Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

Upon discovering her uncle's lost kung fu film, the filmmaker travels to Taiwan during Ghost Month to uncover his past.

In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, Prince Fu and his son Lou-yang ran wild terrorizing the vassal state of Henan. Their only block was the 500 monk-soldiers protecting the Shaolin Temple. Under the pretense of an order from the Emperor, Prince Fu sent all 500 monk-soldiers away to fight bandits, leaving Shaolin Temple unprotected. Guang Ci had been training some of the young monks in martial arts. With the 500 monk-soldiers gone, Prince Fu planned his ambush and his army began surrounding the Shaolin Temple. Aware of Prince Fu's evil intentions, the young monks defend the temple with Tong Deng leading. Only his "Tong Zi Gong" can overwhelm Prince Fu's "Light Kicking" in this struggle for consummate power. Superb Wu Shu fights in the tradition of Jet Li's, Shaolin temple.

There has been no water in the house for days, and the reason may be the leak in the water tank on the roof. This adds another thing to Kao Li-Hsuan and Kao Cheng-Hsuan's to-do list today. In spite of their constant bickering, their relationship might be tighter than one can imagine during the rain.

A white collar worker is kidnapped on the way back home. The kidnapper gives lectures to him on the interrelationships among the five senses, and points out the importance of the olfactory system. Nomination for Best Short Film, 34th Golden Horse Awards, Taiwan | Outstanding Short Film, 21st Golden Harvest Awards | Outstanding Narrative Film, Taipei Film Awards 1997

Secret of Tai Chi is about a young martial-arts aficionado who duels with a nasty Chinese military man.

People wear vivid colours to express political stances in the demonstrations in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This digital video artwork explores how colour, particularly skin tone, is ideologically constructed in media and design. Through sampling, glitches, and critical overlays, the work questions the perceived neutrality of colour standards and highlights how visual systems encode racial and cultural biases. Blending theory with experimental aesthetics, it invites viewers to rethink how identity and power operate through the language of colour.

Who lost their memory? Why did you forget your story? Where is my hometown? Home Kong is an 8-minute short film comprising only 3 drone shots. A tale of 2 cities. A co-production between Hong Kong and Taiwan.

A spirit gets lost in the sea of flowers, looking for the flower that belongs to her.

Her bright world became dark after losing sight. One day, She met him, the person she had loved when she still could see…During the short conversation, she could feel the temperature, smell, vision and state of mind, in this extravagantly ordinary night.

Without means to put down roots and settle, two migrant workers seek a solution on an island where anchorage is prohibited.

Yuan and Zhong are friends, their teacher wants Yuan to keep Zhong from bullying Chun. However, Chun doesn’t look grateful to Yuan. Yuan decided to do something.

A documentary film about the U2 surveillance planes that were flown by the secret 35th Squadron of ROC Air Force.

Although Tsi-an and Yi-rui are an invincible duo in table tennis doubles, Tsi-an’s technique is in no comparison to Yi-rui’s. Tsi-an, frustrated by her sense of inferiority, beseeches the coach, Yi-rui’s father to give her additional drill. During an one-on-one training session, she develops a crush on the coach. Ping Pong Coach adopts Tsi-an’s point-of-view to narrate her romantic fantasy in an understated manner, which in the event gives rise to her bewilderment, joy, disappointment and growth. LIN Yen-chen, who plays Tsi-an, captures the capricious behaviour of the teenagers in her delicate performance, Yi-rui and Tsi-an’s grandmother also leave behind a vivid impression during a brief screen time.

Also known as White Jasmine.

Every December to January, almost a hundred squid fishing boats from Ch'ien-chen Fishing Harbor in Kaohsiung will sail from East 120 to West 60 to work at Falkland Islands in the South West Atlantic. The sailing takes 35-40 days and crew members named it "waterway." January 1st, 2015, a 65 meter long, 11 meter wide fishing boat began its journey to Falkland island. This is a documentary about 60 crew members from south-east Asia to work far away from Taiwan.

The plot of Golden King is not currently known, which is partially because the film's poster describes the plot only as "Hot stunt action! Heart-wrenching plot!! Innovative ideas! Fantastic story!!" with not even a basic synopsis of the plot included.

Li, a former soldier who's family broke apart during wartime, was born in Hebei Province in China. He joined the army since youth, never about any political beliefs, but to survive by fighting for those who fed him. The war brought him to Taipei Taiwan, a place where he spent six decades to fit in. Li never had a chance to return to his hometown Hebei, but has revisited it countless times in his dreams. whenever he dreams of it, he sees blood flowing all over the place. At the age of sixty, he decided to separate from his wife and children and lived alone for 20 years. He missed all those years wasted in wartime when he was young, at the same time, he had no idea how his eventful life would come to an end...

Wei and Chen grew up together. They are each other’s closest companion—at least in Wei’s mind. On a quiet winter break afternoon, Chen brings up the broken fridge in Wei’s room— filled with forgotten objects, and somehow shared between them.

A Taiwanese Odyssey resulting from the assassination attempt by three expatriates in April 1970 on Chiang Ching-kuo, heir apparent to dictator Chiang Kai-shek. The story is told through the life of Cecilia Huang, a gentle and quiet participant previously unknown. With memories shared by people across three continents, the film explores complexity of the human condition, love, betrayal, defiance, regrets, trauma and the possibilities of poetic closure from pain and loss.

Using hand-processing techniques and super 8mm film material, the film produces unexpected effects on texture. Furthermore, with different speeds of controlling the super 8mm projector, it creates a special rhythm in back-and-forth movements.

How does a dream become a reality after 10 years? Prof. Cheng and his students at the National Taiwan University built a solar car, and the team competed in the 2005 World Solar Challenge in Australia. They overcame great difficulties along the way, and achieved fifth place in the 3,000-km race through the Outback. However, the finishing line was certainly not the end of their story. For More Sun II continues their story and shows us where they are heading NOW.

With his complexly plotted feature-film debut, shot entirely in widescreen black and white, Taiwanese director Fu Shan-Fong has created an often hilarious satire of filmmaking in Taiwan and a parody of cinema cliches resulting from the attempts of a group of hot young advertising executives to make a major motion picture. Each of the would-be filmmakers tends to make commercials that pay tribute to their favorite movie directors (who range from Ingmar Bergman to John Woo), and all are eager to realize their dream of making an art film. At first, the group faces so many obstacles the director kills himself in despair. Shortly thereafter they find a backer who unfortunately insists they make a Hollywood-style action thriller about Mafia arms smugglers called "Striking Back." Scenes from the investor's dream movie periodically appear throughout the story, and Shan-Fong uses them to parody Asian cinema's tendency to imitate and elaborate upon Western movie conventions.

To solve the problem of styrofoam, an adventure of beach cleanup in Penghu began. It started with a two-person studio and expanded to include many environmentalists. As they set foot on the small offshore islands to clean up beaches, challenges arose in the process. Is the carbon footprint generated during beach cleanup more environmentally unfriendly? How to deal with the piles of litter? These problems came as a great blow to them, just like waves crashing on the shore.

Miao hadn’t been living with her father; she kept good care of his car. One night with a sudden rain, her father came to visit and had dinner with her. After waking up the next morning, Miao realized it had been only a dream out of her longing for her father.

Two Taiwanese girls fly back to their hometown Taipei for an annual family visit. The trip starts out joyful with the embrace of family love; however it becomes unbearable when a disturbing truth is uncovered.

Return to the Land

Dedicated to the sisters who fought back with the last strengths in them, The War of Roses documents the struggles and aftermath of four women in different environments that encountered sexual assaults, shedding light on the underlying structural violence sustaining the unequal power relations in gender.

He has to leave the tribe for entering the next grade. This is a must challenge for the kids at the tribe. For YUKAN, besides this challenge. He still has to leave from his favorite mountain life. YUKAN’s ambition is to be a hunter from his childhood. Can he achieve his dream? The old spirits inside his heart will be obliterated gradually in the city life?

A girl lying in her room in Taipei gets bored and goes to sleep. Heavy rain starts, and the story goes into a dream world. She mounts on her bed and starts her trip guided by mice. The background music is Maiden’s Prayer which she finds played by mice. After diving into the water, she starts dancing with the mice.

Legend has it that one can realize their wishes by continuously having sex with unattractive people to accumulate good karma. Ching constantly has sex with unappealing gay men to fulfill his wish of getting close to his handsome crush.

In 1949, the KMT government retreated from Mainland China to Taiwan, bringing along an army of 600,000 people. The director’s father was one of them. They thought they would be returning to the Mainland before long but ended up waiting for forty years. A hairpin belonging to the director’s grandmother allows her to walk into her father’s world, and to discover the memories of these old veterans.

On an ordinary morning, she brushes her teeth, but when she looks into her own image in the mirror, she sees totally a stranger. She had required a surgery three years ago to change her jaw. This is a story about a person who dislikes her body and decides to take action.

Annie and her family are spending the holidays with an old aunt at a remote mountain village. For this city girl, the big adventure begins at The Ching-Hsiow Villa! Here she learns of the old aunt\'s love story during the Japanese colonial era, meets a magic raccoon, and makes friends with the local Native Taiwanese. Full of surprises - and some minor dangers, too! - this is an unforgettable vacation for Annie and her family. One of the few outstanding Taiwanese animation productions in recent years and a nominee for Best Animated Features at the Golden Horse Award in 1997, ANNIE\'S MAGIC RACCOON is a simple and yet profound tale about the heart. It also reflects the emerging awareness of environmental and political issues in Taiwan in the early nineties.

Little blue pieces of fluff fall off from a fuzzy sweater. A girl cannot get rid of them, they’re spreading across her body like an epidemic. Metaphorical story from the age of Covid.

Set in the year 2050, ARIA 夢姬 is a CGI animated speculative short film. In the smart surveillance city of Dream Harbor, a fourth-generation female AI agent named ARIA is on the verge of obsolescence. She is the product of a state-run “Cyber Road Initiative” designed to address labor shortages and declining birth rates. Modeled after a famous late actress, she is the image of “grace and restraint” and domestic femininity. The work references Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” and ideas of a post-gender future.

Father, son, the lighthouse as the center of their lives. Both grow up, the son leaving every day to pursue his studies, then returning to an increasingly elderly father who welcomes him with the same warmth, taking him, as he has always done over the years, to the piano to play together.

Zhang is a boy living a depressive life and with no self-autonomy. DaChang is a boy who has a secret base, many comic books and who knows how to play kung fu. They meet each other in school.​ Although Zhang does not know what he wants, he just knows that he does not like his previous life. But just run away and get away. Even if you don't know where to escape, at least you're happy when you run away.​

Scottish photographer John Thomson's trip to Taiwan in 1871 left an important mark in the history. This film reinterprets the event via a photo of a hunter, taking the audience to the Siraya tribe to meet WAN, a tribe elder who knows how to sing and talk. Through his intriguing words and songs, WAN leads us back to the past as he plucks the strings.

Father lay on the living room sofa, enveloped in plaster, resolutely clinging to his identity as a patient. Shengwen, ensconced in the driver's training car, fixed his gaze on the instructor beside him. He was reluctant to confront the situation at home and his perpetually elusive father, yet he found himself equally unable to face the instructor by his side. Inevitably, he began to transform into a reflection of his father.

A dazzling and unconventional documentary where a filmmaker explores their first experience of great loss after her best friends Chun and Yueh go missing. Trapped in a cave in Nepal for 47 days, Yueh survives. Chun does not. Yi-Shan offers an intimate window into the complex relationship of survivors as she traverses the intricate terrain of grief and gender with Yueh. Their conversations are steeped in themes of guilt, perseverance, and identity as they navigate Chun’s legacy with ease, even as elders around them fail to acknowledge their friend’s queerness/transness posthumously.

A misplaced time of youth, is like playing badminton in a tennis court.

In 1962 China, Japanese warlords hold the power and are wielding it with no regard to ethics or propriety. Two private entities, the Nagoa Isam Transportation Company and the Bai Loon Forwarding Agency, have taken competition to the extreme, wreaking havoc and violence as a means to hold onto whatever sovereignty they may have. Loyalty no longer exists as residents watch out only for their own interests.

A justice lawyer, for revenge, has become a mysterious bomber, even trying to change the society and practice political ideals with bombs. Would he eventually become a God or a Devil of the new era?

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.