Son of a banana farmer in Pingtung (屏東), Juang Yi-tzeng (莊益增) studied philosophy at the National Taiwan University (國立台灣大學). Upon graduation, he decided to go back home to work on the plantation because the idea of having a nine-to-five job scared him.
“Everyday I drank. And they wanted me to be in an office at 8am every morning?” he exclaimed.
Some 20 years later, the self-confessed alcoholic “made a big sacrifice” and quit drinking. He wanted to save all his energy for a historical documentary film he would co-direct with Yen Lan-chuan (顏蘭權). Together with one assistant and using a small digital camera, the two spent five years on the project that left them in debt and Yen with muscle pains and weakness for which doctors have not yet been able to find a cause.
Photo courtesy of Yen Lan-chuan and Juang Yi-tzeng
The result of their efforts are beautifully shown in the resulting film, Hand in Hand (牽阮的手), an invaluable piece of documentary filmmaking that looks back over Taiwan’s democracy movement through the lives of activist couple Tien Meng-shu (田孟淑) and Tien Chao-ming (田朝明).
The director duo’s filmmaking odyssey began when the Public Television Service (公共電視台, PTS) approached them in 2006 to take on this project after their Let It Be (無米樂), a documentary about the plight of the rice farmers in Houbi Township (後壁鄉), Greater Tainan, made a critical splash and became a box-office hit. Not knowing who the Tiens were, Juang and Yen hesitated at first, but after initial research, they were quickly drawn to the activist couple whose lives closely followed the thread of Taiwan’s post-World War II political history.
Yen and Juang decided to take on the project, but never expected the production to grow so big. The size of the project would normally warrant a team of 30, rather than just three, the full size of the production team.
Photo courtesy of Yen Lan-chuan and Juang Yi-tzeng
“When you open Uncle Kun-pin’s (崑濱伯) [a lead role in Let It Be] drawer, you see a few letters and photographs, and that is it. Mama Tien’s [as Tien Meng-shu is better know among political activists and dissidents] house is like a huge archive without indexes and file cabinets. There are tens of thousands of pictures she took and hundreds of tape recordings she made at every political occasion she went to as well as countless letters and manuscripts she has kept. I needed to identify the people in the photographs, listen to each one of the tapes, and sort out all the material,” the 45-year-old director said.
As Tien Chao-ming had been bedridden as a result of multiple strokes in 2004 and was unable to speak, the directors relied on Tien Meng-shu to trace the couple’s past. Besides Mama Tien’s good memory and personal collection, more footage and archival records were unearthed. Photographers who were on the streets snapping shots of protest rallies were sought out and asked for help. “They had to help me find images containing the Tiens from the thousands of photographs they shot some 20 years ago,” Juang explained.
The 25 old ballads used in the film posed an equally daunting task. Since each song has not one but three copyright owners — the composer, lyrist and record company — it was Juan’s job to track down the 75 owners and pay them. Things could get complicated if the songwriter had passed away or the company no longer existed.
Photo courtesy of Yen Lan-chuan and Juang Yi-tzeng
Collaboration between Juang and Yen began 10 years ago with a documentary series about the 921 Earthquake. They have since become a formidable team. Surprisingly, the carefree-looking Juang is the pragmatic one who manages all the “administrative work” including negotiating copyright fees, while Yen is the creative type and often lets her imagination run free.
“I am her genie. She makes a wish and I make it happen…. I sew buttons too,” he said.
On Yen’s insistence, the two did something that no filmmaker on a shoestring budget and in their right mind would do: to make eight animated sequences to visualize past events. The directors had no clue how this might be done until the animation studio they worked with asked them to provide images showing how things like hairstyles, buses, doors, mailboxes, street signs and facades looked at different points in the story.
Photo courtesy of Yen Lan-chuan and Juang Yi-tzeng
“At one point, we asked our friends from the theater to reenact scenes, videoed them and gave these to the studio,” Juang said.
Their arduous work paid off. Anyone who has seen the film would agree that the emotion is far more powerful and resonant when audiences are actually able to see scenes from the story reenacted. An example is a scene in which Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇), Tien’s oldest daughter, discovers the appalling murders of Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) 60-year-old mother and seven-year-old twin daughters on Feb. 28, 1980. Lin was an activist who was being held in detention on charges of insurrection at the time.
Another scene shows the events surrounding human rights activist Deng Nan-jung’s (鄭南榕) self-immolation in protest against the lack of freedom of speech in 1989.
Controversial sequences such as these were apparently too much for PTS, which, after viewing the completed work, suggested cutting two-thirds of the sequence on the Lin family murder and leaving out the scene about Deng. The filmmakers refused to make the changes and Juang mortgaged the banana farm his father left him to liquidate the ensuing NT$3 million debt that resulted from PTS’ withdrawal from the project.
“As filmmakers, we have to stay faithful to the people we film, to present their political views and stances as they are,” Juang said, “I hope the audience can see the idealism, the love and history in the film, not just the politics,” he added.
Juang said one of the most memorable responses he got from the audience involved a veteran who fled from China to Taiwan with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops, who thanked his daughter for taking him to see the film as he finally understood why there are people who get angry even hearing the word KMT.
Some lament that it is a shorter 140-minute version, not the original 170-minute version, which is currently showing in theaters. To Juang, it was simply not practical to ask theaters to take in a local documentary production that runs almost three hours.
The longer version covers political events and developments in recent years and Juang said that it contains sections critical of corruption within the DPP.
Nevertheless, there are plans to release the longer version on DVD, but the directors said they need more time to think things over before making the final cut.
“I don’t want to make the kind of off-the-cuff criticisms that political commentators on television are so fond of,” Juang said.
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