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
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist