Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

Jay wonders about the nature of the fear that he has towards his father. Where does it come from? Where should it go? To learn about their relationship, Jay uses a camera to observe their daily interactions. He investigates the grandfather he never knew and gradually discovers a strong intergenerational bond among all of them. As he learns, he begins to feel bolder and uses the camera to have a dialogue with his father about what he never dared to ask: about his identity and the politics surrounding gay marriage laws in Taiwan.

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.

At the foot of a mountain, there is a one-hundred-year-old house. Closely connected with each other, four women decide to become a real family there. In their capable hands, they build a home for women in this once deserted house.

The grandma from the country seems to have magical superpowers. As time goes by, the boy gradually discovers...

This film was made in the Bade Area of Taoyuan County, Taiwan. Chen Chieh-jen invited local temporary laborers to wander around the area, and enter office buildings and factory spaces that had been sealed off by the courts due to property right disputes. Examining the objects left behind in these spaces from the viewpoint of these temporary laborers, it muses on the voids and landscapes left behind in Taiwan amidst the torrent of globalization.

Hard Good Life II is a work that comes from the heart. Since the director learned how to hold a camera, she had gazed at her father through the lens all the time. This film is a memory of her father. After her father got cancer, they went through all kinds of treatment together, including loss or gain, hope or sorrow. This unbreakable connection supported them to the very last moment and never faded away.

Rainy days, parks, girls, secrets emerged quietly in her heart.

The pandemic-born “emo rave”-categorised “Change, Reset ft. PRINCI” portrays how distressed human beings lean on their desire for intimacy and connection on chat apps, without any physical interaction. The personality-training AI chatbot app “Replika” and dating app “Tinder” specifically, became the inspiration for this music video. The First-Person point of view coupled with a “Pokémon GO”-like AR interface fills this journey with sorrow and uncertainty. As the story starts with a user (Sonia Calico) who refuses to update her AI chatbot (PRINCI), she desperately ventures to find the AI partner’s crystal avatar in limited time as the obsolete-version of the world around them starts to fall apart.

The chest medals represent not only the prestigious and righteous decorations but also the heavy guilt. A veteran chased the stealing medals and started recalling the life with getting these medals. It reveals the ambiguous righteous under the medals.

Aya has lived a lonely life without an official identity because her mother is an illegal migrant worker. When Aya becomes ill, she meets two playmates in the hospital and discovers they are also Invisible Children, incapable of growing up ...

A group of Pangcah people left their homeland in the eastern Taiwan to seek jobs on the western coast. They drifted from one construction site to another, until they finally settled on a temporarily unclaimed clearing behind a university, building a community far away from home. Despite the instability of work and earnings, they lived life to the fullest catching fish, growing vegetables, singing and dancing, even electing leaders of their community in this 'new paradise'.

After restoring their Ceremony of Ancestral Spirits, the Atayal people of the Raisinay Village, Miaoli County, were distressed by the absence of their traditional garments. Yuma Taru, a researcher of Atayal folk costume, decided to trace back their history by conducting interviews with the elders, learning weaving techniques from them. This documentary captures the passing down of the weaving art, and the younger generation’s yearnings for revival of their traditional clothes.

An indigenous couple married young with a child when they were only 16 and 19 years old. The financial burden and challenges in life were so heavy for them that quarrels were unavoidable. As their former elementary school teacher, the filmmaker recorded the young couple’s daily life, while trying to give them a hand in their time of need.

My sister Pei-ling went through with an unexpected pregnancy. The child was nicknamed Angoo. In three years, Pei-ling broke up with the child's father, met a new boyfriend, left Angoo in my parents’ care to move in with her boyfriend, until she finally moved back in with our family due to the disapproval of her boyfriend's brother. The parent-daughter relationship was strained at first, but gradually things changed; understanding and love returned between them.

I tried to discuss the stirring and emotional states in human life, like a touch or a physical state of behavior. We expose ourselves to a vast event that creates a state of smallness and vulnerability, We are so vulnerable, so powerless to extend our thoughts or intentions.

A story about memories.

A Taiwanese woman's journey to America reveals her fantasy of love and an identity entangled with beauty, sexuality, nationality and two languages. Through the protagonist confronting her own image and her failure at communicating, Wild Grass tells an unusual love story that is deceptive yet revealing.

People usually don’t put much attention to old news. When the next incident occurs, the focus will soon shift. The unscrupulous company was revealed to manufacture foods with tainted ingredients. Thus, the public protested to the company and comprehensive boycott their goods. After a while, the tainted foods of this unscrupulous company had been repackaged and hit the store shelves again, but the company even claimed that it is new healthy food. What should consumers do when they find out the dark truth? Will their decide make a terrible food supply chain in future？

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.

This is a story of seeking each other, between flesh and soul. As the flesh and soul merge together, does that really form a complete individual?

It shows the psychological and destiny changes of a New York man on the subway.

It tells the story of a woman who recalls her childhood at night.

Shivering Wall discovers solitude in a crowd; a moment of lucidity in a hubbub. A house party is paired down to somnolent bodies and throbbing noise and in the midst a person gains an indefinite and individual experience.

Wedding photos are the development of emotions. The unique cultural etiquette and true temperament of the Chinese society are all recorded in the wedding photos. It makes everyone believe that this is a dream factory that can exchange money for concrete happiness. Before entering into marriage, the prince and princess are looking forward to a happy and happy love and future. On the other side, the couple who are already in marriage, what they hear is a frank conversation between them. Looking back at the photo that symbolizes the marriage contract, what kind of form does the "intimacy", "happiness", or "love" between the two transform into?

This short documentary begins with the script. Its author is also the protagonist who works as location scout. The story is about the author himself, his mother who died before her time due to overworking and “that man” who abused his mother.

This work is an argument initiated with Wendy Brown’s article Resisting Left Melancholy. She applied Walter Benjamin’s notion of “Left Melancholia” to see the political thoughts and the norms in the left-wing movement/ theory traditions as the notion of melancholia. There is the thingness of the thoughts that can see as the lost object. Extends this idea, the thingness of thoughts, come from one’s personal or collective memories could become the pathological fixation.

This restrained, documentary-like work explores the central role the manufacturing industry has played in Taiwanese history and the way in which this history continues to haunt it today.

A story, between father and son, happened round dinner table in the kitchen. "Bland lunch, day after day. the father who lives in the fridge. Discontented son. Inside the kitchen. Repast. Communication. Genes. On the verge of breaking out." Father and son came into a conflict because of a decision made by the son. To indicate the relationship between them through their reaction on that circumstances. We are all have some dissatisfaction with our parent’s personality,but meanwhile,we will gradually find them in yourself when you are growing up. The trepidation and the contradictory state.

Following the death of a young girl’s beloved grandmother and pet, she is to relocate to the city with her parents despite their estrangement. While being told how to think, feel and behave by her parents, she reveals love in its rawest form.

For its grandma's funeral, the child goes to its father's hometown. Facing the argument with his wife, the hostile relatives and his mother's death, the father cries before his child for the first time.

His mom promised she would watch and cheer for him at his table tennis match if he made it to the school competition. However, he’s not a good player and his old table tennis paddle broke during training. Most importantly, his father disapproves of him playing table tennis…

after 10 years in prison, Facu Silva returns to tehran to find out his wife is dead. he decides to investigate who killed his wife and at the same time starts having an affair with a woman that is a suspect. and meets an old man who might be key to the investigation...

It is a visual record of long-lasting open wounds, Chinese medical progress, and the disappearance of memory. This documentary examines the current plight of a small group of elderly Chinese peasants who have been suffering from open wounds for over 70 years. The director visits some elderly surviving soldiers of Unit 731 – a WWII Japanese secret unit devoted to biological warfare.

People from different cultures and generations coexist in a dreamy world – Hamasen, once the most prosperous area in Kaohsiung. In this utopia of memories, the intrigue on and under the chess table is blurred and blended into the harmony of the traditional market. A train falls from the sky, arrives at the platform on the screen, like in a movie, and gathers everybody for a journey through time and space.

This animated short film examines the injury of rigid religious upbringing to a teenager who discovers the strange and terrifying reality behind fundamentalism.

A documentary short about indoor shrimping, an all-ages pastime that's found a following in Taiwan over the past three decades.

Sometimes forces greater than the grid forces their way in.

On a morning in 1966, as requested by the director, artist Shiy De-jinn ran around the Renai Road Roundabout, while an 8mm camera tagged along. The runner, wearing a striped outfit, keeps striding forward to some unknown finish line, his eyes looking around from time to time; suddenly, a crowd of motorcycles appears and engulfs him.

About the past , my memory are fading and The past "I" is also vanishing . Considering the question of the relation between "I" and its image and death.

A daily gif created over 100 days.

Right in the afternoon after the graduation ceremony, the boys' plan to celebrate was disturbed by a sudden rain. Xiao-hai rushed to the park and it was already past the time he and Xiao-pan were supposed to meet. The rain had stopped; everything looked brand-new. Summer is on its way, but a sudden death has made everything somewhat different.

Horror Action movie from Taiwan.

This is an unfinished [Shaw Brothers] production entitled THE NOCTURNAL KILLER. It's possibly an aka for the above mentioned THE LITTLE POISONOUS DRAGON. It's just one of many unfinished films that were started at Shaw's and abandoned for whatever reason. With between 40 and 50 movies being scheduled throughout 1971 and 1972, some productions were scrapped, or morphed into an entirely different picture. Curiously, the plot and Shi Szu's attire appears similar to HEROES OF SUNG (1973; it was filmed under different titles as well), a film that did starred the actress and Lo Lieh, but not the Taiwanese actor, An Ping. - coolasscinema.com, Dec 2010