The Spirit of 8

TAIWAN/2003/Mandarin, Taiwanese/Color/Video/60min
Director: Li Chia-hua

Keep the Change

TURKEY/2003/Turkish/Color, B&W/Video/27min
Directors: Ceren Bayar, Dilek Iyigun, Elif Karadenizli, Ozge Kendirci, Savas Ilhan

Since causing an incident at eight years old, the director of The Spirit of 8 held fast to a feeling of guilt. At twenty-five, his camera reveals the process of freeing himself from that burden. In 2000, the Turkish authorities intervened in a hunger strike of political prisoners, causing them to suffer memory loss. Keep the Change challenges a Turkish society that has forgotten the incident.

9.18(Mon) 20:05-Director (Li Chia-hua) present @Polepole Higashinakano theater
9.22(Fri) 19:35-Director (Li Chia-hua) present @Polepole Higashinakano theater
9.28(Thu) 12:30 @Polepole Higashinakano theater

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Fluiding Stage

TAIWAN/2004/Taiwanese/Color/Video/42min
Director: Lin Chi-shou

Diminishing Memories

SINGAPORE, AUSTRALIA/2005/English, Chinese/Color, B&W/Video/27min
Director: Eng Yee Peng

Fluiding Stage’s camera journeys with a traveling puppet theater as it quietly criss-crosses people and places. Here is the ambience of an era left behind by a modernizing Taiwan. Home village of Singaporian director of Diminishing Memories, Lim Chu Kang was demolished by a state’s development plan. Gathering the memories of former villagers, the film laughs in the face of Singaporean “history.”

9.22(Fri) 12:30 @Polepole Higashinakano theater
9.27(Wed) 20:05 @Polepole Higashinakano theater

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The House Masters

TAIWAN/2004/Mandarin, Taiwanese/Color/Video/89min
Director: Wu Yii-feng

After the devastating 1999 Taiwan earthquake, The House Masters records the efforts of the survivors living in Shihmen Village in Guosing Township, Nantou County as they try to help themselves on the road to recovery without media or government aid. The film follows the stubborn attempts of senior residents to go on living in tents. The activities of the residents in a housing complex called “The House Masters” also come into focus as the earthquake exposes the use of inferior construction materials. The elderly eventually pass away in loneliness, while the housing complex residents suing the construction company are confronted with legal contradictions. A final note adding that the trial is still in progress reminds us of the severe difficulties faced on the road from disaster to recovery.

9.22(Fri) 17:40 @Polepole Higashinakano theater

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A Taste of Plum

TAIWAN/2004/Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka/Color/Video/142min
Director: Kuo Hsiao-yun

The village of Nangang, near the epicenter of the earthquake in Guosing Township, Nantou County, was buried in a landslide. This film follows the survivors as they try to recover—particularly the three Ju brothers, who have lost their mother and their home. Misplaced expectations lead to confrontations with the government, the village is being turned increasingly into a tourist destination, and in order to put their lives back together, the villagers are even willing to exploit their own experiences of the earthquake. These are lives that cast a life-sized image of Taiwan.

9.24(Sun) 18:45 @Polepole Higashinakano theater

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Radio Mihu

TAIWAN/2004/Mandarin, Tayal/Color/Video/136min
Director: Lee Jong-wang

In Zhiou, a village of the Mihu tribe of the indigenous Tayal peoples in Heping Township, Taichung County, the poet and primary school teacher Walis Nogang establishes temporary housing after the earthquake. Based on ideas of traditional, cooperative living, the project aims for independent self-recovery, but discord grows as differences of opinion with elders surface and the outside attention drawn only to the housing development creates a sense of unfairness among the villagers. While the darker side of humanity is brought into stark relief under the severe conditions following the devastating earthquake, the bright and cheerful voice of the pirate radio station Radio Mihu frames the film, conveying a sense of human strength and hope for the future.

9.26(Tue) 14:25 @Polepole Higashinakano theater

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Three Fork Village

TAIWAN/2005/Mandarin, Tayal/Color/Video/144min
Director: Chen Liang-feng

This film documents the events in Three Fork Village, a small village of the Tayal tribe who migrated fifty years ago from Mihu. After the earthquake forced the entire village to relocate, the villagers encounter a succession of ups and downs in the process of reconstructing their homes. As a typhoon causes further water damage, the camera not only follows the reconstruction efforts of the villagers, but it also questions the essence of the problems that have hindered reconstruction in the five years since the disaster.

9.26(Tue) 19:00-Guest present @Polepole Higashinakano theater

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Homesick Eyes

TAIWAN/1997/Thai, English/Color/35mm/85min
Director: Hsu Hsiao-ming *no English subtitles

Hsu Hsiao-ming focuses on four Asian laborers in Taiwan. Philippine house servants and Thai construction workers are the new nomads of more industrialized countries. Hsu skips the usual newsreel style and opts to delineate the homesick hearts of four individuals. The result is both touching and realistic.

9.22(Fri) 15:50 @Polepole Higashinakano theater

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Grandma's Hairpin

TAIWAN/2000/Chinese/Color/16mm/90min
Director: Hsiao Chu-chen

Director Hsiao Chu-chen points her camera at her father, a retired soldier. In 1949, the Nationalist government retreated from mainland China to Taiwan with 600,000 soldiers. In his twenties at the time, Hsiao’s father believed as did many others they would soon return to China with the Nationalist government. But it took forty years for relations across the straits to be re-established, and it was futile even to dream of returning home. Hsiao uses an ornamental hairpin that belonged to her grandmother left behind on the mainland as the key to her father’s world, bringing forth his feelings towards the China of that era and the remembrances of other retired soldiers.

9.26(Tue) 17:05 @Polepole Higashinakano theater

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