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
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built