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Tsunma, Tsunma: My Summer with the Female Monastics of the Himalaya

Tsunma, an honorific term connoting “noble, delicate, and pure”, refers to the Tibetan Buddhist Nuns of the Himalayan Region who have been largely dismissed or forgotten by the traditions they follow and the societies they’ve served. Taiwanese photographer Lin Li-Fang undertook a solo journey up 4,270 meters into the Himalayan Plateau and lived for an entire summer with some of these nuns and recorded life in the unforgiving environment dubbed “The Roof of the World”. There, Li-fang captured a life devoted to hope and faith and a people possessing a unique kind of tolerance, humility, and perseverance. This is a story of the Nuns of the Himalayas, of seeing one’s life through theirs, that is, a life lived in faith and with the spark of a summer eternal.

Tsunma, Tsunma: My Summer with the Female Monastics of the Himalaya

NR 2017
Manfei

A pioneer in Taiwan’s contemporary dance scene, Lo Man-fei receives a beautiful tribute from director En Chen, a decade after her passing. Three years in the making, Manfei traces the life and work of the dance legend, including her early days at the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, her studies at New York’s most prestigious dance schools, and the founding of her Taipei Crossover Dance Company. Featuring rare footage of Lo’s graceful performances as well as candid conversations with her closest friends and collaborators, Manfei is a stirring journey into the heart of a true artist and a moving remembrance for a dearly missed member of the Taiwan art world.

Manfei

8.0 2017
Condemned Practice Mode

HSU Tzu-chiang was pronounced guilty and sentenced to death in a 1995 kidnap and murder case despite the lack of forensic evidence. After a 16-year effort by NGOs, HSU was released with a life sentence in 2016. Now he continues to fight to prove his innocence. Director Chi has been documenting Hsu's story since 2012. The journey brought Chi face-to-face with the shortcomings of human society and inspired his investigation into why the judicial system failed HSU.

Condemned Practice Mode

6.0 2017
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
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
Stargazing

After WU’s arrival in New Zealand, WU has been trying to take a photo of the starry night sky every day with his phone, whether or not it was clear. The star photos can be interpreted as diaries. Using a 16mm Bolex camera to film the stars frame by frame with long exposure. Exposure time was determined by the mind. These uneven pulsations of lights correspond to the starlight changing along with the thoughts that were at mind. This film documents WU’s everyday ritual of star-gazing with the related associations and inspirations and forms a meditative process.

Stargazing

NR 2017
The Silent Teacher

Lin Huizong often drives north to see his wife, Xu Yu'e, at the Medical College of Fuzhou University. Xu Yu'e is a "dissection teacher", that is, a deceased person who donated his body to be used as anatomy class teaching materials. In Asia, which attaches great importance to the burial of the deceased's body, doing so often requires facing the reluctance of relatives. And what changes will this dedication bring to the family, teachers and students of the medical school? What does "alive" mean? When the end of life is not physical destruction, but the impact left on future generations, how will people decide the color of their lives?

The Silent Teacher

NR 2017
My Dear Art

In the past fifteen years, the Asian art market has exploded. Chinese collectors now spend more money in auction than Americans and Brits, while a new generation of Asian artists are reshaping the world’s artistic palate. My Dear Art depicts the wonders and absurdities of the Asian art market. From China, to Singapore to London, it profiles the artists, collectors, gallerists and experts who are changing the face of the art business forever and asks fundamental questions about the value and role of art in modern society.

My Dear Art

NR 2017
Café Togo

CAFÉ TOGO looks at the efforts to change street names with colonial connotations in the so-called Afrikanisches Viertel (African Quarter) in Berlin-Wedding. According to Berlin’s street law, every street named after a person honors that person. Petersallee, Lüderitzstraße, and Nachtigalplatz bear the names of persons whose biographies are tainted by the blood of the victims of German colonialism. According to the law, streets that do not correspond to today’s understanding of democracy and human rights should be renamed.

Café Togo

NR 2017
Once Existed

Kinmen is a group of islands governed by Taiwan and a solid base for the capitalist camp during the Cold War era. Kinmen commenced its construction of military fortifications in 1958, with millions of soldiers stationed on the island. As the USSR communist bloc gradually disintegrated, Kinmen began a large-scale withdrawal of troops in 1988, placing the lives of the island’s 50,000 residents in a predicament after having relied on soldiers to earn a living for so long. With the improvements of cross-strait relations, large amounts of Chinese tourists now flood the very islands they once rained countless bombs on. Tourists from both sides of the Taiwan Strait now take group photos in front of fortifications, but will the future of the cross-strait relations be as fine as the seemly peace?

Once Existed

NR 2017
Realm of Reverberations

For more than two decades, internationally acclaimed artist Chen Chieh-jen has illuminated the deep impact of power on bodies and architecture. Here he explores a pair of sites built by the Japanese colonial government in the early 20th century: the Losheng Leprosy Sanatorium and the Taipei Prison. The first was on the outskirts of Taipei, the second in the heart of the city. Both were used for controlling marginal populations; both continued to operate long after the Japanese left; and both were eventually torn down for urban redevelopment. Across its four sections linking different times, places and people, Realm of Reverberations reveals cycles of construction and destruction, and the ironies of emotional attachment and historical detachment.-UCLAFilm&TV

Realm of Reverberations

NR 2017
Temporary

The factories which were abandoned, the temporaries who were employed on a temporary basis, and the words were painted on the edge of the wall of the city. They were dirty humble but very strong, it reflects the real situation of "workers" in the social class. These factories, workers, and wall were utterly discarded after being used up, without any responsibility and affection. They were "relics" of the modern industrial process, and now left behind in the edge of the city and barren. We try to record the imminent disappearance of these graffiti walls, abandoned factories, are the temporary workers in an atypical way. Because of these images usually remind us that the city hides a group of incomplete consciousness and the body, they are in the search for a possible survival, a possible aesthetic, a desolate before the disappearance.

Temporary

NR 2017
A Journey of 35

Five Taiwanese teenagers, faced with sweeping and untested educational reforms in 1996, revealed their dreams in the CommonWealth Magazine documentary "A Generation Freed." Their lives were then revisited in 2006 in the film "A Generation Freed - 10 Years Later" to see how the more liberal education system had affected them. Now, another decade later, we find out in "A Journey of 35" if indeed they were able to chase their dreams and if their horizons have grown brighter with adulthood or become more cynical.

A Journey of 35

10.0 2017
Dialogue Among Tribes

In 1987, as Taiwan had just lifted martial law, society and the economy were undergoing rapid transformation, and Indigenous peoples faced a wave of urban migration and labor relocation. An Amis man Du-Ya Pan Ming-fu, his childhood friend Duwake, a Kavalan artist, and Lai-Sa-Gai-Nu Tian Acheng in Xiangbi Village, have different but intertwined lives. Though the three men were compelled by economic hardship to leave their homes, they did not bow to fate nor choose to remain in the city forever. In an era when Indigenous peoples were overlooked, they each steadfastly confronted their identity and cultural values, forging life paths that intertwined in unique ways.

Dialogue Among Tribes

NR 2017