March of Happiness

When a daydreaming Taipei teenager tries to save a kidnapped boy, he ends up being kidnapped himself and transported to the Taiwanese countryside. There, among an eccentric family of criminals, he embarks on an unexpected journey that is by turns hilarious, surreal, and deeply humane.

In a coastal village near Taidong during the 1960’s, a single, middle-aged mother, Bao-chai, lives a quiet life with her daughter, Xi-lian, a 20-year old schoolteacher. After conservative Bao-chai finds out that Xi Lian has fallen for her cousin, she forbids them to see each other. As time passes, Xi-lian finds love again, this time with Chu-cheng, a new teacher at her school from mainland China. When Chu-Cheng is relocated, he writes love letters to Xi-lian. Unknown to Xi-lian, the letters are intercepted and read by Bao-chai, who, in reading them, has feelings awakened in her that has been buried for most of her life. Then, one day, Chu-cheng comes to visit, and something happens that will change these three quiet lives forever…

This is a four-part anthology comedy. The themes of four parts are: car, house, body and friendship. The central characters are a plastic surgeon Chen, a nurse, an experienced maid, three energetic teenagers and a young couple. The stingy surgeon Chen treats a car and a man so differently that he could be a perfect example to show how treasonously modern people treat their cars and how indifferently they treat other people. The maid Ying is like a knight on her "iron horse" (a bicycle), fighting in the city. Every day she rushes home after work to wait up for a husband never returns. The new nurse has problem with her colleague because they support different idle. What she also doesn't know is the reason why her brother's girlfriend sends her free lunchbox so often. The truth is that her brother's girlfriend wants to get plastic surgery in the clinic. Almost everyone here is not satisfied with his/her body. Moreover, they try to change their body with quite violent ways.

A cute coed leaves her mother's home and gets involved with a pastry chef who has links to the local criminal element.

A rather dejected Mei-li Chen lives with her extended family in the suburbs. She drops out of college when the boy she has a crush on finds a girlfriend. Mei-li eventually ends up selling tickets in a movie theatre. A great camaraderie then builds up between the two cashiers in the small ticket booth.

The heart-warming tale of a poor boy turns into a world-class baker, set in southern Taiwan and France. Pao-chun comes from a poor background, and realizes he must acquire a skill to provide for his mother. He leaves for Taipei and becomes an apprentice in a bakery, Finally, Pao-chun overcomes the odds and makes his dream red-bean bun, but disaster strikes when he loses both his childhood love and his mother.

When a military contingent of "mythic" Americans arrive for war games in a little farming village in South Taiwan in the late 1960s, a veritable flood of hilarious cultural and linguistic misunderstandings is loosed on both sides.

The film follows Robinson, a very succesfull real estate broker, who lives in a modern hotel in Taipei. But all the success also hides a lonely man, whose relations are becoming distant, including friends and lovers; Robinson's dream is the Crusoe, an island on the Caribbean, which he wants to try purchase.

After his wife dies during childbirth, Ku-cheng leaves his children behind in their rural village while he finds work on a construction site in the city. He develops a relationship with a widow but despite their intimacy, he refuses to remarry.

With a singular voice that distinguishes him from his New Taiwan Cinema contemporaries, Lin Cheng-sheng adds to his brief, but already remarkable, filmography with Sweet Degeneration, his third film in two years. As with A Drifting Life and Murmur of Youth, Lin’s new film delicately unfolds, gradually building to a climax of stunning emotional reverberations. Drawn from a particularly painful episode in the director’s past, Sweet Degeneration delves into the uneasy bonds a brother and sister have with each other and the people around them.

Three mothers became friends because of their kids with autism. They learn, encourage, and support each other. Although they live in different regions of Taiwan, they form a strong relationship and connection. The tough moms arrange trips and visit each other with their kids, helping these Asperger syndrome kids to experience different family lifestyles, learn social skills, build and maintain relationships.

In 2010, director Lin Cheng-sheng made Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a documentary about autistic children and their teacher Han Shu-hua, who taught her young charges to express themselves through art. In this moving follow-up, Lin once again follows Han, who has since founded a shelter institute where autistic children can nurture their talents in painting and music. Because of their inability to effectively communicate their emotions and thoughts, people with autism can often be treated like outsiders. To inspire empathy for them, Lin made this moving documentary that embraces the diversity that these talented individuals and their stirring works of art bring to our lives.

Once a rising star in Taiwan's mountaineering boom, A-Gong fell into debt and went on the run, hiding on Yushan before surrendering. After prison, he returned to the mountains, rebuilding his life step by step. Now, he's a living legend among Taiwan's high-altitude trails.

CHEN Ming-chang, exposed to Western music, from The Beatles to Bob Dylan, often taught himself to play and sing with a guitar when he was young. In the closed social milieu of martial law in Taiwan, he became immersed in music and yearned for freedom, arousing his desire to become a musician. Later, he decided to set out on a journey to learn more about the music that has been passed down through generations. Traveling around Taiwan, he learns traditional opera music from prestigious musicians and integrates it into his artistic creations, composing music and stories that belong to Taiwan…