Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

During a hot summer vacation, in addition to making Tik Tok videos and feeding the deer, Ruei has to deal with death.

The things we had lost in time differ, it is the reason why we can’t grow up together. Some events seem to be not important at the moment might became a crucial milestone in a personal sense. Through retelling and rewriting the memory, the pointless emotions turns to the flowing memory, and being able to preserved. The film was shot in 16mm, based on a childhood (false) memory, transformed with fantasies and symbolic objects, and performed in a public environment. The elements in the film are both the markers of emotion and time, with montage, the outside world and inner scenery came across to each other.

Umezawa Sutejiro came to Taiwan to work in 1911, and had stayed in Taiwan ever since then. He participated in design and construction of nowadays, to name a few, Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, Law School of Taiwan University, T&L Hsin Chu, Taichung Normal University, Chiayi Art Museum, Tainan Art Museum, Hayashi Department Store. This documentary film is in attempt to draw a finer portraiture of Umezawa by interviewing Umezawa’s grandson, scholars and architects and by focusing on the discourse of Chiayi Art Museum building. It also intends to pay tribute to Umezawa.

A-He, a 70-year-old film projectionist, has worked for 37 years in Shin-Rung theater in which just shut down recently. To make a living, he went to other theaters in Chiayi to look for a job. However, he was rejected due to his age. Suddenly, he felt he has lost something that has always been the majority in his life. Idling, he still went to Shin-Rung theater to clean up the projection equipment and tidy up the reels every day while waiting for the new investor to reopen the theater. One day, A-He returned to the theater and played a film. A long-awaited reunion is presenting through the image with movies.

My elder brother A-Chih has been serving as a psychic since he was twelve. He has helped many believers communicate with the divine to overcome their problems. Despite his gift, he is unable to escape the grip of his own difficult life. It is the reason why I have doubts about his abilities. To improve his circumstances, he has tried various works such as street vending and part-time jobs. What can he do to find a way out of this tough situation of life?

A story about a money machine, a poor man, and cat food

“The passing of time would be meaningful and memorable only when something happens.” Commissioned by Chiayi Art Museum, the crew revisit locations where photographer FANG Ching-mian, known as Uncle Hsin-kao, shot 70 years ago in Yushan (Niitakayama). The story of Uncle Hsin-kao and landscapes is told by interweaving a variety of climbers, scenery and Bunun Narration. The narration implies the presence and absence of certain characters in Taiwan history. Through the off-screen voice, a layer of discourse is created with the narrator's role, Bunun's lines, and the images. The absence of the indigenous people in the history of photography, the presence and revisit of the crew, the reports and postcards created by Uncle Hsin-kao reveal a poetic story between Uncle Hsin-kao and landscapes.

A story about two volleyballs. No genders, merely two objects and souls falling in love. Both were solitude until an encounter breaks their desire to be each other’s loved one.

A music piece called "finger" is played by anxious people.

Ling is having an affair with Midnight Cowherd without telling her husband, and one day unfortunately, the Cowherd and two gangsters take nude photos, and then intimidate and blackmail her. Unable to bear the humiliation, Man Ling got into an argument with the gangsters, and was killed and her body mutilated. The gangster was ruthless, and then contacted Man Ling's husband, Zhen Feng, to demand a kidnapping and ransom...

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous demonstrations by the LGBT+ community that began on June 28, 1969 in the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village. This was a turning point in the gay liberation movement and is often seen as the start of the modern fight for LGBT+ rights and freedoms in the United States. 50 years on, for many around the world this remains a dream. Filmed in Honduras, Zanzibar, Taiwan and England, the documentary provides unique access to the poignant personal stories of those facing challenges due to their sexuality or gender identity.

A political superstar finds himself falling from grace and plummeting to the depths. After the Sunflower Movement, Chen Wei-ting, whose reputation now preceded him, returned to Miaoli County to run for the legislature, but he soon withdrew due to some sexual harassment scandals. From public sweet heart to someone scorned and deemed a “criminal”, what does Chen think of what he calls his “perfect crash”?

A documentary short about a couple dedicating to marine environmental protection.

An animated feature adapted of Brother Ox Cartoons' (牛哥漫畫).

In 1956, the U. S. Naval Medical Research Unit No.2 built a pure white building in Shuilin Township, Yunlin County, and began a seven-year research project. The building was white, clean and bright, so that local residents call it the "American White House." The various things in the research process made the residents quite curious and suspicious of this mysterious building. The adults even reminded the children not to approach it. However, Taiwan didn’t know much about this project. After the project ended, all relevant materials were taken to the United States and stored at Johns Hopkins University. So the team went to America to find research materials and bring them back to Taiwan. The director’s father was one of the members of the research project then. Therefore, the shooting process is not only to dig out the past, but also to evoke the youthful memories of those elders.

Taku feels like he is incompatible with this world. But one day, he wakes up to discover that all his dissatisfactions no longer exist.

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.

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.

Zhe stole money from Wei, and pinned it on borderline man in class, Kang. They deceive the others and struggled in bullying on campus. At night, Zhe comes across a woman seriously wounded by an accident. Still, he chooses to flee on the spot. Will he confess his mistake, or getaway with the consequences of his wrongdoing?

Taiwanese man, Yen, has been in a long-distance relationship with his Thai boyfriend. Because of the Covid pandemic, they have not been able to see each other for over 2 years. In the difficulties of unreal virtual relationship, Yen wants to end it but he is not sure how to do about this relationship stuck in limbo.

Martial arts comedy teaming the acrobatic "Dog King" against a "Snake King." Together with their dogs and snakes, they are invincible.

Collection of home movies which was shot by Deng Nan-guang, the well-known photographer, during 1930-1940s.

"Zhongsen Theatre" opened in 1968. At that time, the theaters competed with each other. The Zhongsen Theatre still managed its own characteristics in many theaters. However, after 2000, the old city was down, and it was closed to the changes of the times. The company was closed down and idle. As the old city began to recover, the theaters also changed hands, but most of them did not present the cinema, and the Zhongsen Theatre was sold to the construction company in 2016. The film records the demolition of the old theater and the rescue of two antique projectors, hoping to find a more suitable place for them to preserve and continue the spirit of the times. After the demolition is completed, the site is intended to be used as a new residential construction site.

Due to an assignment assigned by the school, David had to take the time to accompany with his father to go back to his hometown where he grew up. They rushed back from the bustling city to the beautiful town, and gave his father the opportunity to travel through time and space and see again his own hometown.

As her mother’s dementia gets worse, Wei Ling decides to take her mother out of the house they have always been living in. The people and things that once surrounded us like air, eventually fade away like a distant light.

Waking up from a dream, I suddenly find that I have lost my name. I'm scouting around but the world becomes odd and weird, leading me back to somewhere familiar...

After WU’s arrival in New Zealand, WU has been trying to take a photo of the starry night sky every day with his phone, whether or not it was clear. The star photos can be interpreted as diaries. Using a 16mm Bolex camera to film the stars frame by frame with long exposure. Exposure time was determined by the mind. These uneven pulsations of lights correspond to the starlight changing along with the thoughts that were at mind. This film documents WU’s everyday ritual of star-gazing with the related associations and inspirations and forms a meditative process.

An art teacher returns to her childhood home to mourn the passing of her grandmother. As she pieces together the fragmented memories of her youth she finds herself coming face-to-face with the problematic issue of her country’s fractured history. Through an artistic duty that this teacher gives to students, a performance art process that has lasted for more than 10 years, a representational portrait of the island’s collective memory begins to emerge; and in so doing, these young artists have initiated a process by which Taiwan, an island forgotten by the world and in the midst of forgetting itself, can now remember itself and construct a new postcolonial identity through art.

K’S ROOM is a mental space that serves as a metaphor for the complex relationship between men, boundaries, and the nation during martial law. All the lines in the film were extracted from the sentences used in the "New English Grammar", one of Taiwan's most popular English grammar books, to restructure the mental status of its author, Mr. K, during his incarceration because of the political left.

In the 1990s, foreign migrant workers began to occupy the Taiwanese workforce under the government’s new policy. Many indigenous labourers lost their jobs and were forced to return to their homelands, squeezing out a living on odd jobs, frustrated and powerless. Please Give Us a Job records their unheard voices against a backdrop of economic growth, and observes the rivalry and tension between foreign workers and indigenous workers.

The children are having a frolic with the insects on the lawn. Inspired from the director’s memories of chasing locusts in her childhood.

The documentary follows the life of Ah-Tian's family over the course of 7 years and also shows the changes in Myanmar, the dangerous work at the jade mines, and the big rains every year which compel Ah Tian to come back home to look after his family. – MUBI

In 1949, the Nationalist government safely arrived in Taiwan, but the war between the Nationalists and the Communists continued to ravage the island of Kinmen. Situated between the two coasts, Kinmea was bombed by the Communist Chinese government on every odd-numbered day for over 20 years following the Battle of August 23. This island with an area of 140km^2 endured more than 970,000 bombs. Working with donations from over 300 island residents, local filmmaker Dong Cheng-Liang reveals this hidden history from the residents.

The story of three Latino Chefs in Taiwan, and their motivation to cook Latino food, and share their Latino culture with the local Taiwanese.

In an ancient Eastern Kingdom, an emperor was controlled by the ministers. The emperor could not stand it and escaped from the palace

The director reminisces wistfully on the homosexual relationships he formed during his military service. Like pages torn from a diary, his cinematic voiceover monologue touches on themes of childhood and family, and is imbued with a soft and sunny melancholy revealing his intimate childhood memories and pessimistic fatalism.

At midnight, two kids who don’t sleep start to play. Talking about the present and future, they travel to lots of fantasy imaginary worlds, becoming animals, flying into the sky, and having fun with their beloved blanket.

The Pangcah people living in the urban area used to compete and win the dragon boat race every year, but only as hired agents in a festival event of the Han Taiwanese. In 1995, a team of Pangcah contestants decided to compete in the race under the names of their community and homeland, 'C'roh of Yuli, Hualien', striving for glory to honour their true origin.

This is a story on human desire and acrid smoke. When Myanmar opened its borders in 2010, there was an incursion of foreign capital into these unclaimed lands, with China the most aggressive of them all. Determined to also stake their claim within this fever rush of Chinese cash, Yung-heung and his comrades have set ablaze large swathes of forest alongside northern Myanmar to be turned into farmland.

One day I asked my aunts and uncles about my grandpa. They said Grandpa was a gold miner, a trainee, a businessman and a hero. The stories they told are so difficult to imagine.

Centred on the interwoven relationship between nature, spirituality and ritual, Charwei Tsai's​ "Lanyu — Three Stories"​ portrays the everyday life of the Tao people.​ Telling three short stories, the video is a journey into the indigenous communities that live in Lanyu, a rocky island off the southern coast of Taiwan, which controversially houses the nuclear waste of the country's three nuclear reactors.

Yen-Chao Lin travelled along the east coast of Taiwan – an area characterized by its wild nature, colonization and population exodus. The Amis is the largest of many ethnic minorities in Taiwan officially recognised as indigenous peoples. In search of different spiritual practices belonging to the indigenous people of Makuta’ay, Yen-Chao Lin places the memories of the old Amis spirit keepers on an equal footing with the practices of Daoist rituals and Presbyterian burials, allowing personal prayers to resound and collective resistance to emerge. The Spirit Keepers of Makuta’ay was shot on Super 8 film and developed by the director by hand. The effects created during the development process add an additional layer of spiritual interpretation. A miniature, an essay, an impressionistic painting.

The sound of sutra chanting echoes slightly around the temple located in northern Burma. The monks here are leading a peaceful life.