The unexpectedly huge box office successes of Cape No. 7 (海角七號) and Orz Boyz (囧男孩) are looked upon by defenders of Taiwanese cinema as a sign of revival. Audiences are being gradually drawn back to the theater to watch local productions, they say, since younger generations of filmmakers think of cinema not only as tool of personal expression but a medium through which to entertain.
If the three shorts that hit the screen at Spot — Taipei Film House (台北之家—光點) starting tonight are any indication of what can be expected in the near future, then the Taiwanese movie industry is in for a renaissance of sorts.
The End of the Tunnel (天黑) by Chang Rong-ji (張榮吉) is a genre-bending boy-meets-girl story about a talented young pianist who lost his eyesight when he was little. He meets a lovelorn schoolmate through music. The newly found friendship takes both of the characters out of their respectively closed cosmoses and into the world.
Ho Wi-ding’s (何蔚庭) Summer Afternoon (夏午) starts off as an innocent road movie with three friends arguing and bickering on their ride in the countryside. Things take a shocking turn when the annoying backseat driver takes control.
Family Viewing (闔家觀賞) by Kuo Cheng-chu (郭承衢) begins with a French TV crew barging into a family’s home in Taipei to document the life of a typical Taiwanese family for a French reality show. Agreeing to be followed by cameraman Pierre for the weekend, the father, mother and daughter hospitably show how they live and what they think in front of the lens, and in the process reveal family secrets that lead to an unexpected denouement.
Having co-directed documentary feature My Football Summer (奇蹟的夏天) with veteran documentary director Yang Li-chou (楊力州), young filmmaker Chang once again demonstrates his aptitude for blending the fictional and non-fictional genres in The End of the Tunnel where reality, memory, dreams and fiction are spun into an arresting swirl of emotions.
Featured previously in Chang’s documentary film about a group of visually impaired people, musician Huang Yu-xiang (黃裕翔) is the inspiration of the well-scripted The End of the Tunnel and plays himself in the film. Promising young actress Sandrine Pinna (張榕容) is well cast as the young woman, who turns in an admirably natural and seemingly spontaneous performance that is more in the league of documentary filmmaking.
Malaysia-born, US-trained and Taiwan-based Ho first came to the attention of international film circuit with his highly stylish, SARS-themed post-apocalyptic short Respire (呼吸). Summer Afternoon is another of the director’s filmic experiments with his cinematographer friend Jake Pollack. Comprising five long takes and shot in black-and-white, the film draws the audience into a deceptively simple story with Pollack’s fluid camera work that tracks, moves in and out of the car, circles and floats around the characters, engaged but unnoticed.
In Family Viewing, the camera never moves. It stands still as a quiet observer. The world Kuo and his steadfast camera capture is a seemingly stable and secure straight family that is at the same time stuffy and repressive.
Veteran actress Lu Yi-Ching (陸奕靜) is excellent, as usual, as the mom, matched by seasoned actor Li Tien-chu’s (李天柱) seemingly effortless performance. Taiwanese cinema’s new favorite Guey Lun-mei (桂綸鎂) dabbles in light comedy, with slight success. The biggest flaw of the film is its hasty ending, which may leave audiences unsatisfied.
If you are a Western and especially a white foreign resident of Taiwan, you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of Taiwanese assuming you to be an English teacher. There are cultural and economic reasons for this, but one of the greatest determinants is the narrow range of work permit categories that exist for Taiwan’s foreign residents, which has in turn created an unofficial caste system for foreigners. Until recently, laowai (老外) — the Mandarin term for “foreigners,” which also implies citizenship in a rich, Western country and distinguishable from brown-skinned, southeast Asian migrant laborers, or wailao (外勞) — could only ever
Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 The construction of the Babao Irrigation Canal (八堡圳) was not going well. Large-scale irrigation structures were almost unheard of in Taiwan in 1709, but Shih Shih-pang (施世榜) was determined to divert water from the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) to the Changhua plain, where he owned land, to promote wet rice cultivation. According to legend, a mysterious old man only known as Mr. Lin (林先生) appeared and taught Shih how to use woven conical baskets filled with rocks called shigou (石笱) to control water diversion, as well as other techniques such as surveying terrain by observing shadows during
In recent weeks news outlets have been reporting on rising rents. Last year they hit a 27 year high. It seems only a matter of time before they become a serious political issue. Fortunately, there is a whole political party that is laser focused on this issue, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP). They could have had a seat or two in the legislature, or at least, be large enough to attract media attention to the rent issue from time to time. Unfortunately, in the last election, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) acted as a vote sink for
This is a film about two “fools,” according to the official synopsis. But admirable ones. In his late thirties, A-jen quits his high-paying tech job and buys a plot of land in the countryside, hoping to use municipal trash to revitalize the soil that has been contaminated by decades of pesticide and chemical fertilizer use. Brother An-ho, in his 60s, on the other hand, began using organic methods to revive the dead soil on his land 30 years ago despite the ridicule of his peers, methodically picking each pest off his produce by hand without killing them out of respect