2013 has been a productive year as new talents and filmmaking veterans hand in solid and sometimes ingenious works. One offering that has earned approval from audiences as well as critics is Zone Pro Site (總舖師), an emotionally engaging comedy that marks the fanfared comeback of director Chen Yu-hsun (陳玉勳) after a 16-year hiatus. Part of a recent wave of Taiwanese movies that emphasize local culture and identities, Chen’s work centers on bandoh (辦桌) — a unique form of Taiwanese banquet culture — and benefits greatly from a clever script loaded with grassroots humor and zestful character archetypes such as the loud-mouthed mother and small-time gangsters. The story is as boisterous and delightfully messy as its whimsical characters, and at the same time clings to universal emotions that go beyond borders.
Following his melodramatic When Love Comes (當愛來的時候, 2010), Chang Tso-chi (張作驥) turns his lens to childhood with A Time in Quchi (暑假作業), which follows a 10-year-old boy left by his parents to the care of his grandfather in a hilly village outside Taipei during summer break. The sense of hopelessness and the inescapable fatalism that defined Chang’s early works such as Ah Chung (忠仔, 1996) and Darkness and Light (黑暗時光, 1999) have almost vanished. Instead, warmth and a sense of living life as it is permeate the boy’s journey, as he tries to survive in a rural community devoid of urban comforts and is emotionally marked by the experience.
Starring Joseph Chang (張孝全) and Jimmy Wong (王羽), Chung Mong-hong’s (鍾孟宏) third feature film Soul (失魂) tackles father-son relationships — a recurrent theme in Chung’s cinema — under the guise of a psychological thriller in which a possessed man goes on a killing spree. With his expressive and opulent cinematography, distinctive approach to storytelling and the same cast of actors from previous works, Chung, who doubles as the cinematographer for all his films, firmly establishes a unique aesthetic expression and sensibility with his third feature.
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Return to Burma (歸來的人) and Poor Folk (窮人。榴槤。麻藥。偷渡客) herald the emergence of the film auteur that is Midi Zhao (趙德胤), aka Midi Z. An ethnic Chinese born and raised in Myanmar, the 31-year-old director returned to his homeland at the height of its 2010 democratic elections to make his feature debut Return to Burma after years of exile in Taiwan. The next year, he followed it up with Poor Folk. Shot by a small crew with a consumer-grade digital camera, Midi Z’s cinematic world is populated by underemployed young men hanging around and comparing their meager salaries, or prating about their planned escapes to neighboring countries. A sense of alienation permeates, while displacement is an inevitability of fate. It is raw, gritty cinema that offers poignant insights into a region that had been largely unknown to the rest of the world.
New York-based Taiwanese filmmaker Chen Ming-lang’s (陳敏郎) feature debut Tomorrow Comes Today (你的今天和我的明天) conjures up the cinema of Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) in that they both require considerable intellectual effort on behalf of the audience. Built around a narrative structure that is fragmented and sometimes elusive, the film centers on a food delivery boy from Taiwan who searches for his mother in New York with a photo of Marlene Dietrich. His neighbor Wayne, whom he never meets, makes a living by cleaning payphones at night, while trying to forget about his ex-girlfriend by following instructions from videotaped lessons. Like Tsai’s works, the film oozes with symbolism, using elements such as muteness and old sentimental songs to weave together a peculiar tale about migration and self-identity.
In the non-fiction realm, up-and-coming director Chung Chuan’s (鍾權) Face to Face (正面迎擊) breaks away from his oeuvre of prettily packaged motivational documentaries and instead paints an intimate portrait of a group of struggling men. Clearly forming a close relationship with his subjects — wrestlers who are frustrated and denied chances in life to self-actualize and gain confidence in the ring — Chung doesn’t shy away from recording the ego clashes that create antagonism and hurt among those involved. Neither is he afraid to become an active participant in the film and capture stirred-up emotions with his observant camera. The resulting work is an intelligent reflection on the art of wrestling as scripted entertainment, which asks the viewer to think twice before making a quick decision on what is authentic and what is not.
Photo courtesy of Good Day Films
Photo courtesy of Activator Marketing Company
Photo courtesy of Activator Marketing Company
Photo courtesy of Flash Forward Entertainment
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings Films
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings Films
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50