Poetries From the Bookstores: Here I Belong

After four decades, a group of veteran singers gather together again. The songs they wrote when they were young had once changed the fate of the island. However, time took away their youth and changed the island's soul. Not only a new national identity has formed but so many new music genres have emerged since then. Can the innocent songs they sang back in the old days still be related to the new era?

A woman is transported into a world as strange and beautiful as her dreams in this fantasy. Singing, who comes from a family of poor shopkeepers, earns her living as a cleaning woman on a ferry that services a military base. Singing has a recurring dream in which she meets a handsome stranger who speaks in language she cannot understand, and one day on the ferry she meets Tsai Hsien-tsung, a soldier who resembles the man in her dreams. The soldier is immediately smitten with Singing, and when the power goes out on the ferry, the two are thrown into a strange netherworld where they sail to South America on a deserted vessel as Singing loses her heart to the military man.

Between 1979 and 1983, 117 violent and gritty social realist pictures were produced in Taiwan. Many of these found their way around the world courtesy of Hong Kong's IFD films.

10+10 is a project initiated by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival to demonstrate the solidarity between Taiwanese film-makers. 20 directors are invited to make a 5-minute short film each on the theme of the “Uniqueness of Taiwan,” but allowed total freedom in all other aspects.

A triptych reinterpreting Shakespeare's classic character Juliet. The three stories are directed by 3 different directors; Juliet's Choice (By Hou Chi Jan), Two Juliets (By Shen Ko Shang), and Another Juliet (By Chen Yu Hsun) Juliet's Choice : In the 70's, Ju worked in a printing store where a boy with a banned article changes her life. Two Juliets : Mei is told that in the 80's, a woman faked insanity to be locked up just to wait for her lover. Another Juliet : In 2010, "Juliet" tries to commit suicide but a TV commercial crew gets in the way.....

This heart-warming romantic comedy takes place at Nanyang Street, the most famous "cram school" street in Taipei City. A young man works at a copy shop where his life is a boring routine of copying test papers for students. One day he finds a drawing of a sheep mixed in on the test papers, which leads him to an unexpected journey.

Urban legend has it that once you get bitten by a vampire, you will become one of them and reconnect with your suppressed primal desires. Who will be next?

Each bookstore forms its own poetic landscape: gentle hands restoring old books, a bookstore owner guiding customers on herbal hikes, an eco-activist protecting mountains through reading, and a woman from a fishing community preserving local memories. Director Hou Chi-jan captures these intimate narratives through lyrical imagery, portraying 15 independent Taiwanese bookstores and preserving fading stories and quiet cultural resilience.

Documentary short examining the life of the indigenous Taiwanese singer, Panana.

The cat has disappeared in a night of torrential rain; they say if you point a pair of scissors to your doorstep and silently call the cat’s name, a mysterious force will lead your cat back. Half a world away, I silently call my cat’s name, and my memories take me across the waters of the underworld, as things I have lost in the past now stand before my eyes. As the scissors slice time open, can the cat find its way home?

To celebrate the 21st anniversary of InD Blue, InDPanda brings you the Film Festival Edition of “Poetries From the Bookstores: Season 3”. The documentary series Poetries from the Bookstores enters its third season, with director Hou Chi-jan carefully selecting forty bookstores nestled in cities, the countryside, and outlying islands. Each uniquely styled space is captured through film as poetry instead of words, reflecting how Taiwan's over 200 independent bookstores not only house books but also foster a rich tapestry of diverse relationships and cultures. (Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival)

A boy working in a supermarket develops a strange relationship with a shopping cart.