Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

The crime story takes place in a car, following three thieves who get their hands on a valuable antique only to have the fruits of their labor shared with a newcomer.

That old street is no longer flourish. The walls have fallen and houses were abandoned. But still living for those who were forgotten by times. Grandpas playing cards, chatting and drinking tea, Grandmas doing laundries…. They slept inside the old house, but doing everything outside the house. They helped each other, day by days, year by years.

Founded in 1979, Lanlin Theatre Troupe is the first evertheatre group in Taiwan. It has inspired and nurturedimportant figures in the theater industry of Taiwanduring the past 30 years. This is a story about the rise of ageneration and the fall of the oldest theatre troupe inTaiwan. Having spent their early life in this troupe, these artists are devoted to bridging traditional Chinese theater and modern art form.

At the end of a cicada-filled summer, Yen attends his final swimming lesson—the last practice with his coach, Shuan. Despite their difference in age, the ripples they create in the water speak of an unspoken bond. After class, Shuan takes Yen along quiet afternoon paths. Like brothers, yet something more, they share a gentle farewell to a summer meant only for the two of them.

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

Hao-Cheng, an urban indigenous boy, sets out on a journey to reconnect with his ancestral tribe. Yet, as he ventures deeper into the heart of his heritage, a creeping fear begins to take hold, with eerie occurrences unfolding one after another.

More than 60 years ago, my father followed his parents and took the train to Kaohsiung. Little did he know it was a one way trip and grew up in Liuhe Night Market ever since. Then he became a Japanese tour guide, traveling around and accompanying countless families. The most complete time we spent together was to go out with my father’s group–a way to improve intimacy. Due to the pandemic, his work has been suspended. If the past is a kind of scenery where sight-seeing is laid above; this film is a journey of himself.

One of "2020 Taiwanese presidential election" short film series by Next Film (一丁目), a short-lived streaming platform by Next Digital (壹傳媒).

The gender issues that exist in Taiwan's rap circle are actually a microcosm of the overall social gender structure. Even though there is now an increasing awareness of gender equality in society, gender limitations still exist and require our continuous efforts to slowly change them.

Sòng Pèi Xīng, Sophia Song, the first Taiwanese American to play in the professional women’s basketball league in Taiwan, recounts the most pivotal moments of her basketball career. This short celebrates the struggles and triumphs of an athlete who persevered through life’s circumstances to reach the highest level of her sport.

“Historic Exception State” originates from my visiting the pyramid of the legend at Qixing Mountain. Through the stroll and walk, the sense and memory accumulated inside and outside the body and the guidance of many linking prick points, with the images which are born with timeliness and constructiveness of reality and fantasy, the film develops with the creation of exploring memories, history and nature.

A voyage to the northern border of Taiwan — the eponymous Beigu Islet, a sea rock roughly 300sqft submerged under water half of the time — delves into regional histories, the gaze on borderline landscapes, and the ambivalent state of Taiwanese territory and subjectivity.

A voice from the ocean floor awakens the forgotten protagonist. All creatures in the ocean current carry a mark resembling a black hole. In an instant, they are swept to an unknown place — the deepest part of the North Sea.

“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.

How far does one have to go to get back into the endless stream of a child's imagination, and where does it actually lead?

A boy struggles in the middle of an art exam while others are working on their masterpieces. His mind starts wandering as time flies by, and he realises that as long as he enjoys the process, no-one else's opinion matters.

A man enters a room of pouring rain from a deserted, dry land. What bothers him is not the rain, but how vulnerable he is against it. This film is based on a short story by Franz Kafka.

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 first Taiwanese-language film produced by a public studio.

"Southward Expansion to Taiwan" describes the achievements and achievements of the Taiwan Governor's Office in ruling Taiwan for about forty years. The film presents the appearance of Japanese rule in Taiwan: including the customs, industries, construction, geography and cultural landscapes of Taiwan's states, such as: the aboriginal people's club sound, the earliest department store in Taiwan, etc., and Taiwan's natural beauty, resources and Japan in Taiwan The achievements of modernization since taking power have been presented to the Japanese.

Stardust 15749001

This exquisite black-and-white animated short poignantly explores a personal family story in an innovative fashion, and casts a nostalgic gaze at Taiwanese grassroots culture and history. David, a high school student in Taipei, has to finish a school assignment, which requires the students to conduct an oral interview with a senior family member. All his relatives live in the countryside far away from the city. Therefore, he urges his father to give him a ride to his grandfather’s. The two travel from the bustling city to a scenic small town in a rural area. While revisiting his hometown and childhood, his son’s simple assignment unexpectedly brings back precious memories, complex family history, and torrential tears for the father.

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”?

How Do You Turn This On

Situated in the middle of a traditional three-section compound, “tangˊhaˊ” is the shrine where the Hakka worship their ancestors. The tangˊhaˊ fire burns all night everyday, leading generations of offspring home—except for the married daughters. As responsibilities are passed on to the younger generations, some Hakka clans have begun to relax the restrictions, although there are still many hurdles to overcome....

A boy takes a girl to his girlfriend's house on a date. My girlfriend felt a little wrong when she got home. The girlfriend and the girl waited together at the girlfriend's house the next day.

Before the pandemic, I did a series of street shoots in Wanhua, a place out of my comfort zone. Then, I got Covid-19. During the quarantine, I looked back at the photos, wondering if the people are doing well or not. I seemed to have a shared time with them, so I returned to Wanhua with the question: Do you know where is Zhen Zhen now? I let the residents tell their stories.

This is an 8mm and 16mm experimental film made during the year of Covid-19 around the time I moved back to Taiwan from Japan. I shot 8mm footage during the state of emergency in Japan and just after moving back to Taiwan. I then spent several months cutting and pasting each 8mm frame onto 16mm film. Sometimes the daily fragments were too sentimental, but the film gave me shelter.

Over the past 20 years, there has been too much comment on the merits of education reform. This film visits education reform advocates, administrators, critics, as well as teachers, students, and parents, trying to review the historical significance of education reform, and analyze the difficulties faced by education reform and the underlying factors behind it. In terms of form, humorous talk shows are used to emphasize lightness; in terms of structure, elementary school classrooms are used as a guide, so as to help students solve the problems, and go deep into the core of education reform and Taiwan's social and cultural reform.

Wedding, a big event. It took place during lucky hours, following traditional conventions until the daughter left the house and female family members got in. People involved then happily raised their cup and said, "Congratulations! Wish you a destined good affinity, a marital happiness, a soon-born offspring, a harmonious union for a hundred years, blessed and felicitous." "Thank you!" replied the female family members, with smiles.

Hypothesis Voyager is a road trip film that weaves social theory with a trip to the west of the United States.The video opening with a gallery social scene through the viewfinder, point out the first-person view that associated with the spectator. Then the story turns into discovering the history of the first human shelter that held the social events. Through the shift of the way we see art, the narrator travels us to the gallery and the loop we all faced. To escape, the time froze, the artist takes a deep look into the story of volcano mt. Vesuvius and sees the crater from a historical and mythology perspective of how it formed. The artists' camera becomes the vehicle voyage the viewer through time and space. The narrator travels the audience with her emotions that served as the passages connect each chamber by making the tour and detours.

On the Way Home follows a man on his way home on a rainy night, while cross-cutting the happenings after he returns home: doing laundry in a flooded bathroom, drinking tea, reading, and repeatedly opening and closing the door.

Creatively inspired, but the puppet can’t seem to execute his ideas. After repeatedly revising, he finds himself dominated by his creation instead. A creative beginning results in an unexpected ending. The subjective “human” becomes the object.

Chattering school boys first learn of the secret of palm reading. They stare at the overly short lifeline, all of a sudden, the fear of death seeps into their youth. The black and white images exude repression and melancholia, mixed with the angst for mortality and the memory of deceased loved ones. Time flies by like the train speeding past town. With the desire to live, the boys run forward, attempting to break free from destiny.

The year 2003 is a rather turbulent period for Hong Kong – the economy was in recession, the government constantly implemented futile policies, the SARS outbreak, and, on July 1st, 500,000 people went on strike opposing the adoption of Article 23 of the Basic Law. It was against this political atmosphere that YIN Zhao-Jian gave up his social worker job, a 10 year long and steady career, and joined the political circle and participated in the district councilor election, which he had no idea about.

Cinema has closed one after another, yet some still remain its traces. "The First Cinema" in Meinong, which opened in 1969 and closed in 1991, had built collective memories for people in town. These faded traces once nourished someone's dreams where fairies still dance, where laughter and tear reechoes.

“Have we ever been to Matsu?” Does this question trigger some mental images, such as flashing postcards inside our mind, or memories of shared photographs through social media? How do we build a landscape of an island? By modifying the geography or by spreading its visual representations? Let’s replace the first inquiry with another one: “Have we ever listened to Matsu?”What would we listen to first? Who would we listen to? What do people in Matsu listen to? As islanders, do they listen to the sounds of the sea or to the sounds of the neighboring country? Is there any document we can listen to about Matsu? Just like images and the internet conspired to transform our vision and memory, may recorded sounds could alter our listening, and therefore our perception of these islands?

Care home resident, the blunt Mr. Tao secretly admires fellow resident, the elegant Ms. Pai. He finally plucks up the courage to write her a love letter, but it gets mischievously posted on the home’s bulletin board. Two other residents: Mr. Peng and Mr. Wang call each other “son” as a pet name. Mr. Peng misses his grandson whom he dares not see, while Mr. Wang frets over his terminal illness.

This documentary tells the sorrow and helplessness faced by villagers in Nansalu Village (Ming Tribe) of Namaxia Township at southern Taiwan, a hard-hit area by typhoon Morakot. The twelve short stories about homes depict the kind of emotional entanglement experienced by the tribal people after going through a drastic disaster. These stories portray the cruelty of reality and allow the audience to see how it forges endurance of life.

On January 23, 2001, in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) staged and directed a self-immolation of Falun Gong practitioners to seek success. Through logical reasoning and analysis, the film shows clearly that a government-directed "drama" and self-immolation occurred to resolve a situation in which Jiang Zemin, then leader of the Chinese Communist Party, was "in a difficult position" to suppress Falun Gong. In addition, the film tells the story of how Falun Gong practitioners came out one by one to tell the truth, but were brutally persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party and tortured to death, but they did not give in and insisted on telling people the truth in a peaceful and rational manner. This spirit of perseverance and resilience in spite of life and death shook the audience to their core.

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.

A wife accidentally gives Grandpa's broken clock to a scavenger, unaware that it contains her husband's hidden secret money. Upon searching the scavenger's surprisingly neat and wellkept abandoned house, they are amazed to find the antique clock fixed. The traveling antique clock explores different attitudes toward life, as well as the different values placed on the old and the new.

The Weight of Things explores this world of layers, these liminal spaces between heaven and hell, life and death, hope and despair. It is a visual testament of these pandemic times, of the invisible weights we bear. These weights of words and actions, unpursued dreams, the loss of loved ones—these burdens that bind us and hold us down, making it all too easy to forget the lightness of possibility. To not only be weighed down but to also become the weight…