When Lin Jing-jie (林靖傑) turned his lens on novelist Wang Wen-hsing (王文興) for a documentary project, he felt like a novice standing before a martial arts master. He tried to enlist help from other authors in tackling the star of the film, but most “declined the offer with an awed look on their faces,” Lin said.
Those reactions are understandable. Wang, now 72, has earned a reputation as Taiwan’s most abstruse modernist author, despite the fact he has only two major works to his name: Family Catastrophe (家變), which was published in 1973 and is regarded as subversive and groundbreaking in content and form, and the two-volume Backed Against the Sea (背海的人), which was published 25 years later.
The Man Behind the Book (尋找背海的人), Lin’s film about Wang, is part of a six-film series titled The Inspired Island: Series of Eminent Writers From Taiwan (他們在島嶼寫作—文學大師系列電影), for which five directors documented the lives and work of six literary figures, including poets Yu Kuang-chung (余光中), Yang Mu (楊牧), Chou Meng-tieh (周夢蝶) and Cheng Chou-yu (鄭愁予), as well as female writer Lin Hai-yin (林海音).
Photo courtesy of Fisfisa
The ambitious project was born of a fire in 2008 that engulfed much of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre’s (雲門舞集) studio in Bali (八里) District, New Taipei City. The blaze prompted Pegatron Corp (和碩) chairman Tung Tsu-hsien (童子賢) to take action to preserve Taiwan’s artistic heritage. Two years of negotiations and more than NT$15 million in funding later, some of Taiwan’s most celebrated literary figures were immortalized on film.
As most of the authors were driving forces in the poetry movement that flourished between 1950 and 1970, the films offer a window into an exciting age in Taiwanese literature. The zeitgeist of the era is reflected through personal histories and anecdotes, and the documentaries serve as references and footnotes to one another, synergistically building up the bigger picture.
In The Man Behind the Book, Lin Jing-jie uses animation and theatrical performances to bring to life Wang’s novels and probe the author’s tempestuous inner world. The documentary, which is easily accessible to those who may not know anything about the author, includes interviews and commentary from young writers.
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Images of the novelist writing in his cell-like study reveal why Wang produces only 35 characters a day. He lashes out violently on pieces of paper with a pen as if he were sculpting words, not writing them.
It’s telling that the film only shows Wang performing a reenactment of writing in his study; the purist says he can’t work with even the slightest interruption — in this case, a small digital camera on a tripod.
“I held myself in check a little to be photogenic. The reality is 10 times more violent than what you see in the film,” Wang told the audience at a question-and-answer session held after the film’s premiere earlier this month. “I write this way exactly because I can’t write, not even one word, but feel even worse if I don’t write anything at all.”
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The affable relationship between Lin Jing-jie and Wang is the subject of envy for veteran filmmaker Chen Huai-en (陳懷恩), who spent
a year and half documenting Yu, but was
unable to observe the poet in an up-close and personal manner.
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“At his age [82], Yu focuses his energy on his works and cares less about the outside world ... He thought making a documentary would be like an interview that could be done in a day. Most of the time, he would say, ‘Okay, I think that is enough for the day,’” Chen explained.
The fact that Yu is a widely studied poet with more than 50 titles to his name heightened Chen’s anxiety. But the resulting documentary, The Untrammeled Traveler (逍遙遊), presents a refreshing take on the influential figure, who is portrayed as a traveler who longs for home.
For Home in Two Cities (兩地), filmmaker Yang Li-chou (楊力州) faced an even more difficult task as his subject, Lin Hai-yin, passed away in 2001.
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Noted for his narrative-driven documentaries, the director delivers an emotion-packed rendering of the writer and publisher as a doting mother figure who nourished a younger generation of writers and artists including Cloud Gate founder Lin Hwai-min (林懷民) and nativist literature figure Huang Chun-ming (黃春明).
The rest of the series is composed of Wen Chih-i’s (溫知儀) Towards the Completion of a Poem (朝向ㄧ首詩的完成) on poet Yang Mu, Chen Chuan-hsing’s (陳傳興) lyrical Port of Mists (如霧起時), which examines the life of poet Cheng Chou-yu, and The Coming of Tulku (化城再來人), the first biographical documentary on the 90-year-old Chou Meng-tieh.
The series is currently showing at The Ambassador Theatre (國賓影城) at the Spring Center (長春廣場), 176 Changchun Rd, Taipei City (台北市長春路176號). It runs through May 6. Screenings are mostly in Mandarin with Chinese subtitles. For more information, go to fisfisa.pixnet.net/blog.
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July 1 to July 7 Huang Ching-an (黃慶安) couldn’t help but notice Imelita Masongsong during a company party in the Philippines. With paler skin and more East Asian features, she did not look like the other locals. On top of his job duties, Huang had another mission in the country, given by his mother: to track down his cousin, who was deployed to the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II and never returned. Although it had been more than three decades, the family was still hoping to find him. Perhaps Imelita could provide some clues. Huang never found the cousin;
Once again, we are listening to the government talk about bringing in foreign workers to help local manufacturing. Speaking at an investment summit in Washington DC, the Minister of Economic Affairs, J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), said that the nation must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers for high end manufacturing by 2040 to offset the falling population. That’s roughly 15 years from now. Using the lower number, Taiwan would have to import over 25,000 foreigners a year for these positions to reach that goal. The government has no idea what this sounds like to outsiders and to foreigners already living here.
Lines on a map once meant little to India’s Tibetan herders of the high Himalayas, expertly guiding their goats through even the harshest winters to pastures on age-old seasonal routes. That stopped in 2020, after troops from nuclear-armed rivals India and China clashed in bitter hand-to-hand combat in the contested high-altitude border lands of Ladakh. Swaths of grazing lands became demilitarized “buffer zones” to keep rival forces apart. For 57-year-old herder Morup Namgyal, like thousands of other semi-nomadic goat and yak herders from the Changpa pastoralist people, it meant traditional lands were closed off. “The Indian army stops us from going there,” Namgyal said,
A tourist plaque outside the Chenghuang Temple (都城隍廟) lists it as one of the “Top 100 Religious Scenes in Taiwan.” It is easy to see why when you step inside the Main Hall to be confronted with what amounts to an imperial stamp of approval — a dragon-framed, golden protection board gifted to the temple by the Guangxu Emperor that reads, “Protected by Guardians.” Some say the plaque was given to the temple after local prayers to the City God (城隍爺) miraculously ended a drought. Another version of events tells of how the emperor’s son was lost at sea and rescued