Sacred Forest

Though Taiwan's rainfall is three times the global average, its uneven distribution creates striking scarcity. Water gives and takes; it sustains life yet brings destruction. Following the sound of currents, the film reflects on water's shifting states, capturing the emotional and spiritual ties woven between people, memory and the surrounding tides.

This thirty-five section, no-narration, no-music visual story is a true minimalist dialogue with fishermen. Unadorned and unadulterated, Ocean displays a collection of recorded marine images in a plain and simple way. Gazing at the images, one sees a true representation of marine life and the myriad ways humans capture nutrients from the ocean, as well as the ocean’s power to strike back.

This film re-examines major environmental movements and events in Taiwan from the 1980s to 2018, including the protest against LCY Chemical Corp in Hsinchu, anti-DuPont movement in Lukang, movement against the expansion of petrochemical industry, anti-nuclear and anti-air pollution protests. It is a compilation of over 30 years of documentary footage and interviews of those who took part in the protests.