Notes from Taiwanese Writers: Lin Shuangbu

"I'm interested in the topic of homeless people and… there are a lot of things in this world that do not make sense." – Singing Chen Bundled is activist filmmaker Singing Chen's fiction/verite reflection on homelessness in Taiwan.

In contemporary Taiwan, the aboriginal Ah-ming attempts suicide. When his life is saved by an old miner, Ah-ming is drawn into a journey back to his origins. Meanwhile, the miner's son, Ah-Chuan, finds a fugitive hooker who has returned from the lowlands. But Ah-Chuan only wants to integrate himself into mainstream society, in sharp contrast to the intentions and needs of those around him.

During a sweltering summer day on a small island, messenger Qi finds the body of the team commander. Qi finds a grotesque style graffiti book in the commander's pant pocket. Afterwards, all the crazy situations depicted in the graffiti book invade Qi's life day by day. The death of the commander is closely related to another soldier, Yi San, who runs away with his gun and disappears. The dead commander's girlfriend Kang Hua immediately falls into the hands of the new commander...

As the director and the cameraman of a documentary project, Meng and Jianxian are travelling around Taiwan filming statues of religious and historical figures. Their conversations and debates on the statues often touch the political reality of Taiwan. Meng's girlfriend, Ning, is involved in a mediocre commercial feature film (initially as location scout and subsequently as an actress). Instead of realizing her ambition, she finds herself being exploited by the filmmakers. On the other hand, Meng and Ning's relationship is gradually faded.

A group of Taiwanese who were born before World War II still insist on writing poetry and haiku in Japanese language. Director HUANG Ming-chuan has been documenting them for 22 years since 1994. Unlike Korea, another previous colony of Japan, Taiwan retains emotional and cultural ties with Japan even after the War. Over 40 years, these poets and writers get together discreetly under the ban of speaking and publishing in Japanese. More than half a century later, despite aging, they remain using Japanese in the final years of their lives. This film gathers memories of local Taiwanese who have been ruled by several colonial powers since the Dutch arrived on the island in late 17th century. And the path to obtain their own voice became a long way struggle, and so as the national identity.

It came as a shock at the peak of her artist career, HSU Su-chen died of cancer. She went cross-disciplinarily in a short 14 years of her creative life. From early work such as “Self-Portrait” revealing multi layers of her own images to “Plant-Paradise” which collaborated with many people of different expertise lead her to the winning of Taishin Bank Arts Annual Award. HSU always walks out of the box to touch all of us from deep inside herself to ordinary plants as well as neglected communities in foreign countries. Every step of her attempts raised applause. This film assembles HSU’s talks and images of exhibitions of different locality spreading world wide including Vietnam, Micronesia, Australia and footages photographed by her personally at many places in Taiwan. It tells an extraordinary story and unseen visions of a distinct artist who endlessly discovers real issues of human life.

My work is an attempt to combine the relationship between historicism, commodity totem worship and political semantics. I do not intend to respond to questions about political correctness, but also try to show the unsolved issues of art itself. What I care about is how they find enough channels between history, reality and the public. In short, my creation is the crystallization of personal complexity. As long as the perception that can be obtained through the idea, it can be regarded as a style in the development of my personality. All the warriors related to experience may become artistic associations. They are the result of profound meaning and endless reproduction. There is a mysterious place. ---Dean-E Mei's self-report

Huang Ming-chuan interviews female poets from Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, inviting them to speak about feminism, their social context and the role of poetry today.

The artist Mucun’s interest is to collect antiques and old objects. He likes to hang out in flea markets and second-hand junk stalls to hunt for treasure. To him, the tens of thousands of old things piled up at home are just the epitome of people's life history and life memory. The film "Dream is not a residual image" reflects Mu Can's inner artistic ideal, a strong surreal style, and a high standard pointing out the "incomplete" aesthetics.

This documentary is about a group of people led by the anti-high artistic attitude of the underground culture of the end century during the Mid-Autumn Festival in 1995 for three consecutive days and two nights, supported by the unprecedented courage of the Taipei County Cultural Center; the planning is broken.

This is a rare seen film about well known multidisciplinary artist YANG Chin-chih who was born in Taiwan, and has resided for more than 30 years in New York City. YANG is widely remarked as a performance artist in New York visual art world. His performances often dramatize the divided quality of the self such as the most praised piece “Kill Me Or Change” in which he dropped 30 thousand empty aluminum cans over his head within 20 seconds. The main theme of the story tangles in between YANG’s uniquely work which incorporates the actual rhythms and discords of human society and his own facial illness for a long time. Works he made were exhibiting in terms of the waste materials wantonly discarded by industrialized production. Whereas the disease he had suffered ever since his youth causes his face to become twisted for nearly 40 years. But all failed to cure with efforts of five surgical operations in his life.

[The name "Hong Yi" not only represents a local "art" style that has attracted much attention in Taiwan in recent years, but also allows us to witness from a life course that belongs to the "anomalous" features of contemporary society. ]

"Ground Me More" focuses the ignored details of main roads, sidewalks, ground objects, and billboards of major cities across Taiwan to seek commonalities, differences, and trends. Thus, the current state of aesthetics of Taiwanese and the politician policies could be revealed.

"A Love Letter to Oneself" describes six young men and women who play roles that are 80 years apart from the Japanese rule and the Republic of China era, concatenating the different identities of the 1930s and 2010s, comparing the two The generational differences in occupations, lifestyles, concepts, and political environment profile the influence of the development of Taipei’s West District on Taiwan’s history.

A young woman in an old town is looking for a place to stay. How does her gaze differ from the goddess's?