The healing powers of documentary

Only 17 bodies of the 39 people who were buried alive were recovered. Still buried are farms and 300 deer under mud and rocks piled up to 100m high.

In the film, director Wu avoids focusing on the grief of the victims' families. Instead, he quietly documents their everyday lives over four years after the quake. The images begin with the victims desperately trying to retrieve buried bodies, then dealing with the emotional aftermath of the quake and finally walking out of the shadow of their sorrow.

During the first month after the quake, the victims' families lived in tents near the disaster site, constantly watching the work of the bulldozers, eyes fixated on the dirt and mud being removed. "Yeah! This is debris from my house. We have some hope now! My mother's body may be just underneath here," one of the residents says in the film, while flipping through muddy papers.

Other characters in the film include Pan Shun-yi (潘順義) and his wife who were working in Japan when the earthquake hit. They lost their daughter and her grandparents. Back in Taiwan, staying in the tents nearby, they had trouble voicing their sorrow, but Wu's shots captured their emotions during the excavation process.

Ultimately, the couple decided to re-shoot their wedding photo in Japan to replace the photo buried in the mud as a symbol of a new beginning.

A teenage girl who lost her parents, uncles and grandmother to the quake found escape in different part-time jobs and in computer-game arcades. By the end, she decides to have a baby and to marry her boyfriend to mark a re-birth.

"In the beginning, we rented an apartment in Taichung to serve as the film team's base. We ended up being the tenants of that house for four years," Wu said.

Even the residents began teasing the team about their long slog to finish the documentaries. "They would say: `Hey, are you making a long soap opera or what?' and `Stop shooting or you won't have time to edit,' or We're still waiting for your films to come out,'" Wu said.

Their long stay in the area gained them the trust of the residents and by the end, Wu had shot more than 300 hours of footage with them.

"By the end of the filming process, it was, in fact, the residents who were giving me therapy, teaching me and my family how to find power amid struggle in life," Wu said.

The film also contains a storyline about Wu's aging father. Suffering from a stroke, his father lost hope and the will to live, providing a contrast with the residents fighting to get back on their feet.

Since its establishment in 1988, Full Shot has made five TV documentary series, including The Moon Children (月亮的小孩, 1991), a film about children dealing with albinism that first brought the foundation into the spotlight.

Apart from filmmaking, the foundation also organizes educational programs for documentary-makers, holding filmmaking workshop around island.

The unexpected success of Full Shot's documentaries about the quake led the team to arrange additional screenings at Show Time Cinema (欣欣晶華影城). Full Shot is also negotiating with cinemas in Kaohsiung to open more screenings.

"We're happy to see people supporting local documentaries. We want to be the seeds promoting documentary-making to every corner in Taiwan," Wu said.