56 Matches Found
In Taipei’s dreamscape, Tao’s incomprehensible love for Shin drives her to create painful memories. Meanwhile, Melih, burdened with self-blame, longs to connect with the perpetually drunk Ping.
Over an extended period, a director engages in an ongoing conversation with Yu, a teenage girl trying to come out of her experience of sexual trauma. A dialogue built on trust, the film follows Yu as she gradually learns to assert herself while the director remains present and open in the process. Through her social encounters, her words, and the short films she makes, Yu reflects on how she has been seen and defined, and begins to reclaim control of her own story. Resisting the label of “victim,” she moves forward with a firm step into the world.
In the 1970s, Taiwan's first grand cabaret, The Sapphire, opened in Kaohsiung, igniting a golden decade of live entertainment. Beneath its dazzling lights, the nation's tensions and censorship faded in nights of glitz and song.Stars like Teresa Teng, Fei Yu-ching and Fong Fei-fei graced. its stage, where glamour met gambling, drugs, and danger.Half a century later, The Sapphire is resurrected—through AI and music—to relive its untamed brilliance.
On a small island, the indigenous Da’o people live in harmony with the Pacific. Their love for the sea prompts 19-year-old Vongnyan to enlist in the navy. Returning broken, he confides his traumas to the waves during bouts of insomnia. His younger brother, Bo, plays and lives in the water, completely carefree, yet he, too, will soon have to choose his future.
During the turmoil of 2019 Hong Kong, before pursuing his studies in Taiwan, the director was abruptly frozen in the present by a message from his father. As Hong Kong entered a pandemic lockdown, the director, now in Taiwan, began to Skype call his father, unpacking his traumatic memories and their entangled hearts.
Daughter of Nectar, a gracefully carved marble nude from 1921 by Huang Tu-shui, Taiwan's inaugural modern sculptor, encapsulates a complex century of Taiwanese history, spanning from Japanese colonisation to Chiang Kai-shek's authoritarian rule and the White Terror era. This sculpture, both delicate and resilient, stands as a silent sentinel, mirroring the enduring struggles, suppressed voices, and profound cultural transformations of its homeland.
Graduation is approaching, marking the close of a chapter. I took my camera to Green Island, recording video letters day by day. But the camera became unruly, backup batteries went missing, and the trip began to go downhill. Typhoons arrived, and the video letters ceased... Finally, facing the sea beneath the sun, my camera non-responsive, I took a Dramamine, then boated back home.
When Birdy was young, he was like a fledgling still learning how to fly. He needed care and nurturing from his family to grow strong, yet he didn’t want to grow into the person his family expected him to be. SECOND ROUND is a coming-of-age documentary that intertwines Birdy’s gender transition with his inner emotional transformation—pulling back, pushing back, confusion, courage, fear, anxiety, and taking one last all-in gamble. We walk alongside Birdy through countless thoughts and struggles, witnessing a life crack open, grow, and ultimately find its way back to itself.
Known as ‘Pa Nana’, a celebrated Latin singer in 1950s–60s Taiwan, Kao Chu-hua supported her family through nightclub performances after her father’s execution during the White Terror. Drawing on family testimonies and newly declassified archives, the film reconstructs her life under state surveillance, revealing survival beneath authoritarian rule and enforced silence.
Veteran filmmaker Mary Stephen digs into her own family past to uncover the long-hidden origins of her Western surname, revealing a story of culture shock, colonialism, and contested remembrance.
Set above the clouds, The Echoes is a visual documentary exploring Taiwan’s alpine wilderness. By juxtaposing human traces with nature’s slow rhythm, the film captures the duality of fleeting existence and eternal silence, inviting contemplation on how time eventually reclaims all man-made marks.
In 2023, Elephant Gym was preparing to embark on a world tour—yet the band stood on the brink of breaking up. This documentary chronicles Elephant Gym’s journey, from their formation in 2012 to their recently completed “The World tour,” which spanned 23 countries and 60 shows. As the story progresses, we witness how the band gradually finds balance on tour, while each member confronts personal challenges and the ongoing search for self-worth. Spanning themes from individual growth and group dynamics to the global music industry and the challenges faced by Taiwanese musicians abroad, this documentary aims to portray the many layers of music—from deeply personal expression to its place in the international industry—through the lens of Elephant Gym.
Once a rising star in Taiwan's mountaineering boom, A-Gong fell into debt and went on the run, hiding on Yushan before surrendering. After prison, he returned to the mountains, rebuilding his life step by step. Now, he's a living legend among Taiwan's high-altitude trails.
A young filmmaker, once skeptical of incense rituals, sets out to explore faith through his lens. From street vendors to temple youth groups, his journey captures how belief quietly answers life's questions. A heartfelt documentary bridging gods and people, offering hope and reflection in a post-pandemic world.
"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.
Upcoming Hugh J. Service Taiwan Documentary.
In Singapore, executions take place at dawn. Years after her brother’s death sentencing for drug trafficking, a sister duo continues their early-morning journeys, carrying the quiet aftermath of a punishment the city no longer sees.
Though Taiwan's rainfall is three times the global average, its uneven distribution creates striking scarcity. Water gives and takes; it sustains life yet brings destruction. Following the sound of currents, the film reflects on water's shifting states, capturing the emotional and spiritual ties woven between people, memory and the surrounding tides.
This film traces Arizona’s desert as it is reshaped into a hub for data centres and semiconductor manufacturing. Moving through altered waterways, the film exposes tensions between technoutopian visions and drought-stricken ecologies. Guided by offscreen voices and Tohono O’odham poet Ofelia Zepeda’s ‘Cloud Song’, ancestral knowledge counters the rise of industrial ‘cloud’ infrastructures.
The refracted gaze on Mianhua Islet, Taiwan's eastern de facto border, turns the concrete landscape of physical territory into a mirage of topography and politics. The fragmented image of the frontier reflects the ambivalent state of Taiwanese subjectivity. The camera slowly sweeps over the contour of the islet as if touching the country's body to ensure its existence. The ever-imaginary border that eludes, obscures, and fictionalizes the construction of a nation confronts us with its external mirrored image, as a subject and as a site, where the process and paradox of forming national subjectivity are materialized, embodied, and caught in a liminal space.
The pastor of the church asked believers to sign a petition opposing the same-sex marriage referendum. A young church member with rainbow-dyed hair, raging with anger and resentment, sought to prove his own existence.
As a Taiwanese in France, I have learnt a few things. There are three things I would like to share with you the most. French is difficult… but there are certain things more difficult than French.
Before the family home in Shalun, Taoyuan, was demolished under the Taoyuan Aerotropolis redevelopment project, the director's mother passed away unexpectedly. Yet in her absence, the family's long-fragile order seemed to stabilize, even appearing strangely "happy." This subtle and difficult truth compels the director to repeatedly return to the old house on the verge of disappearance, insisting on bringing back her father and brothers, who are trying to move on. As the boundaries between filming and being filmed blur, differing attitudes toward farewell gradually emerge, and long-suppressed memories begin to seep through. The director is left asking herself: Is this an attempt to preserve memory, or a way of trapping herself in a cycle of loss from which she cannot find closure.
Chiayi's City Center Fountain is deeply embedded in everyday life, layering a rich cultural foundation. In the "post-roundabout era," youth creativity injects new energy to reimagine the old town. From a traffic circle to multidimensional revitalization, how does this new generation bring fresh trends to the century-old landmark and traditional trades? The film captures this dialogue across time, exploring the fusion of old and new. More than a landmark, the fountain symbolizes the heart of Chiayi, where collective memories come full circle.
Li Ze-yang's journey in music was bumpy yet full of colors. His musical collection serves as a historic witness to ethnic communities. His relentless editorial commitment proved a quintessential scarcity in the history of Taiwanese music.
The final chapter of the Taiwan trilogy, exploring the long-term effects of cultural education during Taiwan's military dictatorship.
Tao litterateur Syaman Rapongan bridges the bond between father and son through the Tatala and his writing, preserving the memory of his people. Spanning seventy years, the film interweaves footage from different eras, evoking the spirit of the language and culture rooted in the sea and the body. Along this journey, Syaman Rapongan learned and borrowed a foreign language to tell the story of his own people.
This documentary examines Taiwan's role within the war machinery of East Asia, and how air-raid shelters have transformed from military defense structures into part of the everyday landscape. By guiding audiences through the often-overlooked landscapes of Chiayi, the film calls for renewed attention to historical sites and explores how war has shaped urban structures and collective memory. It also invites reflection on the lasting impact of war, reminding us that war is never as distant as it seems.
As a long-term migrant caregiver, Fidati shapes Indonesian stories with Taiwanese paper clay. After years of separation during the pandemic, she returns to Central Java in 2024. Laughter and tears intertwine, yet family duty keeps her moving between two lands, where the taste of mangoes bridges emotions across the sea.
Stones in Chiayi's streams bear the marks of time and the land's memory. Seventy years ago, Zhan Long began carving tombstones, turning cold stone into living art and founding Chiayi's stone monkey tradition. The second-generation sculptor infused family memory and cultural sentiment, making the stone monkey a city symbol. Today, new self-taught artists reinterpret the craft, letting tradition endure and be reborn, bearing witness to the warmth and vitality of culture.
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.