Departure

"Departure" is a collaborative video essay that looks at how the development of transportation extends from the histories of colonization and foreign influence in three Asian centers, Taipei, Shanghai, and Hanoi. Progress is a promise made by builders and occupiers. What are the costs of their promised modernity? The drive toward modernity is accompanied by nostalgia. The video documents the changing and layered landscape, giving a window onto a place from other places. Five women narrate the interconnected stories of their cities in their native languages, the network of complicated language relationships, and the conditions of their understanding- evidence of politics of narration.