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Light, Shadow - CHANG Chao-Tang

"Light, Shadow - CHANG Chao-Tang" is a documentary directed by Fu Chi-Chung, built around autobiographical footage that Chang Chao-Tang filmed and edited himself after receiving Taiwan’s National Award for Arts in 1999. The film expands this material with reflections on his life since then, analyses of works from his high-school years, and interviews with people connected to his practice, forming a concise portrait of his life and artistic career. Eschewing conventional narration, the film relies on ambient sound, location audio, and black-and-white slide projections of Chang’s photographs. By revisiting sites from his earlier works, it creates a dialogue between past and present while documenting the everyday lives and rituals of ordinary people in Taiwan. Through a stance of being “present” yet “non-intervening,” Chang’s images bear witness to the transformations of Taiwanese society over the past half century.

Light, Shadow - CHANG Chao-Tang

NR 2011
Beyond the Mirage

This is a behind-the-scenes documentary of "Double Vision", a Hollywood film shot in Taiwan. In 2001, Taiwan was struck by as many as nine typhoons, bringing with them an extraordinary amount of rainfall. That same year marked the first time the Hollywood film industry arrived in Taiwan with substantial funding and manpower. Although this documentary follows a production boasting an impressive international cast, it also captures a more complex reality: when the powerful machinery of Hollywood enters a country whose own film industry has all but disappeared, what should we be questioning or reflecting upon in this model of transnational collaboration? Like the typhoons that repeatedly swept across Taiwan during filming, what else did they bring besides torrential rain?

Beyond the Mirage

NR 2002
Demarcation

We captured images along a boundary within Mongolia, chronicling the contrasting landscapes on each side. This boundary delineates the realms of the Przewalski's horse and the domestic horse: on one side, a 506 square-kilometer sanctuary safeguards wild horses, free from human intervention – untouched and unaided; on the opposite side, horses lead entirely different lives under human care, serving as children's companions, workers, modes of transport, sustenance, and sources of amusement.

Demarcation

NR 2023
Inside Taiwan: Standing Up to China

Taiwan is at the heart of a struggle between two nuclear powers – China and the United States - and there are fears it will become the next global conflict. President Xi Jinping insists Taiwan is part of China and must re-unify with the motherland. But Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, says the island is already independent and must maintain its freedom and democracy. Jane Corbin investigates how the Taiwanese government and young people are fighting what they say is Chinese disinformation, cyber attacks and dirty tricks.

Inside Taiwan: Standing Up to China

7.0 2023
Unfinished Progress

Giraffe-like construction cranes are avid eaters. They forage around in the woods and fields for their feeds: the collective longing for development and prosperity. As they crane their necks longer, they make the fantasy of progress more alluring. And that is what Chung-Ming Wang steps forward to fight. Left his stable life behind, he devoted himself into local environmentalism in his hometown Tamsui(Danshui), tried to keep it distant from developmentalism that Taipei had been suffered for long. Few years later, he decided to change his way of political participation. This documentary film depicts his third attempt to run in the City Council Election in 2014, including the difficulties and conflicts he encounters and the diverse imaginations toward progress. The film also tries to brings up an important question: do we need more edifices in our city, or we need to find a way to edify ourselves?

Unfinished Progress

NR 2017
Absent without Leave

They sacrificed their lives fighting for the independence of their country, but their stories remain untold for 60 years. The story begins with a man’s portrait, which has been hanging for more than 30 years in an old wooden house where I was born and grew up in Perak, Malaysia. It’s long become a taboo that my families do not talk about this man, not even to bring up his name or his past. Eventually I found out he is my grandfather, who sacrificed his life fighting for Malaysia’s independence and decolonisation, but his and his comrades’ stories are excluded from history. This documentary set out to unveil the mysteries.

Absent without Leave

NR 2016
Archiving Time

In Taiwan, there is a group of people participating in this race against time. They are hidden inside the film archive of New Taipei City’s “Singapore Industrial Park”, where the 17,000-plus film reels and over a million film artifacts have become their spiritual nourishment. Day after day, they shuttle back and forth inside, carrying their doubts, their learnings, and their faith. What they are doing is awakening these long-neglected film reels, then piecing together the no-longer-existent social atmospheres and lives of distant pasts recorded on them. And spending time in this archive has become everyday life for these film archivists and restorers.

Archiving Time

NR 2019
In the Making: An Australian-Taiwan Indigenous Art Exchange

"In the Making: An Australia–Taiwan Indigenous Art Exchange" is a 43-minute bilingual documentary co-produced by Australia and Taiwan. It explores a five-year exchange program between Indigenous artists from both regions. Filmed mainly in Taiwan in late 2024, the artists' first in-person meeting reveals the depth and transformative potential of cross-cultural collaboration through interviews, shared creative processes, and the creation of new collaborative artworks.

In the Making: An Australian-Taiwan Indigenous Art Exchange

NR 2026
Yang Tsu-chuen and the Green Field Charity Concert

Documenting Taiwan’s first large-scale postwar outdoor concert, this film revisits the 1978 Grass Field Charity Concert, an unprecedented gathering of over 4,000 people. Organized by singer and television host Yang Tsu-Chun (楊祖珺) during the height of the island’s folk song movement, the event foregrounded music’s relationship with everyday life rather than overt political messaging. Yet its significance was inseparable from the era’s tensions: Yang’s self-titled album had recently been banned for the perceived “left-wing” social consciousness of her lyrics, and despite the concert’s stated charitable intent, its scale and popular appeal drew the scrutiny of Kuomintang (KMT) intelligence agencies. Framed against late-1970s Taiwan, the film documents how music, public space, and cultural expression intersected under authoritarian surveillance, marking a pivotal moment in the history of popular music and collective gathering.

Yang Tsu-chuen and the Green Field Charity Concert

NR 1978
A Foley Artist

This documentary turns the spotlight on an overlooked component of filmmaking: the art of foley through the perspective of Taiwan’s most experienced master, Hu Ding-yi. Hu has worked tirelessly for decades in his studio, manually recreating diegetic sounds (sounds whose source are visible on screen) using his large collection of everyday objects. Through the artisan’s eyes, Wang Wan-jo’s timely documentary looks back at the golden age of Taiwanese cinema and examines the new dynamics of the Greater China film industry. Hu received the Lifetime Achievement prize at the 2017 Golden Horse Awards.

A Foley Artist

5.0 2017
Mori

Mori investigates the confluence of ecologies with place-based affectivities in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. The title of the three chapters,“守(to protect)”、“森(forest)”、“杜(spirit)” are different in shapes and meaning, yet all pronounced as “Mori in Japanese.” Karst cave, groundwater, the soils, villager, burning mountain ritual, scientist, Buyō dancer, majestic oak and forest, the work questions the ways of contemplating nature through rituals and folklores, and how landscapes have been historically constructed. Conceptualizing Dan Graham’s installation “Two-way Mirror Triangular Pavilion with Shoji Screen” as diffractive model of the work, Mori sees landscape as process and inner mechanism, which is defined by our detached vision and interpreted by our bodymind. It is a panorama which continuously changes as we move along any route.

Mori

NR 2021
The Inspired Island: My City

Poet and author Xi Xi is one of Hong Kong's most treasured writers. Though also acclaimed in Taiwan and mainland China for seminal works like the essay Shops, her writings are firmly rooted in the spirit of Hong Kong. Leave it to Fruit Chan, another staunchly grassroots auteur, to make a documentary on Xi Xi's career. Chan sought out renowned critics and writers to discuss Xi Xi's works, starting with 1979's My City. He also juxtaposes photos of a changing Hong Kong with readings of her writings, and even playfully inserts characters from her stories into the film.

The Inspired Island: My City

NR 2015
Faraway My Shadow Wandered

When he was a child, Junya promised his maternal grandfather that as the eldest grandson, he would take over the family Shinto shrine. However, this did not come to pass as Junya did not share the same family name and he grew estranged from his family over time. To escape this tension, Junya ventured overseas to pursue other dreams and distanced himself from the hometown where he grew up. One day, while working in an izakaya, he meets a foreigner with the same birthday researching a new dance piece for a film. His fateful encounter leads him to confront a family history that he has left behind and gives the dancer inspiration for her work. Together in the midst of winter, they revisit Junya's hometown to reconnect with his childhood and let go of a promise he cannot fulfil.

Faraway My Shadow Wandered

NR 2020
Landscape Hunter

“The passing of time would be meaningful and memorable only when something happens.” Commissioned by Chiayi Art Museum, the crew revisit locations where photographer FANG Ching-mian, known as Uncle Hsin-kao, shot 70 years ago in Yushan (Niitakayama). The story of Uncle Hsin-kao and landscapes is told by interweaving a variety of climbers, scenery and Bunun Narration. The narration implies the presence and absence of certain characters in Taiwan history. Through the off-screen voice, a layer of discourse is created with the narrator's role, Bunun's lines, and the images. The absence of the indigenous people in the history of photography, the presence and revisit of the crew, the reports and postcards created by Uncle Hsin-kao reveal a poetic story between Uncle Hsin-kao and landscapes.

Landscape Hunter

NR N/A
Fly, Kite Fly

The black kite, generally referred to as “the eagle” in Taiwan, used to be very widespread and so common that it is the main character in a well-known Taiwanese children’s game. However, it has now become so rare that very few people ever get to see it. SHEN Zhen-zhong, better known as “Mr. Kite” who vowed to safeguard this endangered bird, is determined that he spent the best 20 years of his life traveling throughout Taiwan to find out why the black kite is disappearing. From 1992 to 2015, the film documentary maker LIANG Chieh-te followed Mr. Kite’s journey. Through his camera lenses, the story of how, one person can cross the species barrier and totally devote himself to a cause with no regrets because of love.

Fly, Kite Fly

10.0 2015
Stone Dream

Stone Dream records the daily life of Liu and his family and, by means of interviews with the protagonist and his neighbours, describes the complex ethnic relationships in Taiwan, where many Chinese live who have started families with native Taiwanese. The stones from the title are the rocks from the river that sometimes, in their polished form, display beautiful landscapes, as a symbol of inner beauty. When his wife dies, the now elderly Liu wants to return to his fatherland, but at the same time he realises that he will no longer feel at home there. He has become too strongly attached to his new fatherland Taiwan, where his son and grandson were born.

Stone Dream

NR 2004
Silent Delta

The fate of the three coral atolls in northern Taiwan was decided by the migration history of the humans. A land does not always require human explanations to give it a meaning. "Silent Delta" is a film based on the testimonies of nature. A beached ocean-liner on Pinnacle Island; a lone goat who has lived on Cotton Island for five years; and on Peng-Jia Island, an apparition of a Japanese soldier, left behind from the times of the Japanese invasion. We come to the islands and devour these scenes with our cameras... Wandering between these three islands, we become a part of this silent ghostly landscape.

Silent Delta

10.0 2000
At Your Service

Twenty years ago, LIN Sheng-hsiang was a successful athlete who enjoyed glamor and glory. Once a child abandoned by the education system due to his unimpressive academic performance, LIN has redeemed himself in the modern pentathlon, an obscure sport in Taiwan. Now a coach, LIN tries his best to serve disadvantaged children who have a similar background to his own. This year, he meets CHEN You-hsuan, a talented young girl from a remote village in eastern Taiwan. LIN devotes himself and all the resources he can find to train You-hsuan. If he manages to help You-hsuan qualify for the Olympic Games, he will have realized his dream of bringing Taiwan’s modern pentathlon team onto the international stage. But everything, including time, funding, the system, and the wayward adolescent, all seems to be going against his wishes. But LIN never expected that this would be just the beginning of the cruelest and toughest challenge he has ever faced.

At Your Service

NR 2022
Several Successful Situations; Simultaneous & Successive

I enjoy religion, I appreciate belief systems and how they offer structure to people's lives. I also appreciate how spirituality manifests itself in Asian cultures as this almost earthbound presence guiding people through every day life and when they need an extra bit of help they need only ask whichever deity holds dominion over their desire. Here is an experimental film I made with videos from my iPhone. Shot across Taiwan and South Korea. An experimental film I made with videos from my iPhone. Shot across Taiwan and Korea. My aim was to explore success in how it pertains to every day life, the satisfaction of small moments, spirituality, superstition, and daily rituals.

Several Successful Situations; Simultaneous & Successive

NR 2024
White Witness

The film documents the harrowing experiences of 16 survivors of Taiwan's White Terror period. Using a minimalist aesthetic, the documentary features the victims speaking directly to the camera against a stark black background, interspersed with rare historical photographs and archival documents.Without any added narration, the film allows the survivors to piece together a collective memory of state oppression. They recount their personal nightmares of being arrested on fabricated charges, undergoing brutal interrogations and torture, facing unjust military trials, and enduring years of forced labor and ideological re-education on Green Island. It serves as a powerful oral history, capturing not only their past suffering but also their resilience, solidarity, and the difficult journey of returning home.

White Witness

NR 2003
Stay Hot Stay Chill

Twenty years ago, AJ returned from San Francisco and began hosting parties to give Taiwanese lesbians a place to meet, dance, and feel free. What started with a few hundred attendees has grown into LEZS Party, a cornerstone of lesbian culture in Taiwan and Asia, expanding into media and branding while paralleling Taiwan’s equal rights movement. This film follows AJ as she plans the 20th anniversary, revealing her emotions, beliefs, and vision to empower more lesbians to challenge the system and make their voices heard.'

Stay Hot Stay Chill

NR 2024
Seaman

Huang Hsin-yao began studying documentary filmmaking in order to make a difference as an ecological activist. While attending Tainan University of the Arts, Huang made this film as a continuation of a previous documentary about the salt evaporation ponds near Tainan. But instead of filming the ponds once more, Huang turned his camera around to capture the state of the mangrove habitat surrounding the ponds. The result marks an important evolution for Huang as an ecologically-minded documentarian.

Seaman

7.0 2000
Escape

Is being in a foreign land, separated from one’s familiar daily life and human relationships, another form of escape? Four seemingly unrelated footages from CHUNG Mong-hong's overseas studies represent a contemplation of the foreign land and self-identity. Fleeting images of the city, surrealist compositions, the multifarious landscapes and imageries presage CHUNG’s early experimental features. The monologue at the end narrates the absence of the father and the resulting solitude and regret, reflecting CHUNG’s delicate sensibilities towards family and human relationship. The local religious chants serve as a stark cultural contrast against the life overseas, highlighting the cultural barriers and loneliness brought about by estrangement.

Escape

NR 1993
Festival

Since the early 1990s, there had been a deep concern in Taiwan about the Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant (aka the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant). In 1994, a local referendum at Gongliao, where the nuclear power plant was to be built, was held and 96% of voters voted against its construction. Chung Mong-hong combined images from the resistance with that of Taiwan's local festivities and religious ceremonies. Juxtaposed in an experimental style and accompanied by Christian chants, these images appear fragmented but reference each other, before transitioning to a more social realist style. The work depicts the shifting urban landscape of Taipei, capturing the collective memories of the locals, demonstrating Chung’s unique and astute observation of the society.

Festival

NR 1994
When Spring Rain Falls

A Taiwanese Odyssey resulting from the assassination attempt by three expatriates in April 1970 on Chiang Ching-kuo, heir apparent to dictator Chiang Kai-shek. The story is told through the life of Cecilia Huang, a gentle and quiet participant previously unknown. With memories shared by people across three continents, the film explores complexity of the human condition, love, betrayal, defiance, regrets, trauma and the possibilities of poetic closure from pain and loss.

When Spring Rain Falls

NR 2025