I usually get lost in long documentaries that stitch together numerous storylines, characters and artistic elements without much of a direct plot, but Chen Hui-ling (陳慧齡) does it just right in Letter to A’ma (給阿媽的一封信), which took her 10 years to make.
The editing is superb, melding everything into a poignant and layered composition that’s enjoyable and illuminating to watch without having to fully follow every subject and catch every bit of information. In place of a gripping narrative is a powerful emotional buildup that slowly draws the viewer in and hits hard later. It’s not difficult to see why it was nominated for Best Documentary in last year’s Golden Horse Film Festival.
Featuring young people trying to understand the experiences of their grandparents through interviews, writing, art and music, Letter to A’ma is a beautiful and compelling ode to those who went through Taiwan’s turbulent past and lived on to share their memories, no matter how painful.
Photo courtesy of sky digi entertainment
Due to the political climate, the grimier parts of Taiwanese history were rarely discussed at the dinner table or taught in schools. Chen is seen in the film leading her “The Island’s Collective Memories Project” (島嶼的集體記憶計畫) classes in various schools, where students ask their grandparents questions, present their findings and create drawings based on their impressions.
Chen never got to do this herself, and the stories are interspersed with images of her reading a poem to her deceased grandmother: I can’t seem to be able to see you, so I can only try to view you through other people’s eyes, she says in one line.
But as the film goes on, it’s evident that the purpose of this exercise goes beyond just getting to know one’s grandparents. It’s about trying to patch together these buried memories from different groups in Taiwan — Hoklo, Hakka, indigenous or mainlander — and creating a deeper understanding of the nation as a collective whole.
Photo courtesy of sky digi entertainment
We Taiwanese are like bats, one indigenous grandpa says, referring to Aesop’s The Bats, Birds and Beasts. But unlike the opportunistic bat in the fable, they never really had a choice of who to side with as the nation passed through the often-brutal hands of various rulers.
In addition to the numerous student presentations, Chen also does a deep dive on six adult subjects. Their unique tales are also chopped up and dispersed throughout the film, with some more memorable than others, but collectively they provide a strong backbone that binds together the other bits and pieces.
Chen employs an extremely layered and complex approach, adding long shots, color shifts and seamlessly overlapping images and voices to her cinematic collage. The scenes start from basic interviews but build up into performances within performances as the subjects recreate their grandparents’ experiences: one man rebuilds a cramped brick chamber where his elderly interviewee hid his Communist brother from the authorities for 12 years, while another woman visits Shenyang, China where her grandfather worked when it was under Japanese occupation.
Photo courtesy of sky digi entertainment
In one sequence, it’s the grandmother — whose husband, brother-in-law and father-in-law were executed in the aftermath of the 228 Incident — who is painting a picture with the words “freedom” in the center.
A more elaborate scene features the descendants of indigenous Tsou White Terror victim Uyongu Yata’uyungana getting together to play an orchestral piece that he wrote. While they set up their instruments, Uyongu’s son, the grandfather who is interviewed in the film, copies Uyongu’s final letter to his wife before he was put to death in 1954. Finally, the scene of him reading it aloud is juxtaposed with him singing the song with his family.
It’s hard to sum up all the intricacies of this film as different components keep coming to mind. Just go watch it when it comes out.
Photo courtesy of sky digi entertainment
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and