Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Asia / Taiwan / All Films

Faces of Change: Taiwan

Fri, 7 Sep 2018 09:20:00 GMT

Faces of Change: Taiwan
Buy Now: $340.00

Shot in 1973, these five films present a portrait of life in Taiwan by following the daily economic and social exchanges in Tsao Tun (also known as Tsaotun, or Caotun) Township, an area inhabited by farmers, in Nantou County 130 miles southwest of Taipei. This agricultural community depend primarily on wet rice and other mixed vegetable farming. Pigs and poultry, too, are important farm products. These films offer a window into Taiwan during a time of economic and social change, and serve as a record of the culture and life ways of its rural people as they stand on the cusp of tradition and modernization.

Films in the Taiwan series

A Chinese Farm Wife
People are Many, Fields are Small
The Rural Cooperative
They Call Him "Ah Kung"
Wet Culture Rice

About the Faces of Change Collection

Faces of Change is comprised of 25 films that examine five cultures selected for their distinct geographic locations: starting with the China Coast at sea level and moving up to Taiwan, then to Afghanistan, Kenya and finally to the mountains of Bolivia. Each location is examined through five themes: Rural Society, Education, Rural Economy, Women, and Beliefs.

This innovative collection of 16mm films and videos was funded by the National Science Foundation, produced by Norman Miller and directed by some of the finest ethnographic filmmakers of its time.

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.

A Chinese Farm Wife

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

A Chinese Farm Wife
Buy Now: $340.00

A Chinese Farm Wife gives us a peek into the life of Mrs. Li, a Taiwanese woman whose husband is a salaried factory worker. Along with the help of her eldest daughter and her neighbors, Mrs. Li runs their 3-acre farm, cultivating crops of tobacco and rice. She also supervises the children's education and manages the household, and is a full participant in community activities.

Films in the Taiwan series

A Chinese Farm Wife
People are Many, Fields are Small
The Rural Cooperative
They Call Him "Ah Kung"
Wet Culture Rice

About the Faces of Change Collection

This innovative collection of 16mm films and videos was funded by the National Science Foundation, produced by Norman Miller and directed by some of the finest ethnographic filmmakers of its time.

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.

Encountering Jean Rouch

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Encountering Jean Rouch
Buy Now: $275.00

This short film was shot in 2002 during Bilan du Film Ethnographic for the purpose of introducing Jean Rouch to the audience at 2003 Taiwan International Ethnographic film festival. Unexpectedly, Jean Rouch passed away in 2004. In this film Jean Rouch talked about his new marriage, his anger towards the moving of the artifacts of the Mankind Museum, his anarchistic nature, his dreams and fantasies, etc..

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.

Moon Children

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:50:00 GMT

Moon Children
Buy Now: $320.00

Documentary-maker Wu Yii-Feng delivers a tour de force in Moon Children, a fascinating chronicle of albinos living, working, and finding recreation in modern-day Taiwan. Dubbed “moon children” by the San Blas Indians, albinos were isolated from society and only allowed to work at night. Times have changed, but prejudices have not, and albinos of today still experience discrimination and cruelty. Wu immerses us in the lives of these people, individuals who are clearly just as intelligent and capable as their darker-skinned compatriots, but whose insufficient melanin and poor eyesight still manage to render them outcasts.

We follow one albino man as he marries, goes to his job as a masseur, and waits for his wife to give birth, hoping ever so much that the child comes out "normal." Other parents talk of their experiences with albino children, their tears and disgust when they realized that their children were somehow inferior. Wu's camera moves seamlessly from scene to scene as we grow to understand these peoples' reaction -- they are victims of a conformist culture, one which allows few deviations in looks, and even fewer in behavior. We repeatedly witness people discussing the principal way of insulting the albinos, which is insinuating that they are half American. Such an implication gets at the heart of the need for conformity, and the unwillingness to permit any infiltration of the foreign, bizarre, or incomprehensible.

Wu has another message in mind, though, and that is the power that the albinos can muster when they band together and help one another. Wu documents their songs, religious faith, and compassion, and we realize that although society can be relentlessly callous, those who accept and cherish albinos as they would any other human being have the power to end the vicious cycle. "Love never faileth..."

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.

Passing Through My Mother-in-law's Village

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 10:57:00 GMT

Passing Through My Mother-in-law's Village
Buy Now: $320.00

The East-West Highway was soon to be built in central Taiwan. It would pass through the village of Liu Ts'o, and many homes and rice paddies would be destroyed. The filmmaker, Hu Tai-Li, went back to her mother-in-law's village Liu Ts'o, where she did anthropological research from 1976-78, to preserve some images of life at that moment - forever.

This film was shot in a natural and intimate climate. During the annual two harvests, various activities in daily life and festivals were presented in the film that reflected the villagers' attitudes towards gods, ghosts, ancestors, women, farmlands, urbanization, industrialization, reclamation and resettlement. Through these shorts, the filmmaker attempted to reveal the Taiwanese way of facing drastic social changes.

In this unusual film—the first Taiwanese documentary to achieve commercial success—we are treated to a series of affectionate vignettes of life in filmmaker Hu Tai-Li’s mother-in-law’s village before large portions of it are destroyed to make way for the new East-West highway.

“Intimate family scenes are interwoven with a funeral... a spring festival and celebration of Chinese New Year, offerings to the gods and spirits, rice fields being tilled, small manufacturing factories struggling to get by, the election of the provincial governor, and graves being exhumed and their contents transferred to family urns so that they will be preserved and their descendants blessed. In the final scenes, Tai-Li stands by villagers as they witness their old homes being razed to the ground and take off for their new life in nearby urban developments.”
— Barbash/Taylor, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, November/December 1998

In After Passing (11 min, 2006), a follow-up (included on the DVD) of the previous documentary, Hu Tai-li returns to Liu Ts'o Village to screen Passing Through My Mother-in-law's Village for the village residents, and reports to her deceased mother-in-law the changes caused by the newly built expressway. In the wake of its construction, the Liu Ts'o villagers have created a new lifestyle under an overpass, exhibiting human beings' great ability to adapt to the changing environment.

This DVD contains both films and a 20-page essay, "The Emergence of Small-Scale Industry in a Taiwanese Rural Community", by the filmmaker, providing background ethnography of this project.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Gottingen International Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany 1998

Parnu International Documentary and Anthropological Film Festival, Estonia 1998

Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York 1998

Ethno Filmfest Berlin, Germany 1998

Beeld voor Beeld Festival, Amsterdam 1999

Significant Others: A Celebration of Cinema by Taiwanese Women, the Donnell Library Center, The New York Public Library 2000

The Women Behind the Camera: Celebrating Women Directors in Chinese Cinema, Center for Chinese Studies of the University of Michigan 2002

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.

People are Many, Fields are Small

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 10:57:00 GMT

People are Many, Fields are Small
Buy Now: $340.00

Three farm families, engaged in Taiwan's long summer two-crop rice cycle, compare their lives to those of industrial laborers. Both pride and anger are expressed concerning conditions of a farm life.

Films in the Taiwan series

A Chinese Farm Wife
People are Many, Fields are Small
The Rural Cooperative
They Call Him "Ah Kung"
Wet Culture Rice

About the Faces of Change Collection

This innovative collection of 16mm films and videos was funded by the National Science Foundation, produced by Norman Miller and directed by some of the finest ethnographic filmmakers of its time.

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.

Returning Souls

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:59:00 GMT

Returning Souls
Buy Now: $320.00

The carved pillars of the matrilineal Amis tribe's famed ancestral house recount tribal legends such as The Great Flood and The Glowing Girl, and are home to the ancestral spirits of the Amis. The pillars, however, were removed from the village for exhibition in Taiwan's Institute of Ethnology Museum after a typhoon toppled the house 40 years ago.

This film follows a group of young Amis who seek to restore their people's connection with their ancestors. Working with female shamans, the Amis are successful in reconstructing the ancestral house. Their efforts for cultural revitalization, however, are complicated by the influence of western religions, national land policy and local politics. This documentary interweaves reality and legends in its presentation of a unique case of repatriation.

“Anthropologist and filmmaker Hu Tai-Li's Returning Souls is an intricate portrait of indigenous Taiwanese cultural revival and postcolonial negotiation of identity, religion, and the politics involved in the "return" of cultural heritage to its place of origin.”
— Kate Hennessey, American Anthropologist

“The film provides a moving record of the frustrations and triumphs experienced by the Tafalong villagers and sheds new light on a range of intellectual issues: the changing role of the museum, the complexities of cultural property claims, the tensions inherent in cultural revitalization projects-all of which have import well beyond this particular context.”
— Rough E. Toulson, Visual Anthropology

Screening History

Gold Remi Award, Ethnic/Cultural category, WordFest-Houston, 2013

Special Mention, Intangible Cultural Heritage Award, Jean Rouch Int'l Ethnographic Film Festival, Paris, 2012

Gottingen International Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany, 2014

Association of Asian Studies Film Expo, USA, 2014

Moscow International Festival of Visual Anthropology, 2012

Society for Visual Anthropology Ethnographic Film Festival, San Francisco, 2012

Sole Luna International Documentary Festival, Italy, 2012

Women Make Waves Film Festival, Taipei, 2012

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.

The Return of Gods and Ancestors

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:59:00 GMT

The Return of Gods and Ancestors
Buy Now: $295.00

The Return of Gods and Ancestors is the first locally made ethnographic film in Taiwan. The film, captured with a hand-cranked Bell & Howell 16 mm camera, documents the most magnificent five-year ceremony in Paiwan tribe.

During the festival, the Paiwan people expect to receive blessings of the gods and ancestors by piercing rattan balls with extended bamboo poles; however, they also try to prevent any harm caused by evil spirits.

The Paiwan five year ceremony is not only the reunion of the dead and the living, but a meeting of the old and the new.

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.

The Rural Cooperative

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:59:00 GMT

The Rural Cooperative
Buy Now: $340.00

The Tsau Tun Farmers' Association typifies rural cooperatives in Taiwan. 9,600 families own the cooperatives and rely on it for services ranging from irrigation, provision of seeds, farm implements, and fertilizers to crop storage and marketing.

Films in the Taiwan series

A Chinese Farm Wife
People are Many, Fields are Small
The Rural Cooperative
They Call Him "Ah Kung"
Wet Culture Rice

About the Faces of Change Collection

This innovative collection of 16mm films and videos was funded by the National Science Foundation, produced by Norman Miller and directed by some of the finest ethnographic filmmakers of its time.

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.

Songs of Pasta’ay

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:46:00 GMT

Songs of Pasta’ay
Buy Now: $320.00

The Pasta’ay, which means "the festival of the legendary little people," is a significant ritual held every other year in the Saisiat aborigine group in Taiwan.

Every ten years, they hold the Great Ritual. This film focuses on the Great Ritual in 1986. It tries to convey the Saisiat people’s affection for and belief in the legendary little people. At the same time, the film brings into light Saisiat people’s ambivalence towards tourist invasion, and their dilemma of being caught between tradition and modernization. Structured by the Pasta’ay songs’ movements, the film breaks down to 15 chapters. It carefully juxtaposes the visual with the aural elements, which are conveyed in the conceptual dichotomy between “the real” and “the artificial."

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York 1989

Bilan Du Film Ethnographique, Paris 1990

Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, Manchester 1990

Houston International Film Festival "Gold Special Jury Award", 1990

Tokyo Global Environmental Film Festival, Japan 1992

Worldmusic in the Picture Film Festival, Amsterdam 1992

Visit Taiwan to see additional products in this category.