台灣競賽

Four directors invited their fathers to star in a film adapted from the life story of White Terror era writer SHIH Ming-cheng. The fathers are asked to take on the roles of dissidents in the 1980s. They began with acting and imitating the dissidents of their own imagination, but as the plot advances they became entangled in their own past, and the film captured the reflection and introspection of their lives.

T. S. ELIOT: ‘What might have been is an abstraction remaining a perpetual possibility only in a world of speculation.’ About the past, my memories are fading and my past self is also vanishing. This film explores the relation between ‘I’ and its image, body, memory and death.

HSU Tzu-chiang was pronounced guilty and sentenced to death in a 1995 kidnapping and murder case despite the lack of forensic evidence. After a 16-year effort by NGOs, HSU was released with a life sentence in 2016. Now out of prison, he continues the fight to prove his innocence. Director CHI began documenting HSU’s story in 2012 and was brought face-to-face with the shortcomings of society.

During the Chinese Civil War, some KMT forces retreated over the borders of Thailand and Myanmar. Under international pressure, most of these troops were evacuated to Taiwan in 1961, yet some remained. In northern Thailand and in central Taiwan, the two groups shared similar destiny. Now, over 50 years later, their differences emerge and their next generation struggles with their identity.

Somewhere in northern Myanmar, there is a forest rich in amber and controlled by the Kachin Independence Army. Most of the inhabitants there make a living by finding amber as it is their only hope to get out of poverty. They work under harsh conditions and rest while fearing the attack from the government army. Life there is despairing, like the darkness at the bottom of the mine.