Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

Before and after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, there was a group of photographers who remained steadfast in their beliefs. Undeterred by the pressures of the mainstream market or government interference, they boldly ventured across the country, presenting firsthand material to the public, regardless of whether their perspective was objective or not.

I-Ling is a young professional moving to another country for work. Saying goodbye to friends is hard, but it is hardest going back to family for a goodbye. The past is shocking, the future is uncertain. Among the coming and going she is suspended by a thin thread of identity.

A train rolled into Tamsui, a charming harbour town full of historical and cultural complexity. European-style architecture tells its colonial past, while Fujianese immigrants' influence stays present in local people's everyday life. Celebrated photographer and cinematographer CHANG Chao-tang captured Tamsui in the 1970s on film, creating a nostalgic yet melancholic concerto played by missionaries, fishermen, and tourists.

A young, indefatigable office worker deals with an overwhelming workload. After all, he faints and falls beside a pile of trash on the street and accidentally meets a lazy, alcoholic street child who is living in the pile of trash. They stare at each other. The film raises a question: which one exactly do we drink? Coffee or caffeine, whisky or alcohol?

Ever since her younger sister went missing, the main character has been drowning in grief every night. However, she finds her younger sister's book tonight. When she opens it, she discovers some terror in the drawings.

If you had only three hours a day, what kind of life would you want to live? A comet has disrupted humanity's biological clock, limiting people to three waking hours a day. On his journey, Ian meets families with distinctive views on time, exploring different life choices along the way.

“All sadness leaves a trace of happiness. All regrets leave a corner of satisfaction.” When an all-powerful repairman meets the girl who has incurable disease, a love story destined to be imperfect re-defines their relationship and regrets.

“Synthetic Force” The force is tried to manifest a vibration and spectrum as an audible and visible object – audio visual meditation which includes the maximum and minimum point of views between nebulae and cell divisions that reflect science or sense, scotoma or principle, order and border, super-human and non-humanization. Is there any invisible or subliminal field variant of the system?

Taiwanese fantasy film.

An ophthalmologist numbs his past with eye drops, drifting into visions born of childhood trauma. When he meets a mysterious patient named Pin-Hong, the line between reality and illusion begins to blur. As his assistant Eve prepares to leave his fractured world, he must face a painful choice: to remain in the gentle comfort of illusion, or to truly see the world as it is.

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.

Today, It’s a year after you gone, I sit in front of you and telling you about the past of our family , as well as my deepest longing and regrets for you.

A documentarian's prison interview with a serial killer triggers mysterious dreams and encounters with a dead student's ghost.

A grieving teenage girl embarks on a moonlit scooter journey with a stranger. As memories and doubts surface, they navigate night streets together, searching for answers about her past, present, and future.

A grandmother, who once dreamed of becoming a dancer, spent her youth clipping tickets, bound by duty. Marriage promised freedom, yet life wove tighter threads. Facing her own frailty, she casts off the past, rowing toward the unknown — refusing to let her daughter inherit her cage, vowing to dance forever.

Son of a glove puppetry master, Xiao Guo, after his parents' divorce, could only accompany his father backstage at outdoor performances, often lacking stable meals and motherly care! At one performance, the puppet beside him comes to life and tries to take on the role of his mother...

⁣The protagonist attends a banquet, but it seems to be no ordinary dinner. As everyone enjoys the "delicacies," the atmosphere becomes increasingly eerie...

It’s been 10 years since the landlord sold the house and the family lived apart. A portrait of my imaginary family having a reunion dinner in my old home awakened my longing for this lost space. A journey of reunion with my old home and a journey of saying goodbye.

The Glory of Taiwan is a term whose emergence reveals an apparently paradoxical phenomenon. It insinuates that Taiwan had long been in a dark cave, undiscovered by any civilization in the world. It was not until the Portuguese exclamation “Ilha Formosa” that this island broke through the dense mist named this world and basked in the earliest glory of Taiwan. As the theme of Battle City 1 – The Glory of Taiwan elaborates the inferiority com- plex about Taiwan’s impotence. The society’s collective pursuit of success and superiority ultimately nullified its own existence, and a catastrophe known as The Glory of Taiwan ensues.

The boy was on the terrace and finally encountered that girl. In the girl's mind, this story appeared. Inside the window, with her thoughts wavering, the girl looks outside through a pair of binoculars. Outside the window, the boy collapses onto the girl.

The protagonist of the documentary, Yifang Lin (1926-2018), was born in Chiayi in the 15th year of the Republic of China (Taisho 15th year). When he was young, he went to Hiroshima, Japan to study with his elder brother. During the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, he happened to leave Hiroshima because of work and survived this disaster.

Philosophy student Ping just moved to Germany, when caught in the lockdown. Through online dating he matches Max, who invites him on a "social distance hookup". But when it's about to get spicy, a certain philosophy book ruins their plans.

An amazing origami action overload of paper cut-outs and corrugated cardboard shapes marching, climbing, dancing and jumping on a mission to create a pinball machine.

Fei Lung kills his boss in a mining accident. After serving a jail sentence, he returns to his village and finds his former girl friend married to Ju Hu. Ju Hu has gambled his family's fortune. He then sells his house and land for more gambling money. He loses it all, after being cheated, and is then beaten to death by gangsters. Fei Lung is captured and framed for Ju Hu's murder. He is taken to jail but escapes. After a bloody fight with three gangsters, one of them confesses to killing Ju Hu. There is a tremendous battle between the police and the Gangsters. The Gangsters are defeated and Fei Lung's enemies are killed.

Taking place in the 1930s on one island of the Japanese Empire, a few Pinginumu or the ‘escapees,’ attempt to flee from the infamous Green Jail coal mine but lose their way. They suffer from starvation, risk a brutal beat-up if caught, or if lucky, they swim to regain freedom. They become the hungry wandering living-ghosts. After the war, locals have more or less witnessed the miners’ ghosts that remain wandering about, as if they were still the poor souls that lost direction.

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.

Single channel video installation A Field of Non-Field conveys the concept that the relationship between technological development and capitalism has formed a new concept of technology capitalism, imposing control over technology and even the desires, perception, and thinking of individuals. This condition forms a situation of “global imprisonment, at-home exile.” What are our options of survival under circumstances such as these?

Since "Cape No. 7" in 2008, the Chinese film has been brought into the revival boom. Under what reforms will Taiwanese films regain their glory and go international?

It's a story about a life being trying to find its name and identity. Through the journey of stray animals, we see the dark side of the city. It traps a lot of creatures, not only animals but also some of us.

The film centres around three condemned prisoners who committed different crimes, with one still serving his sentence, one who has taken his own life in prison, and one already executed. Consisting of unembellished interviews and news footage, the film shows the director’s concern for the condemned prisoners and their families as human beings; moreover, it examines the contemporary history of capital punishment in Taiwan and questions the current judicial system.

It's Station Master Chen’s last day at work. The last train is sent off. Tomorrow on, he will be a mere Mr. Chen. He looks around the station where he’s worked his whole life, thinking of the people he’s sent off. Some come back, and some don’t. Finally, Chen realized the reason he stayed at the station. He’s been waiting for himself, who missed that train decades ago.

The background is set in nostalgic Hong Kong, a man keeping having nightmares after murdering his wife. In his nightmare, a big rat always appears to make trouble.

Obsessed with capturing death to glimpse the soul yet terrified of death itself, photographer Hao is haunted by visions due to a past accident. In search of peace and to escape being killed by these apparitions, he embarks on a journey to THE LAND, seeking the God‘s Endless Path.

Is being in a foreign land, separated from one’s familiar daily life and human relationships, another form of escape? Four seemingly unrelated footages from CHUNG Mong-hong's overseas studies represent a contemplation of the foreign land and self-identity. Fleeting images of the city, surrealist compositions, the multifarious landscapes and imageries presage CHUNG’s early experimental features. The monologue at the end narrates the absence of the father and the resulting solitude and regret, reflecting CHUNG’s delicate sensibilities towards family and human relationship. The local religious chants serve as a stark cultural contrast against the life overseas, highlighting the cultural barriers and loneliness brought about by estrangement.