Lin Chun-ni

Eighty years ago, Weng Nao, a Taiwanese young man wrote essays and novels, documenting his life in Koenji, Tokyo. He dies on the eve of the Pacific War, and his death remains a mystery. Eighty years later, the directors come to Koenji to look for the forgotten truth.

YOSHIKAWA Hayao (1890-1959), pioneer of amateur cinema in Asia, authored over 160 books to share his passion during the 1930s. Years later, he rediscovered a forgotten dream from his youth: to create a sci-fi film set on the Moon.

Sculptor Tu-shui Huang (1895-1930) was way ahead of his time, combining traditional Chinese themes with Western influences that he learned while studying at the art academy in Tokyo. This earned him a reputation as the “founder of modern Taiwanese sculpture,” but he also drew criticism.

A dying forest flared up and the flavor of damp ruin, settled in on the tongue: Tsai Ming Liang created an entirely novel artwork with his tenth feature film 'Stray Dogs' at the Museum MoNTUE. Moving images eclipsed, in slivers and swathes, by immovable shadows of deadwood. Waking, sleep and everything in between proved indistinguishable. This documentary recreates elements of existential banality (on view) and guides focus inward. It establishes a firm, if converse, analog between cinema and consciousness: an interplay of movie (and its constituent elements of light, shadow and audience) mirrored in consciousness (and its building blocks of waking, sleep and dream) if you will.

Daughter of Nectar, a gracefully carved marble nude from 1921 by Huang Tu-shui, Taiwan's inaugural modern sculptor, encapsulates a complex century of Taiwanese history, spanning from Japanese colonisation to Chiang Kai-shek's authoritarian rule and the White Terror era. This sculpture, both delicate and resilient, stands as a silent sentinel, mirroring the enduring struggles, suppressed voices, and profound cultural transformations of its homeland.