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Ju Ming

In his 40s, sculptor JU Ming had already made his name in the early 80s art scene in Taiwan. He then decided to pursue opportunities in New York. During then, HUANG Yu-shan made her first documentary with JU Ming as the subject when she studied at New York University. The film contains footage of JU knocking and carving in his studio and interviews with gallery managers, art critics, and sculptors. This film brings together two New York experiences from two Taiwanese/Asian “exhibitors” who respectively experienced documentary filmmaking and sculpting in the city.

Ju Ming

NR 1982
The Other Half Of The Sky

They are four of the most successful businesswomen in China: Belonging to a generation who experienced the austerity of China's cultural revolution, followed by the subsequent economic boom, they have worked their way to the very top in a patriarchal society. Today, Yang Lan is the owner of one of the leading private media companies. Dong Mingzhu is a tenacious female CEO, heading up the world's largest manufacturer of air conditioning systems. Zhang Lan is a tycoon in the luxury restaurant business. Zhou Yi is a top manager working for a big american IT company. How were these careers built? What are the social and economic contexts in which they operate? And what do these women think about the political, social and cultural state of their country?

The Other Half Of The Sky

8.0 2016
Han Ya:The Descendants From Qinghe

A ordinary village in Jiangxi Province, is the hometown of the director. The youth are heading for the city, the author is anxious of his hometown to be changed too dramatically in the coming days. He records down the precious shots of the villages in its four seasons, and then turns to those youth struggling in the city: their worries, their joys and their missing of the hometown. In the film, the author tries to explore the meaning of hometown for those being forced to look for new chance in the city by the market, although his story is not ending......

Han Ya:The Descendants From Qinghe

NR 2005
The Road Home

Following the 2011 nuclear disaster, the Oura family was forced to evacuate their home in Namie-cho, Fukushima Prefecture. Several years later, their eldest daughter Miran, who had moved to Tokyo, began filming her family because she wanted to scrutinize the concept of being considered “disaster survivors.” Amidst shifting familial relations—gradually revealed to the viewer—and the continual shock of the realities they confront, each family member is seen groping for their own “road home.”

The Road Home

NR 2017
Raging Land 2 : Breaking new ground through Thorns and Thistles

Choi Yuen Village faced demolition by the express rail project. In 2009, villagers protested and petitioned, sparking the anti-express rail movement. Despite their efforts, the railway plan was approved in early 2010. Forced to choose between leaving or rebuilding, they opted for the government’s land rehabilitation scheme to create a new village together. With volunteers, they searched for land in Pat Heung and fought to prove their status as farmers. Many outsiders misunderstood, believing the villagers received generous compensation and government help. Yet, it was the villagers’ shared determination and love for their land and way of life that carried them through, even as the once-barren longan trees bloomed again in 2010.

Raging Land 2 : Breaking new ground through Thorns and Thistles

NR 2010
The Roof of Japan

This film was touted as its country's first full-length "nature documentary." Following the tradition established by Disney's "True-Life Adventures," the film transports the viewers to the loftiest heights of Japan's mountain ranges. Here, the hardy residents struggle for survival against the elements, and do a pretty good job of it (after all, they've been there longer than the audience has!) Especially well handled are the sequences involving the animal denizens of the snow-capped regions.

The Roof of Japan

9.0 1957
Go-raku-en

"We make memories in the journey and look for the evaporative emotions in the blurry memories. Facing the illusion of exotic language, GO-RAKU-EN deconstructs the estranged and complicated feelings of lovers and tries to reflect the essence of loneliness. Eventually, the reality of the sound restruct... Wu used images and sounds taken from the trip to create the experimental piece Go-raku-en (後樂園). "It is so simple and pure. ... It's just that when you don't care that much, it's purity," said Wu, who feels that any form of art is an expression of thinking and an extension of liberty and freedom."

Go-raku-en

NR 1997
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
Dream House by the Border

The director, who herself comes from a family near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South, explores an issue largely forgotten between the Korean War and current tensions: In the 1960s, North Korean refugees were settled here in houses provided by the Park Chung-hee dictatorship for propaganda purposes. For decades now, they have lived along the line of confrontation. The most personal border zone runs through their houses, where individual history and collective memory meet.

Dream House by the Border

NR 2013
Yakiniku ToRaJi

After graduating from Joseon school, ✕✕ enters a South Korean university. Jihoon meets ✕✕’s family and friends, sharing meals, drinks, and songs together. Through these interactions, he naturally grows closer to ○○, △△, and ◇◇, listening to their memories of Joseon school and their lives in Japan. These exchanges erase the space of everyday life and question the sense of mission imposed in its place: For whom is it really when we label those living ordinary lives with ‘identity’?

Yakiniku ToRaJi

NR 2025
How High Is The Mountain

In this documentary, director Tang records his own son's birth and growing up, his father's recovering from a stroke and a nostalgic trip home to China. (In the 1940's his father evacuated with the Nationalist troops to Taiwan after it lost the Mainland to the Communist in the war. It wasn't until 1980's were people allowed to go home to visit in Mainland China). From his search for the earliest memory of life, with a close observation and sensitivity, he exams the parallels of the different lives of a different time. In his previous work, "HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN," director Tang ends it with the ultrasound image of his unborn child, representing the beginning of a new life. With this work, "HOW HIGH IS THE MOUNTAIN," it is rather a beginning of a series of questions about life and a continuation of examination of his own life and the longing of a perfect world.

How High Is The Mountain

8.5 2003
Geobelief: Lord of the Soil

Director Xiong Zaixia notes: "A 'she' (commune) is the smallest administrative unit since the Tang Dynasty. She Gong is also known as Soil-Ground or Lord of the Soil. I have found that I captured and edited Soil-Grounds in my video works unconsciously. That made me recall something. So I returned to my hometown Shunde, Guangdong several times to shoot and record over 60 Lords of the Soil in Lunjiao Town’s eastern and western villages. I want to explore how such a traditional Chinese folk belief roots geographically, becomes embedded in one’s memory, and shapes a population’s behavior."

Geobelief: Lord of the Soil

NR 2019
Soji-ji

Soji-ji (1979) is a video work documenting a chant recitation at a Zen temple. The chant recited by many monks does not proceed in unison like group singing. Each monk recites in sync with his breath, so that the intake of breath occurs at different moments. That is to say, each monk articulates the chant differently. Since there is no unified division, when the multiple chants overlap, an endless wave of chant (sutra) appears as a collective density or modality (at the same time, each monk’s steps form a totally different rhythm from the individual chants).

Soji-ji

NR 1979
25cm

Before my thirty-fourth birthday, I underwent emergency surgery at the ER. I’ve been diagnosed with stage 3 endometrial cancer. Enduring the tough chemotherapy, I sense that it changes the way I see the world and how my body experiences it. It also recalls my memories of my grandmother who fought against kidney cancer but passed away in pain. I realize that I have never thought about my fear of death even though I filmed my grandmother's funeral eight years ago. With a 25cm surgical scar from my navel to the perineum, I now pick up the camera to confront my deepest fear of death with the desire to live, standing on the border between death and life. 25cm is a personal essay exploring the question that a person, undergoing the tough treatment, asks oneself: Is life worth living despite the overwhelming pain?

25cm

NR N/A
With Each Passing Breath

Asakusa’s Mokubatei is the only theater in the Kanto region that regularly bills rokyoku—a form of narrative singing accompanied by shamisen. Backstage, a variety of lives intersect, and the art is passed down from practiced singers to the younger generation. The film’s main character is Minatoya Kosome. It follows Kosome from her growing enraptured by rokyoku singer Minatoya Koryu, then becoming the legend’s apprentice—until to the day she is formally announced as Koryu’s successor and namesake.

With Each Passing Breath

NR 2023
Light Up

The world is full of flaws; life is far-from-perfect. It is all the more challenging for people with disabilities. Joanna and King are facing their darkness, as they are losing their eyesight bit by bit. Baobao is hearing-impaired since birth, she cannot communicate with the others but her greatest desire is to speak and express herself. Hazel has cerebral palsy and cannot walk; even though wheelchair can replace her legs, she is fed up with the prolonged pain. Life is strenuous, but Joanna, King, Baobao and Hazel rediscovered the passion for life when they embarked on a journey to the theatre stage, making the impossible possible. Light Up is a documentary about the struggle of the four protagonists against their personal restraints in the Hand in Hand Capable Theatre, witnessing how they made their way to the stage after difficult but ultimately positive training and rehearsals.

Light Up

NR 2017
The Worldly Cave

Here in The Worldly Cave (Fán Dòng), the Hakka people have all moved away from the place where generations of their families lived. Before the execution of the new development, all the villages on this land will soon be buried into continuous muck dunes. On the open grounds, there stocked huge piles of second-hand machines which would be resold in the southeastern countries. Estate investigation teams gathered in different groups, were talking about the potential prices of the land. After passing some huge muck dunes, between two higher muck dunes, the hunters built their sheltered pits and bird traps in the air. They tied a bee to a transparent string as it would lead them to the beehives hidden in the cracks. Fishermen even found a source of fish in the swamp that connects the groundwater. The men and women in the giant ferroconcrete caves on the clouds were still chattering about the bullfrogs from lunch.

The Worldly Cave

NR 2017