislikes her body and decides to take action.
Yen-Chao Lin travelled along the east coast of Taiwan – an area characterized by its wild nature, colonization and population exodus. The Amis is the largest of many ethnic minorities in Taiwan officially recognised as indigenous peoples. In search of different spiritual practices belonging to the indigenous people of Makuta’ay, Yen-Chao Lin places the memories of the old Amis spirit keepers on an equal footing with the practices of Daoist rituals and Presbyterian burials, allowing personal prayers to resound and collective resistance to emerge. The Spirit Keepers of Makuta’ay was shot on Super 8 film and developed by the director by hand. The effects created during the development process add an additional layer of spiritual interpretation. A miniature, an essay, an impressionistic painting.
A series of emails that the filmmaker wrote to her late mentor, the renowned American documentary filmmaker Robert KRAMER (1939- 1999), are woven throughout the plot of a story as the boundaries of life, distance, language, identity and nationality are re-examined from the perspective of Elodie, her daughter.
The abandoned farmhouse beside Shuangxi outside Taipei seems to be wandering on the edge of the city. This is the base of Ruiming Band. During the day, these people have their own identities. The lead guitarist Zheng Zhaoting (Abo) is in the daycare class, the bassist Yang Dongliang (Dong Niang) is a photojournalist, the drummer Han Ligang has no specific job, and the rhythm guitar player Dai Chongyuan (Senior) drives a taxi. Every night on holiday, they come here to rehearse. With their dreams of music, they relieve their discomfort with society. Can music be a meal? Is there any other meaning to life besides making money? The director fell into this fog with them, revealing nihilistic yet true confessions.
Focusing on Yunlin County, we see the area covered in smog and the Jhuoshushi River drying up. The film can be seen as a chronicle of the environmental disasters resulted from industrial development, which ends with the Tianjin explosions in 2015.
A documentary about a professional Taiwanese basketball team's road to championship.
Follow a performance artist who refuses to be defined, drifting between landscape and memory, responding to identity and belonging through physical action.
Years after playing on the same pitch, a filmmaker returns to document his former captain, Hou Pei-hung, who now coaches the new generation. Footprints captures the raw sweat and tears of high schoolers in their final season, witnessing a profound story of legacy, youth, and a passion that never fades.
During the creation of the performance Embodying Pasolini in Taipei, curator Olivier Saillard and actress Tilda Swinton revisit the legacy of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Through rehearsal, memory, and costume, cinema is reawakened in the living body.
Suspended Duty - Taiwan Military Training Regiment delivers the story of some 4,000 young Taiwanese men who volunteered for the army established by General Sun Lijen in 1949. Receiving a short period of basic military training, they were informed they could return home to wait for reentering active service. However, They have never been officially discharged up to this day……
In December 1941, the Pacific War broke out. Hundreds of Taiwanese were recruited to join the war. When the war ended, these Taiwanese soldiers were sent to court as prisoners of war and faced identity crisis. Heat Sun intends to record the lives of these soldiers. Through conversations and visual images, the film reveals the issues surrounding humanity and war.
The entire world was thrown into war in the 1940s. Taiwan, still a Japanese possession, was swept into the war when Japan started the War of the Pacific. Hundreds of thousands of youth from Taiwan were conscripted into the army, and sent to the South Pacific. The cruel experiences of war are unforgettable in all their life.
Braised Delicacies is more than a flavor—it is a legacy shaped by three generations. Master Lin Shun-Cheng upholds traditional craftsmanship passed down from his father, while his apprentice Lai Yun-Chun brings innovation, and Lin's son works to meet his father's high standards. Though different in outlook, all three of them share deep respect for cooking. The film captures how craftsmanship and love quietly endure in this 80-year-old Chiayi establishment of food flavors.
In a shadow play and puppet show inspired by the great tradition of Taiwanese theater, accompany the hero of this documentary narrative as he plunges us into the period of the White Terror.
Ripples Apart is the story of windsurfer Chang Hao, who grew up in the Mountains of Nantou, the only region in Taiwan with no coast. Chang and his Australian coach, Alex Mowday, share a unique and rare bond, two athletes separated by years of age and very different cultures, but who hunt the same Olympic dream. The road to the Olympics is long and difficult. Alex and Chang Hao must beat the odds to qualify, training on the small island of Penghu, off the coast of Taiwan, battling the wind and waves and searching for perfection in the sport of their dreams.
A woman searches for her birth father in Taiwan.
Mr. Lin Song-ji, an Amis man from Hualien, lived a life that mirrors Taiwan’s history. His father was of Japanese descent. As a young man, he was forced to leave his homeland when the government pushed a forestry plan. He moved to the city to survive and spent years working as a driver, which kept him from forming a deep bond with his children. The home he built with his life’s effort now faces demolition due to urban development. His descendants cannot return to the mountains and struggle to survive in the city. Yet, they remain distant from him. In the end, he is left alone.
Recording the way things are.
An interview went on. We tried to figure out the film we worked together. Simple but complex. Time is such an interesting thing.
After the Formosan clouded leopard was declared extinct in 2015, CHEN Mei-ting and CHIANG Po-jen set out to rescue leopard cats and restore clouded leopards, fostering ecological and cultural revival.
When Taiwanese citizens vanish in China, a journalist returns home in search of answers. What begins as reporting becomes a personal reckoning—revealing the high cost of speaking out and the quiet erosion of freedom in Taiwan.
A woman from Chiang Mai speaks in Thai, Mandarin, and Yunnanese. That is the voice I am the most familiar with, the one I first sensed and heard from within her womb. It is also my mother tongue. I chat with my mother about her family of origin and childhood memories. When we are not talking, I wander around the house, touching light and air. Those scents and traces of where my mother resides, along with the fleeting images of her presence, are my intimate gaze of her.
Shower and name. Destruction and reconstruction. Over and over. Again and again. This is my body and within my self. Long lays the nature. Nature.
Set in the Taoyuan Aerotropolis expropriation zone, this film traces a home that no longer belongs to us. Before relocation, my mother passed away—her “too late” compelled me to return and document what remains. Through father–daughter dialogue and acts of creation, the film records landscapes on the verge of disappearance, and the fragile traces of “home” that persist in the struggle against erasure.
A group of elderly living alone in damp, dim underground dwellings in Taipei. They take care of themselves and form a community . They come out of the underground dwellings , searching for comfort and happiness in the city. At night, they return to the dwellings neglected by the city.
“It Must Be” is a collaborative project between the filmmaker and his girlfriend, documenting their everyday life as international graduate students. Through the use of a handheld DV camcorder, they each film the shared spaces they inhabit, gradually exploring and redefining their understanding of “home.” The work also serves as a reflective summary of the filmmaker’s three years in graduate school.
As farmland vanishes and neighbors sell their land, one family faces the same fate. Through conversations with an elder left farming alone, the filmmaker explores the quiet struggle of letting go and the deep values rooted in the land, seeking to preserve something before it inevitably disappears.
For 23 years, Hu has served as an interpreter in Taiwan, assisting over a thousand migrant workers and new residents. This film highlights how interpreters support law enforcement, ensuring justice and protecting linguistic minorities in a system once lacking proper translation for foreign-related cases.
The Taoyuan Aerotropolis project, Taiwan's largest urban development, forces nearly 10,000 families from their homes. As land is leveled and memories erased, residents struggle to preserve their roots. Powerless against economic progress, they cling to the fading traces of a homeland on the brink of disappearance.
They were once Taiwan’s wildest stunt heroes! In the 1970s, a taxi driver led the nation’s top stunt riders and daredevil performers to form the "Shenfeng Stunt Troupe," risking their lives in breathtaking shows that packed arenas and made headlines across the island. Now, the aging team leader’s youngest daughter sets out on a journey to find and reunite the former comrades who once "burned their youth on tires." When the Rumble Sounds Again is a true and thrilling Taiwanese legend — a story that reignites the roaring engines and unyielding spirit of a generation that refused to give up.
During the Chinese Civil War, Taiwan was seen as the terminal destination for a unit fleeing themainland. However, while crossing the Sino-Vietnamese border, they were detained on an islandcalled “Phú Quốc” by the French authorities, who were colonizing Vietnam at that time. Unawareof how long this temporary detention would last, they began transforming this primitive island into abase for a future counterattack on the mainland. Four years later, they finally managed to sail to Tai-wan — an island they had never been to but regarded as their homeland. Years later, in Kaohsiung’s Chengcing Lake, there is also an artificial island named “Phú Quốc” built to commemorate this unit,effectively becoming Phú Quốc 2.0.
An island, isolated yet sovereign, where humans and nature coexist between the ebb and flow of the tides — rising and falling, supporting one another in quiet balance. Through the beauty and sorrow of an island, we reflect on the gendered dynamics of power in contemporary island life. What does it truly mean to live freely? And how do we know which choices in life are the right ones?
Lumi, formerly homeless due to family issues and business failures, spends a decade in odd jobs, park benches, and internet cafes. Joining a social enterprise, he gains skills, saves money, and rents a place, but his past still haunts him.
"Separation" is an essay documentary that delves into the intricate relationship and conflicts between contemporary Taiwanese society and European and American values. This exploration takes place through the lens of three millennial Taiwanese artists who share their overseas experiences during the pandemic and post-pandemic era. Hsiao-Chu resides in New York, Shou-An in London, and Chen-Yi in Philadelphia, each offering a unique perspective on the evolving immigrant status, personal exploration of sexuality, and the artist's profound understanding of self and community.
When a boat sets off, passengers may anticipate their destination's appearance. Some believe imagination can transport them, while others need firsthand experience. The story of Keelung Islet documents both a process and a state of consciousness.
Muay Thai was introduced to Taiwan when Thai migrant laborers came here to work. Han Reng-ding, a Taiwanese who for a long time had no fixed address, joined Li-Chin muay thai at age 22 and, for the first time, found a sense of belonging as he was learning the martial art. The boxing gym’s Thai head coach, Sonsumrit, took special care of him, and the migrant Thai workers taught him everything they knew about boxing and life. They were as close as family members for six years. However, Han’s life will unfold differently due to a new plan.
An ex-Red Guard and anti-Communist soldier during the Korean War, started a three-generation family next to Taoyuan Air Base. Despite the base's historical significance during Japanese occupation and the Cold War, the Taoyuan Aerotropolis project will erase its rich history by 2025, marking another loss in Taiwan's disappearing past.
The protagonist of the documentary, Yifang Lin (1926-2018), was born in Chiayi in the 15th year of the Republic of China (Taisho 15th year). When he was young, he went to Hiroshima, Japan to study with his elder brother. During the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, he happened to leave Hiroshima because of work and survived this disaster.
The Tano Bora, meaning ‘The Magnificent Five’ in Swahili, was the famed cheetah coalition here in the Masai Mara—captivating observers with their stealth, strategy, and striking beauty. The artist follows one of the cheetahs from the perspective of a follower, intuitively and visually connecting the traces of movement in the wilderness. The body image is used as a means of creation to extend the habitat of the animals beyond the frame. In this way, the cycle of "life and death" is explored, thus visually touching the traces of the fate of wild animals.
A land acquisition has disturbed the peace of Shezidao for years. With the new mayor taking office at the end of 2022, the residents are once again confronted with the uncertainty brought by development. Behind the struggles, what is life like on this "trapped island"?
Reorganize the memories of blood and tears and truly present the historical scars. Over the past three years, re-interviews with the victims’ family members and full DV records. An introductory guide to understanding modern Taiwanese society.