Bone Always Outlasts Feather

Fifteen chapters unfold across the Bunun villages of Litu and Wulu in Taitung, Taiwan, and the surrounding mountains and forests. Children dream of chasing — or being chased by — spirit animals; elders recall lives shaped by snake and bear myths; strange encounters emerge in the habitats of birds.

Yannick Dauby: ‘A microphone is a non-neutral device, a transducer which can be taken outdoors. Entirely devoted to the observation of acoustic waves, it produces an electrical signal analogous to the sounds which stimulate it. If abandoned too long in the wild, victim of weather hazards, it might also produce some unwanted or unexpected noises.Much the same can be said of my own process in composing Bone Always Outlasts Feather. This audiovisual creation is a description, or maybe an interpretation, of the voices of animals and a garland of stories and dreams recollected by some Bunun people living nearby.Also, under the influence of the environment above the villages of Lidao and Wulu, a series of mental glitches happened, taking the form of imaginary myths. The film grain of sparse anachronistic images accompanies the spoken words, birdsongs, and whispers of the landscape in a narrative flow about the forest, the mountains, and their inhabitants.’