Marco Wilms undertook a daunting task: to come to Taiwan as a foreigner and make a coherent documentary about Taiwanese politics. But there’s a good reason he volunteered himself to this kind of torture — after all, how many heavy metal singers-turned-legislators are there in the world?
It must be mentioned first that the resulting product featuring Freddy Lim (林昶佐) obviously has an independence slant — it’s unavoidable when Lim’s ideology is so strong that he refuses to go into the main chamber at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, telling the camera that stepping inside would make him sick and calling the former president a demon mass murderer.
Almost all the major events in the film speak to this notion, from the remembrance ceremony for the late democracy and independence activist Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕) to a pro-Tibetan campaign and subsequent trip to visit the Dalai Lama to calling for Taiwan’s admission to the UN on the streets of New York. The opposing voice is seen only in one scene, as Chiang supporters denounce Lim and call him garbage in such a tone that only renders them as mere satire.
Photo Courtesy of Urban Nomad Film Festival
But again, the film is about Lim and his views, and it’s really impossible to explain the entire recent political history and all its nuances in one film while still trying to give space to the protagonist. The information may be too underwhelming for someone familiar with Taiwan who knows much more than the film is showing, but it’s an apt introduction to international audiences to a more controversial, sensitive end of Taiwanese politics that may not be apparent through the usual news programs.
Perhaps it would have been more effective to have Lim himself explain Taiwan’s situation — having Wilms’ voiceover state “Taiwan is a sovereign nation and not part of China,” however true, may make things seem like a bit of propaganda. Some parts seem a bit exaggerated for effect as well, such as using the Kinmen military drills as background when talking about the possibility of war — that’s some dramatic action that the average person never sees in their lifetime.
On the same note, someone familiar with Taiwan may have wanted Wilms to dig deeper and look at Lim’s day-to-day activities and perhaps his domestic accomplishments outside of his ideology and international or symbolic appearances, but that’s probably not what foreign audiences will be interested in. They want to see Taiwan in the context of the world.
Wilms does an excellent job of weaving in the history along Lim’s journey. In fact, the entire film is a thoughtfully-edited patchwork of casual conversations, formal interviews, live-action events, music videos and performances as well as historical context and the director’s brief observations on Taiwanese society. It’s not connected so much in chronological order but through themes and ideas. For example Wilms offers his thoughts on the remnants of authoritarian rule through schoolchildren doing military drills, which segues to Lim visiting his alma mater and speaking of being forbidden to speak Taiwanese, which in turn leads to the next topic of Chiang Kai-shek and his policies and a visit to his memorial.
Casual chatter and off-hand remarks also serve as great segues between the scenes, and oftentimes these segments offer the most insight such as Lim practicing his Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) speech in his car with his assistant on the way to an event. Here we find that Lim’s Hoklo is not perfect and his assistant is impressed that he’s able to translate the entire speech the night before.
Wilms pays attention to minute details such as schoolchildren on cell phones and funky outfits (which were not allowed during Lim’s time) to show how times have changed, and one does not always need to rely on words to show social and political context.
Also helping form this cinematic tapestry is the often political content of the songs of Lim’s band, Chthonic, giving Wilms a large range of provocative music videos (including one where they’re fighting Nazis, who cooperated with Lim’s hated KMT in the 1930s) to draw from. These musical inclusions also remind the viewer that although Lim for the most part in the film is a suit-wearing, polite political figure who only raises his voice during rallies, this is what he’s capable of doing when let loose and given the right platform.
Finally, it’s very fortunate that Lim decided to revert to his rock star persona for one night during the Tshing Shan Festival (青山祭) in 2016, giving Wilms the perfect opportunity to complete the picture. It’s impossible to predict a long-term documentary about one person, especially a politician, will unfold when shooting begins, but it seems like enough happened during that one year for this film to work.
For Metal Politics Taiwan screening time, and a complete list of movies that are being shown until the festival ends on Sunday, visit: urbannomad.tw.
May 26 to June 1 When the Qing Dynasty first took control over many parts of Taiwan in 1684, it roughly continued the Kingdom of Tungning’s administrative borders (see below), setting up one prefecture and three counties. The actual area of control covered today’s Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The administrative center was in Taiwan Prefecture, in today’s Tainan. But as Han settlement expanded and due to rebellions and other international incidents, the administrative units became more complex. By the time Taiwan became a province of the Qing in 1887, there were three prefectures, eleven counties, three subprefectures and one directly-administered prefecture, with
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) and the New Taipei City Government in May last year agreed to allow the activation of a spent fuel storage facility for the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門). The deal ended eleven years of legal wrangling. According to the Taipower announcement, the city government engaged in repeated delays, failing to approve water and soil conservation plans. Taipower said at the time that plans for another dry storage facility for the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) remained stuck in legal limbo. Later that year an agreement was reached
What does the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) era stand for? What sets it apart from their allies, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)? With some shifts in tone and emphasis, the KMT’s stances have not changed significantly since the late 2000s and the era of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) current platform formed in the mid-2010s under the guidance of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and current President William Lai (賴清德) campaigned on continuity. Though their ideological stances may be a bit stale, they have the advantage of being broadly understood by the voters.
In a high-rise office building in Taipei’s government district, the primary agency for maintaining links to Thailand’s 108 Yunnan villages — which are home to a population of around 200,000 descendants of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies stranded in Thailand following the Chinese Civil War — is the Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC). Established in China in 1926, the OCAC was born of a mandate to support Chinese education, culture and economic development in far flung Chinese diaspora communities, which, especially in southeast Asia, had underwritten the military insurgencies against the Qing Dynasty that led to the founding of
RSS