Blind Shaft (盲井) toured various international film festivals last year and the debut film of director Li Yang (李楊) won dozen of awards, impressing critics with its broad and powerful themes.
It is different from the work of other so-called fifth-gene-ration filmmakers -- whose works are sometimes criticized for being stereotypical of Chinese filmmakers -- and Li tells the story in an almost documentary style, but with the help of an excellent script to provide a solid plot.
Based on the short novel Shen Mu (神木) by Lao She (老舍), Blind Shaft is a tale of greed and compassion. Two itinerant miners, Song Jinming and Tang Chaoyang risk their lives working under dangerous conditions and develop questionable morals in order to survive.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATA
The film begins in the dark caves of one of the many illegal Chinese coal mines, where Song and Tang are working with Tang's brother Chaolu, who has just arrived. In the depths of a mineshaft, the two kill Chaolu with a pickax and engineer the collapse of a mine wall to make Chaolu's death look like an accident. Song and Tang then go on to extort money from the mine's management, who are under pressure to cover up the
accident.
After leaving with their hush money, the pair spend their ill-gotten gains on women and song and in time find another potential victim, this time an innocent 16-year-old boy named Yuan Fengming, who has been forced to quit school due to his father's disappearance. Tang agrees to help Yuan find a job at a coal mine, but only under one condition -- he must agree to pretend to be Song's nephew.
The three find another illegal mine where the working conditions are even worse. "Take it or leave it. The only thing that China doesn't have is a shortage of people," the foreman says.
This time, Song and Tang's scheme does not go so well. As the pair befriend Yuan, the boy's simplicity and naivete alters the partners' relationship and there is a surprise ending.
Wang Shuangbao (王雙寶) vividly plays the mean and cold-hearted Tang and Li Yixiang (李易祥) performs admirably in the role of Song, whose conscience is pricked by the goodness of Yuan. As for Wang Baoqiang (王寶強), who plays the role of the young victim, it is such a natural performance that it is hard to believe that he is a first-time actor.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby