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Chronicle of the Sea, Nan-Fang-Ao

Nan-Fang-Ao, a village in northeast Taiwan, once thrived on its big-net fishing industry. Now migrant workers from the Philippines and China vigorously live and work with the locals on one of the few remaining fishing boats. As we observe their life at sea, where the air is abuzz with different languages and gestures, thoughts of home drift among those who have come to provide for their families. There is the captain who talks about the old days, the woman who sent her husband off to sea and runs a shop in the village, and the laborers from foreign countries who buy gifts for their families at the market. With a fresh look, the film depicts people living on the unchanging stage of the ocean’s vast wilderness.

Chronicle of the Sea, Nan-Fang-Ao

8.0 2005
Blind Nights

On Green Island’s Human Rights Memorial, a poem by Bo Yang mourns the mothers who wept through long nights for children imprisoned there during Taiwan’s White Terror. In Cries in the Dark, the filmmaker turns that line into family history. In 1950, their parents were arrested in the Yu Fei espionage case, convicted of rebellion, and sentenced to 13 and 10 years in prison. Their grandmother, desperate to save her newly married daughter and son-in-law, cried for help until she lost sight in one eye. Decades later, the case was officially recognized as a wrongful conviction: 34 people were implicated, four unrelated defendants were executed, and the rest received heavy sentences. Born while their mother was briefly released from prison, the filmmaker spent early childhood behind bars before being separated when she was sent to Green Island. The film records the intimate cost of political persecution across prison, family, and memory.

Blind Nights

NR 2006
Port of Return

The heart is a battlefield where struggles between good and evil, light and darkness rage.Frostlight, a naive girl, disregards the fortuneteller's warnings, and tries too hard in keeping Westwind's heart. Her attempts catch the attention of Asura, and a war breaks out. Frostlight quickly boards a mysterious ship and departs on a perilous and fantastic journey. This strange ship carries a cast of helpless, tormented souls as it drifts through a mysterious space, unable to make port. The souls fear that Asura could strike at any moment and send them to the Asuran Realm, never to return.

Port of Return

3.8 2009
少年午夢

Summer 1996. Days after finishing their national college entrance exams, teenagers Simao, Awai and Qiming crashed their car at dawn following a night out in Beihai - with passengers An'an and Xiaomei. Simao, the driver, hovered near death in ICU for three months while his grandmother and traumatized friends kept vigil. Unbeknownst to the comatose youth, two life-altering events occurred that summer: his long-absent mother visited secretly, and his college acceptance letter arrived. This coming-of-age story traces the trio's journey through guilt, confusion and fractured dreams in Simao's shadow. When he finally awakens three years later - his innocence preserved like a time capsule - his friends confront bittersweet truths: their struggles to outgrow teenage skins now mirror the very fractures that once bound them.

少年午夢

NR 2000
Tai Wan Yi Shu Deng Jie

[Ten Years of Installation Art Series-Taiwan Art Lantern Festival (Technology Empyrean 2004) The Taipei County Bureau of Culture used "Technology Auras-Metropolitan Gaze and Imagination" as the curatorial proposition of the 2004 Taiwan Lantern Festival Art Light District. It reintegrated the meaning of the times, contemporary art, and the cultural image of the traditional Lantern Festival. Its purpose is to focus on dialogue through the works of artists, the contemporary "urban imagination", and a total of 9 domestic artists' lantern festival installation creations.]

Tai Wan Yi Shu Deng Jie

NR 2004
Shattered Dreams

There are more than 320 thousand migrant workers legally hired in Taiwan, among them more than half are from Thailand. To these migrant workers, working abroad in Taiwan is a risky gamble. If they win, they can pay back large amount of brokerage fee and earn some money to support their families. The three Thai workers from northeastern Thailand in this film, however, weren't so lucky. The electronic factory that they'd been working was suddenly closed down. The owner of the factory simply said that he could not afford to pay the salaries of the 100 domestic workers and 100 migrant workers. The Thai workers were eventually deported back to Thailand after fighting futilely for their rights with other migrant and domestic workers. Their dreams of earning money were totally shattered. Some of them were deeply in debt. Would they give up their hopes in earning money from working abroad because of their bad experiences in Taiwan?

Shattered Dreams

NR 2003
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
Searching for the Zero Fighters

Searching for the Zero Fighters documents a little-known chapter of taiwan history, particularly the psychological landscape of postwar Taiwan and the Japanese aircraft left behind on the island after World War II. Through ordinary people’s memories of the Zero fighter planes and the director’s own family footage, the film explores the turbulent period between the end of Japanese colonial rule and the takeover of Taiwan by the Nationalist government. It is the first Taiwanese documentary to examine how Japanese military aircraft were repurposed into everyday household items, and the first historical film to explore why, after the war, many Taiwanese people feared speaking openly about their memories.

Searching for the Zero Fighters

NR 2002
Ling Chi Kao

Chen Chieh-jen’s Lingchi Echoes calmly yet forcefully condemns the many forms of Western colonial domination Taiwan has endured. Its images feel like dream-images from collective memory, buried in the viewer’s unconscious and demanding a response. Projected across three screens at a slow, poetic pace, the work connects historical violence to contemporary Taiwanese society. Hovering between madness, agony, and ecstatic transcendence, the imagery turns viewing into an unsettling confrontation. Though based on a once-obscure historical document, its reenactment of lingchi in the twenty-first century feels like looking at images of hell. Loaded with colonial, historical, cinematic, punitive, and aesthetic meanings, the slowed image compels the viewer to stare—at history, at violence, and at the self. Lingchi becomes a metaphor for First World power over the vulnerable under globalization.

Ling Chi Kao

NR 2002
Notes from Taiwanese Writers: Lin Shuangbu

In this documentary by the writer Lin Shuangbu, the passionate and busy sports spirit is expressed in many short cuts. The free entry and exit of time and space is close to the expression style of the stream of consciousness, and he expresses his life background, social movement, literary philosophy and growth background concisely and neatly. Of course, the technique of screen transition and fade-in is also extremely smooth and vivid. There is a sense of reality of video reporting, and the revolutionary character of social movement in pursuit of truth is also hidden in the editing features.

Notes from Taiwanese Writers: Lin Shuangbu

NR 2004
Nine Songs

This dance film presents Nine Songs as reimagined by Lin Hwai-min and performed by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, directed for screen by Chang Chao-Tang. Drawing on ancient ritual poetry, the work evokes prayers to heaven and earth, spirits and ancestors, as well as love and mourning. Masked gods and human figures move together in a ceremonial structure, staging a timeless vision of human experience. Premiered in 1993, Nine Songs became one of Cloud Gate’s most important works. A studio fire in 2008 nearly caused the piece to be lost, but a surviving ceremonial mask remained as a trace of its legacy. This film records the production before the fire, preserving its original form. Moving across layered time and space, the choreography creates a powerful, immersive atmosphere. Through moments of wonder, grief, and ecstasy, the work unfolds toward a state of clarity and quiet transcendence.

Nine Songs

NR 2007
Farewell Party

“Lifeng Coal Mine” (利豐煤礦) in Sanxia, Taipei County, was once Taiwan’s largest specialized coal mine. Unable to compete with cheap imported coal amid Taiwan’s impending WTO accession, the mine shut down, leaving 118 miners unemployed and sparking disputes over pensions and severance pay. San Yan (《散宴》) follows several aging miners, including brothers Huang Wu-yi (黃武義) and Huang Rong-quan (黃榮全), documenting their reflections on unemployment and their lifelong labor underground. After sharing one final farewell banquet, the miners’ “black gold dream” disappeared together with the closing mine. Through the film, the director moves beyond stereotypical images of miners’ hardship, portraying instead the quiet resilience and optimism of these “last-generation miners.”

Farewell Party

NR 2001
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
The Land Of Abundance The Legend Of Pandas

The Giant Panda is a mammal native to central-western and south western China and is a true member of the Ursidae (bear) family. The Panda's closes ursine relative is the spectacled bear of South America. The Giant Panda is among the worlds most adored and protected rare animal and is one of the few in the world whose natural inhabitant status was able to gain UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. The Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries located in the southwest Sichuan province and covering seven natural reserves, were inscribed onto the World Heritage List in 2009. Discover the beauty and wonder of these great panda's and their fight for life.

The Land Of Abundance The Legend Of Pandas

NR 2009
Memorandum on Happiness

This is a documentary about sweetness and hurt, pursuit and loss. It is a bluebird's song of comrades and their joy, tinged with melancholy premonition-a song that comes from afar as though to rub shoulders with life directly, only to pass on. A story of two marriages, one lesbian and one gay. The parallel structure lays bare the complexity of queer love, but also the cruelty inherent to love itself. Domestic violence, faithfully captured by the camera, threads its way like a deep silent river, cutting out its course and leaving a path of marks and scars. The survivor is like a child who cannot explain, but can only remember.

Memorandum on Happiness

NR 2004
Sentimental Journey

This is a 3-part love story. One girl is talking a story of her ex-boyfriend. He went aboard to chase for homosexual love. Although she stayed home, both of them are experiencing almost simultaneously unbounded sexual exploring journey in each end. The traditional narrative monologue is manipulated as a link to all the experimental segments. As the story goes on, the emotion of those original extremely abstract experimental footages are becoming touchable and understandable.

Sentimental Journey

NR 2003
Hard Good Life

An elderly man cooks himself some noodles and eats them straight from the pot while watching TV by himself. He dozes off at his job as a security guard. Alone since the death of his wife, the father’s daily life is filmed by his daughter. While turning her gaze on ordinary things like garbage, keys, puppies, flies and lizards, we can almost sense the strong smells of summer and the sound of thunder at night. Suddenly, the father turns and waves to us. The father-daughter bond is expressed here in very few words.

Hard Good Life

10.0 2003
Sounds of Love and Sorrow

Sounds of Love and Sorrow lets the eerie sounds of the Paiwan flutes including the nose flute, which legend says imitates the call of the deadly hundred-pace snake, mix in with the recollections of tribal elders and traditional tales to present a rich background of Paiwan life in Taiwan. Tribal elders recall the days of the youth and their romances. They tell of the creation of the Paiwan people, and lament the end of tribal life, crushed by the irresistible and contradictory forces of government policies and alien cultural influences. Talking of love, both the charm and cruelty of a traditional society are revealed. For many of the Paiwan, love may be a high point of a young life – but it is also the gateway to sorrow. But in the end, it is the high spirits, the playful romances and the family spirit of the Paiwan which shine through.

Sounds of Love and Sorrow

NR 2000