Our everyday life is a comfort zone built on a long accumulation of habits, interpersonal network, spaces of our daily life, ways of moving, financial status, and cultural environment, whereas theatre and exhibition spaces (or similar ritualistic visits to specific places) offer a possibility for us to experience the unordinary.  The MRT Daqiaotou Station is located at one end of the historic Dadaocheng area and close to the hustling and bustling Yangsan Night Market, while between them is where DaQiao 1988 – An Immersive Outdoor Theatrical Performance Project by The Double Theatre quietly took place. The participants were requested to download an app on their phones and follow the guidance to certain locations for the stories of Daqiaotou to unfold. Through the headphones and the chosen scenes, the tour performance reconstructs what the community was like in 1988 in terms of its inhabitants/immigrants, industries, and local clans. The actors on-site remain silent like the ghosts haunting the area as they reenact the slices of the past events, either leaving mysterious traces or solving clues. At the end of the performance, the actors recite the transcribed interviews of the local in a plain and non-acting tone, shifting the spectators back to the present time with a gap of two decades and to what they began as, an outsider indeed.   Apart from being a major arterial road, Jianguo Expressway is more associated with the nearby Zhongshan Girls High School, Jianguo Brewery, Holiday Flower and Jade Market, and the nostalgic old-style Japanese bars by the citizens, while the space beneath the expressway takes up different functions, including markets, parking lots, taxi drivers’ club, gas stations, etc.  Neither on the bridge nor under the bridge is the place for one to stay, but the curatorial team of OFF-SITE think otherwise to base their Bridge Hole project here. Following their previous residential research supported by the NCAF’s “Production Grants to Independent Curators in Visual Arts,” the curatorial team invited artists to present project-based creations (“all kinds of relational practices and art interventions”), aiming to stimulate possible or unexpected reactions to the existing spaces and communities under the bridge. The works include FAMEME’s earworm Rub a Dub Charlie's Angel in the Tub as a response to the taxi drivers’ club, the “pān-toh” feast (the Taiwanese traditional catering implicative of a sense of community) at the market’s Fude Temple with food provided by an old stall for both the artists and other vendors to dine together, the fictional urban development plan Jianba Secret Love which devises a luxurious future for the downtown area as an ironic contradiction with the leftover spaces here, and many other projects, taking place in its closing hours, transforming the market space and objects here into a different exhibition to create a mixed experience – aurally, visually, and physically evoking a bizarre and lingering sense of “intrinsic foreignness” (after all, it is a market, not an exhibition space!) as the audience walk around the place.     Unlike the abovementioned projects taking place in public spaces, Housing Things: Compilations, Gatherings, and Practices Shared in An Art Space curated by Tsou Ting, with the grant from the “Curator's Incubator Program @ Museum” project, went to the old military kindred village in Fuzhou, where a small group of local residents scatter to share the neighborhood with The 9 Art Practice Space and the NTUA Art Village. When it comes to the living spaces and the houses of the area, the artists are outsiders who temporarily own the spaces; when they face the spectators, the artists on the other hand become the host to welcome and treat the guests with their artworks, while the spectators in terms walk into the familiar but yet strange spaces (the residence now taking up the role as an exhibition medium), like a carpeted comfy living room/gallery, to experience the switch between the private sphere and public spaces as well as the hospitality without the real host.   In Home away from home – an interdisciplinary multinational collaboration among Taiwan, Germany and Vietnam by Polymer DMT, supported by the NCAF’s The Rainbow Initiative, the spectators are divided into groups and led into the stage settings, which reconstruct different spaces of the life of the Vietnamese immigrant communities in Germany and Taiwan, such as the cramped bunk-bed accommodation for migrant factory workers in Taiwan, the long desks in Mandarin classroom, the restaurants and street juice stalls run by the Vietnamese immigrants in Germany, or the pure white space expressing warmth and love for baby delivering. Every setting has a “host,” taken up by the immigrants or migrant workers, whose real-life stories are shown in a short documentary or staged as live performance, while the spectators are thus allowed to face-to-face encounter a chapter of someone’s life (a real person rather than an actor or character) in an intimate but yet objective way. When they return to their seats, the visible scenes (as revealed voluntarily) what they have just experienced shift from the previous semidocumentary status to be gazed onstage again.Sometimes, the immersive experience can be alienating through its implicative physical surroundings. Such a perspective drifting above the reality when one is “logging in” creates an ambiguous space as seen in the projects/programs on Chito APP, which continuously evoke the most private and unique memories corresponding to specific moments.  The increasingly popular Chito APP is an application designed by Jimmy Chang and has been widely used in audio and sound walks in recent years since Jimmy launched its first project Those Days When the Young People Gathered at the Legislative Yuan, followed by works by Actorship and Uncertain Studio as well as a series of programs under the 2022 Human Rights Arts Festival.  Every work features a different experience and use of multimedia in accordance with its topic and narrative, while the script also activates different real-time physical senses, such as the assurance when someone is being alone but connected to the phone, the novelty when a familiar space is given different lens, or the scare when someone accidentally gets into a strange space by mistake.  Auntie & Uncle by Actorship, an art and creative project for older adults supported by the NCAF’s Inclusive Arts project grant, is one of the examples using Chito APP as its medium to base its performance structure on Ximending, where it took place. After taking performance classes and workshop, the senior amateur actors staged several scenes from the famous Shakespeare plays, and the video of the scenes would be unlocked in certain ways with clues from the place or the plot, such as: you had to choose the photos containing lions to unlock an episode of King Lear at Golden Lion Cantonese Restaurant, enter the corresponding fortune stick number to listen to the scheme of Lady Macbeth (now in charge of the Divine Empress Temple), go to Fengta Café for the story of Romeo and Juliet, or the old-established Lautianlu Braised Food for The Taming of The Shrew (now the Lady Boss of the shop), etc. The localized Shakespeare stories are like a friendly greeting to the audience. When the performance is over and the audience is not wearing the headphone anymore, they can feel a new connection with the place and keep it in their memory.    Meanwhile, Taiwan Historical Trails Sound Narrative Project – Road to Kavalan 1.0 by Uncertain Studio chose the northeastern Lungling Trail between Tsaoling and Shihcheng to develop their storyline, inviting participators to take the trail and imagine how the ancestors followed the same trail (a part of the longer one) to build new settlement in the wildland of Kavalan (the ancient name of Yilan). The ancient journey of the pioneers is not enacted by the information from the script, but how your body reacts to the spreading spider webs, the silver grass almost as tall as a person, the sometimes steep and narrow path and the tension caused by the unknown (the notice “the beehive has been removed” at the starting point of the trail seems to suggest the possible threat of bees along the way), and the videos unlocked at the assigned locations, meanwhile perfect for a short break, become the rewards for your hard work and physical effort.  For today’s travelers/spectators who no longer bear the burden of new settlement, the trail itself as well as its landscape and soundscape clearly make a gift derived from the project.     Open the google map and enter a location, you can easily find the ways as a pedestrian and know the space through MRT stations, roads, streets, or bus stops. We pass by the leftover spaces under the bridge, the old streets separated by traffic lanes, or the neighborhood outside the tourist map, seeing these “spaces” as spectacles in our gaze, whereas they are also “places” where other people live their lives. With all these different topics explored in different formats, it is still impossible to know whether we know more about someone, some ethnic group, some space, some place, or some issue – so let us keep trying and keep logging in! *Translator: Siraya Pai

In the beginning of 2022, I received a message from the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) inviting me, along with other professionals, as observers on their grant project, the Creative Documentary Film Project, and asking us to write down our observations on each case as assigned from a different and non-institutionalized perspective reflecting on the artists and the ecosystem they inhabit. The invitation was certainly a rare and interesting opportunity for a writer like me, not only with an academic training in anthropology but a lasting curiosity about the production of documentary and filmmaking. Since long time ago, my work had been mostly about selecting films for festivals or writing film reviews, while the intersection between filmmakers and me only took place in the final stage of its production process or after its completion when the films were ready to be submitted to festivals. Consequently, I was less familiar with all the possible difficulties in its making. The mission to write about it thus becomes a precious practice which does not expect an one-sided analysis and observation but encourages a dialogue between the observers and documentary makers.  I was paired up with Fan WU, a documentary maker around my age. We had met before, and the first time was in a documentary workshop organized by Taiwan Women’s Film Association, where we were in different groups and working on different documentary subjects, so we did not have a chance to know each other more. After that, we took on different journeys in life and career – Wu went to Europe to study documentary making while I joined the teams of Taiwan International Documentary Festival and Taipei Film Festival as a film selector and critic. Although we both remained in the film circles, but certainly in different positions and indifferent stages of filmmaking. When Wu finished her studies and returned to Taiwan, I was about to move to Holland, and our paths crossed again in some casual occasion with our common friends. We had a brief conversation, asking about what happened in life and about the future plans which were still in a vague shape.  After that, I knew her mostly through her work, such as how she founded Svemirko Film with her graduate school friends, produced the documentary Last Days at Sea (2021) which I liked very much, wrote a solid article “Walking with the Unknown – A Realization on the Road from a Muggle in the Documentary World” for the NCAF Online Magazine, and many more. When she was not making documentaries, she was still doing documentary-related job, and her concerns extended to include how we could improve the environment for documentary making. Perhaps it was her sociologist background which had broadened her vision to investigate the whole production ecosystem, while her experience in Europe had given her access to introducing international resources to Taiwanese documentary making.  The fact is: most of the Taiwanese documentary makers are the lone warrior in their own battlefield, taking on multiple roles from production to public screening without the necessary teamwork especially in its breeding stage, the most crucial among all. Their sources of funds are often limited, mainly from the government support, and strictly regulated to avoid the overlap between the Ministry of Culture, the NCAF, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation (PTS Foundation) in one single project — not to mention these four major institutions in terms of the government financial support have their respective rules. In an immature industry in lack of investment or sponsorship from the private sectors (or they may have a specific interest when it comes to investing a documentary), independent documentary makers are not left with many choices when looking for sufficient resources and support domestically. What matters the most is the lack of experience sharing – on the one hand, there are not enough platforms of openness, transparency and stability for documentary makers to exchange their ideas; on the other hand, the TV and filmmaking industry in today’s Taiwan pressures the documentary makers to learn to survive before really thinking about how to find a balance between the commissioned commercial documentary projects and their own creations. None of it is easy.  XiXi, the documentary feature project in production, is such an adventure of the director WU, starting from her experience as a Taiwanese documentary maker to challenge the limitations of the domestic documentary production system, to extend the international documentary-making network and to connect with the resources of the global documentary scenes. My observations, meanwhile, started when WU finished most of the shooting and focused on her another trip to France in the summer of 2022 for some pick-ups, and the article was completed when she was still editing the documentary.    The main subject in the documentary is an improvisation artist from China, the free and untamed XiXi, who travels from one European city to another like a nomad, performing improvisationally in the streets. The documentary continues to depict how she deals with a failed transnational marriage, the loss of visitation rights, her immigrant status and many other real-life problems, while it also touches upon the unsolved family issue with her mom and its lingering impact on her relationship with her daughter Nina like a Karma passed down. As the director as well as a friend being part of XiXi’s life journey, WU saw XiXi, a female artist from the same generation, as her “window to freedom” – it was in 2018, when WU finished her studies and returned to Taiwan, trying to set free from the conflict between her real life and the dream in art/filmmaking. XiXi had a soul of an artist living fully in the moment with total abandon, which was something WU had been longing for but did not have the courage to follow.   However, when WU started the documentary project and used it as an “excuse” to pursue a life of freedom in France, she found XiXi suffocated by the bitter reality.  XiXi is a documentary on the Chinese improvisation artist XiXi and how her untamed artistic soul has a clash with the social reality. (Courtesy of Fan WU) From the first draft we have of XiXi, we not only see the story of the nomad artist but also how WU, another artist with the same defiance and abandon running in her blood, tries to find an answer. In her eyes, XiXi is the embodiment of both her dream and fear, but just like that the Moon has two sides, and its light and dark sides coexist to manifest each other. Through her documentary project, WU seems to join in the journey of XiXi to search for the answers for all the troubles in life.  Since 2018, WU has presented her documentary project XiXi to different international film festival pitch events, forums and workshops to physically experience and experiment how an independent documentary maker can find a way to deal with the limitations in practice. She finds the strength from the global documentary-making communities as she finds her own voice, making it clear that the act of documentary making may create a space to more extensively connect the individuals scattered around the world.  Fortunately, WU has relatively more experience in international pitch events and workshops with her XiXi than most of the Taiwanese documentaries, including Docs Port Incheon Asian Documentary Project Market in Korea, Doc Edge Kolkata in India,  the workshop AsiaDoc with an emphasis on documentary script-writing, the incubative CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator for female documentary makers, DOK Leipzig Co-pro Market in Germany for co-production, DOCS-IN-PROGRESS (Cannes Doc) in France, the art-in-residence workshop at Yamagata Documentary Dojo in Japan, and Rotterdam Lab in the Netherlands again in early 2023. Other pitch events in Taiwan include Taipei Film Academy–Filmmakers Workshop organized by Taipei Film Commission where she attended as a film producer and the editing workshop under the NCAF’s Documentary Partnership Project where she participated as the director of XiXi. Fan WU in the editing workshop under the NCAF’s Documentary Partnership Project. For WU, all these domestic or international pitch events and workshops provided different kinds of support to the production of XiXi in their respective ways. The exchange with the professionals in the industry brought new and exciting ideas to the content, contributed to the establishment of a functional work model and network, optimized the résumé of the project to make it more attractive, as it might also lead to the practical financial support. It is how you find resources and discover different possibilities for your project.  However, it does not mean that if you attend more international pitch events, you will get better reward. Quite on the contrary, it can be very time-consuming as it requires a lot of preparation from submitting your application to really attending it, and you often receive a huge amount of unfiltered advice about your project. If you fail to find a balance between external opinions and internal needs, you may easily suffer a blow to your confidence and get confused about which direction you should be going. Therefore, the documentary makers need to figure out what they really need in each stage and which pitch events or workshops provide it, asking questions about the mentor list (what network can you develop from it?), format (does it have a more intensive or looser schedule? Who are the other participants you expect to see in the same event?), and its role in the industry (what it emphasizes? Is it about script-writing, pitch and development, editing, post-production, or market fit?), which can help you to make a useful decision to select the right events.  Up till 2019, WU had accumulated a significant amount of footage for XiXi, including the video diary made by XiXi of her relationship with the daughter taken since 2011 apart from the shots of XiXi by WU. At that point, she had already made the decision to turn XiXi’s story into a documentary feature and brought the project to several international pitch events, but it was a battle “out of her league,” said WU, for that she was not sure about the best way of its storytelling. Therefore, AsiaDoc Creative Documentary Storytelling Workshop could be what she needed, as it certainly did. At AsiaDoc, WU went through the process of organization and composition together with the guest mentors from teasing out the materials she had, developing a timeline, and to constructing a possible storyline built on the materials. The footage for XiXi includes the video diary made by XiXi since 2011 of her relationship with the daughter Nina and their growth. (Courtesy of Fan WU)     Her experience at AsiaDoc greatly inspired her to reidentify her position in the film, such as the relation between the camera and the subject, between the documentary and its director, or her relationship with XiXi. In the initial stage of her shooting, she refused to be filmed and took on the role as an objective outsider instead to document XiXi’s life, but the mentors at AsiaDoc asked the crucial question concerning the problematiques of her work: “why do you always put XiXi and her daugher on the frontier (of shooting) whereas you cowardly hide behind a camera? You do have your questions in mind and try to investigate by making a documentary, right?” In documentary making, the camera is not only the “fly on the wall” while the director has to futher think about their relatioship with the story and subject (person), asking questions such as “why they story needs me to tell it.” From this perspective, documentary indeed requires a dramaturgical training and thinking. After AsiaDoc, WU began to conceive several scenes and invited XiXi to join in the process together, where their interaction in front of the camera was filmed. She also tried to script her first-person narration as a voice-over of the video. In spite of her lack of courage/intention to make such atemtps before, they did work very well when she gave it a try as if finding the missing piece to make the documentary more alive. Stepping out of the comfort zone was not as difficult as she had expected – with a smile on her face, WU shared with us this recent realization and her newfound courage which she had gradually learned in pitch events and workshops. From a director hiding behind the camera, she now also becomes the subject in front of it. XiXi is not just about XiXi’s story, but a journey of both WU and XiXi to explore the meaning of life and to make inquiries.  From the first draft we have of XiXi, the documentary is not just about the story of XiXi but how WU, another artist of an untamed spirit, makes inquiries. (Courtesy of Fan WU) International pitch events and workshops are not only the places to creatively inspire documentary makers and to give advice on developing a production model, they are also the impotant means to look for possible international collaboration and financial support. Apart from prive investment and sponsorship, the sources of funds for documentary making in Taiwan mainly comes from the four major public institutions — the Ministry of Culture, the NCAF, TAICCA, and PTS Foundation – with strict regulations that there cannot be an overlap to fund the same project, while each institution has its own rules and the amount of money is never enough. Reasonably, WU has her eye on international funds to make her XiXi happen.  The problem is, being a Taiwanese usually means that you will not have many opportunities to apply for the funding and grants in Europe (see “Walking with the Unknown – A Realization on the Road from a Muggle in the Documentary World” by WU), while being an emerging director without a convincing résumé also makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to directly jump into the market and seek investors. If you are thinking about international co-production, you should make sure that a certain percentage of your funding comes from domestic resources, otherwise you may get yourself into trouble with the negotiation with international producers who usually have deeper pockets. The political situation of Taiwan is another issue since some countries and regions do not include Taiwanese artists in their “co-production treaty” concerning the collaboration between local and international artists. With the Filipino producer joining in the co-production of XiXi, WU was looking for another producer from Europe to make its financial structure more stable. Despite her effort from 2019 to 2021, French producers seemed to show little interest in her story taking place in France, while many other European producers backed out after learning the fact that several major film funds in continental Europe (such as IDFA Bertha Fund, Hubert Bals Fund and World Cinema Fund) were not applicable to Taiwanese directors. Eventually, it was a Korean producer whom WU had met at Docs Port Incheon completing the team and stabilizing the financial structure. As a result, XiXi would have its post-production in Korea, and team welcomed the film composer and colourist recommended by the Korean producer. By doing so, WU also expanded her collaboration network to work with different people.   The Importance of Documentary-Making CommunityLooking back on the international pitch events and workshops WU has participated in with her project XiXi, WU does not only have practical reward in production but also in the establishment of artist communities. Her experience in CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator in 2020, a newly formed workshop centering on the training and development of female documentary makers, proves the significance of having fellow artists as companions with mutual support. Documentary making is a long and lonely journey, while most of the documentary makers fight alone in the battlefield built on their materials, gradually and unavoidably struggling with confusion and self-questioning, not to mention the possible blind spots in one’s thinking. It is the advantage of communities, like a safety valve to function and to get the artists out of the crisis when needed. CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator divides its courses into three stages, in which you can share your project with mentors and colleagues (fellow artists in the same annually-held workshop) throughout the year and mutually push the discussion on each project forward.   In documentary making, the camera is not just the “fly on the wall,” while the director has to further think about their relationship with the story and subject (person), asking questions such as “why they story needs me to tell it.” (Courtesy of Fan WU) The experience in Yamagata Documentary Dojo also provided WU a safe and undisturbed environment for documentary making. Although it switched to online activity in 2022 due to the pandemic, the organizer’s careful arrangement still provided a positive space for WU to receive useful feedbacks for editing, where she was at. The guest mentors at Yamagata Documentary Dojo mostly had a background in editing, so they could effectively help the production team to deal with their materials and gave practical advice on the content. The composition (both the members and mentors) and atmosphere of the workshop were also key factors to create a positive environment, as it avoided a teacher-student hierarchy and tried to encourage all kinds of dialogue between different production teams, rather than close-door group discussion or mass lecturing. Yamagata Documentary Dojo develops a delicate small-scale community and offers a safe and open space for all participants to exchange ideas.  In 2021, WU was selected by the NCAF in its Documentary Partnership Project, where she worked with the assigned editor Lei Chen Ching, having her project to be “taken care of” and her messy ideas put in order. The purpose of the partnership project was to provide an environment for documentary makers to return to the essentials, which were the materials, footage, subject (person) and story, rather than being disturbed by the marketing concerns, which should have come much later. Meanwhile, her experience in DOCS-IN-PROGRESS in 2021 was a different example. It did not really bring inspiration for the content but increased the visibility of XiXi in the market since the project was selected in Marché du film de Cannes.  Director Fan WU attending the online discussion of the NCAF’s Documentary Partnership Project.Film Proposal Writing Has Its Unique Universal FormatWU has once mentioned that “film proposal writing has a unique universal format in the industry.” With all these international pitch events and workshops she has attended with her project XiXi, and the numerous funds and grants she has applied for, she laughed and said that she did not even remember how many proposals she had to write. For WU, proposal writing is a useful process to restructure your thoughts and work. On the one hand, she really depends on writing to develop her cinematic language; on the other hand, proposal writing demands a kind of structure that can facilitate the creative process to prioritize the materials and to give a functional narrative in documentary making. If the documentary makers can give their project a clear outline, and to help others to better imagine “something” which is still in its incubation stage, they will have more chances to target the specific support they need when they pitch. It is like a preproduction on paper before the creative idea is made into a movie.   Such a strategy, admittedly, is the result of today’s TV and film production mechanism, but if the artists need its resources, it is necessary to learn the mindset of the industry, to know how it operates, and to speak its language. XiXi is in the editing stage now, which started in the spring of 2022 as WU and the Columbian editor Anna, her graduate school friend, worked remotely. WU first selected the most important materials based on her judgment, translated the subtitles, and sent the footage to Anna for editing, followed by their daily update and discussion via emails. Usually, since they were in different time zones, WU would send the notes to Anna and receive her reply on the next day. Their remote collaboration had continued in this way for a while, until last summer when WU took a trip to France for more footage of XiXi and soon went to Columbia to work with Anna closely. At that time, the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund came in as an immediate help which they urgently needed it for the editing of XiXi. Speaking of which, WU recommends “Sundance Documentary Fund Proposal Checklist” to any documentary maker troubled by how to write a good proposal, where they can find all the information a proposal requires, concerning the sections it should include, as well as the detailed description and the appropriate length of each section. The structure it suggests is a great help to documentary makers to continuously polish their project.   The following year is a crucial one to XiXi.  WU plans to attend a couple of rough-cut workshops which may help her to bring the cinema language closer to her ideal, as a preparation for the post-production stage. If everything goes well, she will submit XiXi to international film festivals next year. As she spoke about the long journey she had with XiXi, WU admitted that she would not have made it by herself if without the support of her team. To have a documentary community is very important, especially when documentary makers usually work by themselves, so she hopes that the case of  XiXi can offer her fellow Taiwanese artists a different strategy to make it work, with a confidence that a non-issue-oriented project like the one she has, which touches upon very personal experiences and thus risks of being rejected by the mainstream, still has the possibility to grow and develop. This is what the story of WU and XiXi tries to explore and make us to see – can we have such an unrestrained freedom and courage to live as we are and create as we live in spite of the unescapable social reality? The project of XiXi, tenacious as it is, claims a collective effort to open up a space for arts and its multiple different faces. *Translator: Siraya Pai

Su Yu-Ting became interested in writing and doing interviews when she was in high school, and following her interest, she later studied in the Television News Division at the Department of Journalism of National Chengchi University (NCCU). In addition to learning about the production process of television news programs, she also worked as an assistant at the NCCU Audio Video Lab. Deeply influenced by Prof. Kuo Li-Hsin and her other teachers, Su began to study extensively the documentary format’s potential and criticality. Unlike many of her peers who aimed to work at television news stations, after working on some public sector video projects and also at a documentary channel and a cartoon channel, she wanted to break free from the constraints of being an employee and wanted to gain more control over her work. She then began to work as a freelancer and took on production projects from Da Ai Television, the Environmental Protection Administration, the National Science and Technology Council, and Yahoo. However, the efficiency-driven and profit-oriented type of projects made her feel somewhat perplexed and exhausted. Su then saw the documentary, The Man behind the Book, about the literary writer, Wang Wen-Hsing. Wang’s unhurried yet profound work inspired her to write the following wistful words on the first day of 2012: “I want to be a good communicator, to spread good stories and ideas; I want to be a good documenter, someone who painstakingly documents this epoch.”In April of the same year, Su met Yang San-Eii, a person who stays outside of conventions and remains true to himself. To fulfill her new year’s wish, she traveled to the small town of Fangliao in southern Taiwan to document this man whom the locals thought was strong-headed and stubborn like a “Woodman.”Yang’s father was falsely accused in Taiwan’s White Terror Period and was imprisoned at the Tucheng Detention Center. It was a time of extreme poverty, and the seven children in the family all relied on their mother’s work to survive. A year after their father’s detainment, their mother died from exhaustion caused by overwork. Yang San-Eii was only 13 years old at the time. Their neighbors were afraid of getting involved and did not interact with Yang’s family, which led to Yang’s “lone wolf” mentality of doing things on his own. He spent the first half of his life as a vagabond, drifting from one place to another, having little contact with other people in his hometown.Yang’s “lone wolf” mentality is also apparent in the way he works. “Woody Daddy” (一冊木造技研所) is Yang’s “family business” and specializes in only one type of work, which is to build a family house out of wood using only mortise-and-tenon joints. Yang understands very little Japanese, but referring to the Kanji characters and the illustrations in a book on timber-frame houses by Japanese architect Ikuo Matsui and along with some fundamental skills he had acquired in his younger years working on construction projects, Yang started to draft design plans, sand down wood, and drill and polish wooden joinery, and at this point, he was already on his 8th year of preparation for this house. Su’s original plan was to spend about 5-10 days documenting this story for a television station’s green architecture documentary program; however, Yang was unable to give a clear schedule on when this house would be completed. The circumstances made it unfit for the television program. The master’s demand for his house could not be gauged by the modern way of measuring time, and the documenter had to learn how to apply the same temporal logic in order to understand what was in front of her. Since it was impossible to turn this story into a television program, Su then decided to make a documentary. She had to wait around and film whenever possible, which required countless trips back and forth down south and up north. Like the rings on a tree trunk that show the accrual of nature’s changes, the footage captured by Su piled up in gigabytes and then terabytes. Yang continued to build the house, and Su continued to document it; however, the one thing that stayed unchanged was the completion date of the house remained unclear. “Within the scope of the world’s history of architecture, he’s someone who will never be thought of as a Lu Ban-like figure (Lu Ban is the god of carpentry and masonry in Chinese folk religion). In Taiwan, where society pays emphatic attention to a person’s work, education, money, and quick success, Yang appears kind of crazy and foolish. However, with more understanding gained on his dedication, hard work, determination to the craft, and devotion to research and development, which were observed from the discussions he had with artisans of ritual king boats on their waterproofing techniques; his use of oyster-shell ash on walls for better breathability; and him asking an apprentice to send a message via social media to the Japanese wooden-building expert, Ikuo Matsui, to invite Mr. Matsui to Taiwan to give him advice on the house he was building (which a positive reply was received), Yang’s actions seemed so farfetched but also quite exciting and uplifting.” After Passing Away film-still. After years of anticipation, the beam-erecting ceremony is finally carried out by a religious priest. The beam is lifted using a hoist cable made by Yang San-Eii.  (Courtesy of Su Yu-Ting) However, both Yang and Su were confronted with the same dilemma: Without a sufficient budget, the materials, workers, and machinery required for the construction had to be put on hold; on the other hand, in order to capture high-quality footage, it was imperative for Su to hire a professional camera crew, and considering the conditions of weather and other uncontrollable factors, the money required for making the documentary was quite hefty. Su applied for as many grants as she could, which included grants from the New Taipei City Documentary Film Awards, CNEX, and the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF), which generated mixed results. In 2013, her short film, Woody Daddy, was selected by the CNEX Annual Theme Project, which marked an interim progress for the documentary on Master Yang’s story. However, the short film format was inadequate in fully recounting Yang’s story, and Su also had to fight hard to obtain the rights to use the footage she had captured and to further develop the film. She learned a great deal about copyright issues from the free legal consultation service offered by the Taipei Documentary Filmmakers’ Union. As a reminder, she urges her colleagues to pay thorough attention to the terms listed in any contracts that they sign, and it would be wise to have an attorney review the terms prior to signing. The different experiences led her to transition from being a simple creator to becoming someone who’s more knowledgeable about film production. She then took on both roles of director and producer in her other documentary series, Happy Birthday and Our Happy Birthday. Although it was a necessary step for her to put on multiple hats due to resource constraints, it also opened up more possibilities for her to think about the needs of film production from different perspectives.For example, although the Birthday series wasn’t a large-scale production, it, nonetheless, still involved comprehensive steps that included the creative process, project proposals, grant applications, showcases, fundraisings, screenings, and the film release (for further details, please refer to the interview on NCAF’s Audiovisual Media Grants - Research Project: “After Completion – A Study on Taiwanese Documentary Film Release and Marketing Experiences”). The project was also a learning experience for Su, as she observed and made comparisons along the way, and with different references gathered, she then began to contemplate on a better way to tell Master Yang’s story.  “In the short film, Woody Daddy, Master Yang was the focus of the story, which showed this devoted odd man and his determination to uphold this traditional artistry. However, with more time spent with them, I began to grow more familiar with Master Yang’s family, and other storylines then gradually became more apparent.” “The emotional ties between the members of the family made Yang San-Eii’s story even more special. His wife has always stayed by his side, and despite the occasional complaints and frustration, through communication and acceptance, she continues to support her husband to fulfill his dream.” Their relationship reminded Su of the film director Ang Lee and his wife: “She didn’t support Ang Lee because of who he had later become. Love is never an investment, and this is also true for Yang San-Eii’s wife.” After realizing that the achievement of the protagonist was made possible through the support of his entire family, the focus of the ensuing filming was consciously also placed on Yang’s wife, daughters, sons-in-law, other family members, and also his apprentices. There was a scene when Yang was working on the rooftop, and his wife had carefully climbed up the shaky wooden ladder just to remind him to be careful. The exchange between them seemed quite ordinary but was full of understated but deep emotions. After Passing Away film-still. The love that Yang San-Eii’s wife has for him is shown through her daily chatter and nagging. (Courtesy of Su Yu-Ting) After Passing Away film-still. Yang San-Eii’s wife, Hui-Chuan, is his greatest support and also the most hard-working supervisor. (Courtesy of Su Yu-Ting) “His wife’s eyes were full of concern, hope, and also various mixed emotions. I really like that particular scene. It shows that a home is not just the work of a single builder but also involves those who are there to extend their support.” With the schedule of the filming extended, the construction of the house was still unfolding at an unhurried pace; however, the story of the family was changing. Yang’s eldest daughter was originally pursuing a career in sales, hoping to make money to support her father’s dream of building the house, but she had at this time transitioned to work in the theater field  as a production stage manager. Her husband then began to take part in Yang’s project, seeking to incorporate ideas and thoughts from the younger generation in order to create more opportunities for the house-building project and to generate some income, including pitching fundraising proposals, social media management, media exposure, etc.  Influenced by her father, Yang’s younger daughter, who studied interior design in school, also has her own ideas on what makes an ideal dwelling place and has decided to live, work, and raise her own family in a city. With more in-depth involvement in their everyday life, the bickering and quarrel between the family then naturally became a part of the footage captured. “I was no longer only pointing my camera at this self-taught house-builder but was focusing on these three women who, throughout more than a decade, have cried and laughed all because of this dream of his.” Slowly but surely, Woody Daddy then transformed into After Passing Away. After Passing Away film-still. Yang’s youngest daughter, Ching-Wen, was influenced by his father and now works in the field of interior design. She greatly admires her father’s unique approach to building the house with his own hands but doesn’t think she is capable of taking over. (Courtesy of Su Yu-Ting) Because of the extended filming period and the process of developing the short film into a feature-length documentary, the budget required skyrocketed. Su had twice applied for NCAF’s documentary grant but was unsuccessful the first time in 2013. She then tried again in 2020 and was selected by the jury committee this time around. When asked about her thoughts on the different outcomes for the two grant proposals she had submitted, she said she wasn’t quite sure about the direction of the film when she submitted her first proposal. She hadn’t spent enough time with the subjects she was filming, and the story, at that time, also focused more on the life of one individual person and the craftsmanship side of house-building. A few years later, she had accumulated enough footage for After Passing Away and was much clearer about the direction of the story. The various developmental trajectories of Yang’s family members were also clearly shown in the film trailer, allowing the audience to better connect with the story. At this point, the film had also reached the post-production stage, and while making the presentation for the grant, Su was much more certain about what she was doing. The filming and production costs in the first few years were paid for with the income Su was making from other jobs, and when the NCAF grant was approved, a more sufficient budget was allotted for the post-production, which gave her a chance to fulfill some minor dreams she had for the project, including inviting Ken Ohtake, a Japanese musician who has collaborated extensively with some Taiwanese independent bands, to compose the music for the documentary. On the one hand, this decision was made because of Yang’s fondness for the Japanese culture, which he was drawn to due to how the artistry of wooden houses is preserved in Japan. On the other hand, Ken Ohtake’s music was what Su had envisioned After Passing Away would sound like, with the melody of his acoustic guitar used to express the long and repetitive process of building the house, the passing of the seasons, and the family’s delicate emotional connections.The inspiration behind the lyrics of the documentary’s theme song, also titled After Passing Away, came during the post-production when Su tried to imagine if she were Yang’s mother, what would she say to him knowing that she was about to leave her 13-year-old son behind? Su wanted to write in Taiwanese, which is Yang’s most comfortable language, but she felt that was not very good at it, so she then reached out to Taiwanese songwriter Ong Chiau-Hoa to help with the lyrics. The song aptly captured her thoughts, with the unique rhythmic charm of the Taiwanese language also showcased.  “But this ruthless world, makes living harder than leaving.” This line in the song shows a mother’s tender love for her son, and hopefully, after the long house-building journey, the song can bring some comfort to this man who has spent his entire life searching for a “home.”   The singer who performed the song was another dream come true. Su invited the talented singer Yujun Wang to sing “A Hundred Years Later” and shared the emotions and the story behind the lyrics with Wang. Wang then gave a heartfelt performance of the song at the recording studio, which moved Su to tears, and Ken Ohtake, the composer and guitarist, also exclaimed, “This is it!” After Passing Away was further enriched and made more complete due to the music, the singing, the emotions, the artists’ moving performance, and the recording engineering, which superbly enhanced the documentary. Su is also grateful to the film’s executive producer, Mr. Liao Ching-Sung. She had participated in an editing workshop led by Liao, and because of Liao’s advice and guidance, Su, who was without a clear direction at the time, was able to see a bright beacon of light. She then decided to discard the first three edits that were made and tried to reexamine the chaotic footage she had on hand, and together with a new partner she had working with her, they then restarted the editing process. After the workshop, she also mustered up the courage to ask Liao to continue to mentor her and was surprised to receive a positive response from him. Liao had agreed to act as the film’s producer despite his busy schedule and also accompanied Su and the editor to sort through the footage again and try to feel the message that the footage was conveying. They were asked tirelessly by Liao, “What were you trying to convey when you shot this scene?” The editor, Lin Shi-wan, patiently processed over 150 hours of footage, and they then discussed each scene, one by one, with notes and sketches covering an entire wall. (Su even went out of her way to convert the guest room in her apartment into an editing studio!) They moved around different scenes and made countless edits and adjustments. Together, they then slowly took in and condensed everything to produce a new version of the film. Su Yu-Ting editing. The countless footage made the editing process quite daunting. (Photo by Chen Yu-Ching) “Through After Passing Away, we can see the transformation of Taiwanese families after the turn of the millennium,” said Liao.With Liao’s support, Su was able to feel more confident to steadily continue with the editing, mixing, color correction, and other post-production tasks for the film. The feedback received after several small screenings was also quite positive, and some friends who had seen the previous version also commented that the film felt like it had gone through a great transformation, and they were looking forward to seeing After Passing Away on the big screen and for it to reach a wider audience. Invitations were always sent to film distributors, members of the media, and film critics, hoping they would come to see the film, write reviews, and help distribute or promote the film.  “But people seem to always be so busy, and sometimes things would feel like they were heading in the right direction on the phone, but we wouldn’t hear back from them after the link of the film was sent over to them. Maybe they just have a lot of films to watch, and the documentary is long and not very thrilling or eye-catching,” said Su. She then decided to try submitting to film festivals. In September 2022, great news came her way from the 27th Busan International Film Festival: After Passing Away was nominated for its “Wide Angle Documentary Competition,” which meant an international premiere of the film! This was Su’s second nomination at the Busan International Film Festival, and her first was for Our Happy Birth Day. This time she was able to attend the event and calmly observe the film festival from the perspective of a film producer. Because of the festival’s large scale and wide selection of films, it was hard to tell if it had a particular preference, and she wondered why After Passing Away was selected that year. From the audience feedback received from the world premiere held at Busan, she then learned, “The subject of ‘home’ is something that everyone cares about, and the story of ‘home’ and ‘house’ can transcend beyond languages and resonate with people.” A woman in the audience shared that her father was also a carpenter and had built a house for her family. Unfortunately, they were unable to keep the house due to maintenance difficulties. Thinking back to the 10 years she had spent filming the project, the Yang family had to stay in the leaking attic of a restaurant or in a makeshift tent at the construction site, as they waited for their father to build the house. They had minimized their material desires, overcome challenges in life, and even put up with gossipy neighbors. After countless mistakes and do-overs, the dream house finally came true. “Failure is normal, but this success is well deserved,” said Yang. The director couldn't help but get choked up when she was responding to this audience member. Su also noted that the viewers in Korea were quite enthusiastic, and some even came up to her outside of the theater after the screening to ask for her autograph and photos and to ask for more information about the film. The feedback received was greatly encouraging to Su, and it was truly rewarding to see the audience enjoying and expressing interest in her work. For this story from a small rural town in Fangliao, Taiwan to resonate with an international audience, this was a diplomatic exchange that required no use of fancy words. After they returned to Taiwan, After Passing Away was shortly selected for the Kaohsiung Film Festival and was the top audience-choice film that week. Director Kuo Liang-Yin once said, “The audience-choice award is the best award to receive for a director!” And indeed, it was. To be screened in film festivals allows a documentary to gain more exposure, but there are many different film festivals in the world, and which film festival to submit to and when, where to host the screening, how the promotion should be executed, and how to compete for awards, these details won’t just take care of themselves simply because of how heart-moving a film is. Su is still learning about these different aspects. Taking on both roles as the director and producer, the things that she needs to consider often contradict one another, and tasks need to be delegated between the director and producer.  “Ideally, a producer should start to work with the team in the planning stage and begin to seek out resources at that point; otherwise, in the post-production stage, it becomes very difficult to edit and look for resources at the same time. With limited time and energy, it is impossible to consider the different factors involved at that point; it becomes much more challenging.” Is it possible to secure the resources needed at the planning stage? Based on Su’s observations of most film distributors, they tend to take an observational stance when it comes to new directors and new projects, and it’s rare to get their attention at the planning or preliminary editing stages of a film. However, at the later stage of editing and toward the trial screening stage, any changes made would likely increase the project’s cost by a lot. At this point, without the needed funding and the time to make changes, film festivals then become the only possibility available, and if lucky and your film is chosen, the distributors would then be more willing to negotiate. However, the filmmaker is working alone in this process and is mostly betting on luck, but this way of doing things shouldn’t be the norm. Using the documentary, A Holy Family, as an example, Su explained that the filmmaker of this documentary had entered into a 12-year contract with the production team, which turned the relationship into a collaborative partnership, and additionally, with international financial support that was initially secured, they were able to raise the pre-production standards for the film and to seek out more resources for further development, which allowed for better filming and post-production processes, which then opened up more opportunities for the film to be selected by film festivals and more sales income made from international royalty. As a busy mother who was also juggling the post-production work of After Passing Away and other freelance jobs, Su somehow managed to muster up more energy to initiate an event series where entrepreneurial and innovative endeavors were shared. This 5-part event was called the “Ark Project” and took place between March and July 2021, and during the meetings, vegetarian food was offered, with entrepreneurial and innovative experiences shared, and old and new friends freely interacted with each other (there were even prize draws!) The speakers invited to the event were not limited to documentary filmmakers and also included website designers, poets, entrepreneurs, social activists, etc. As described by Su, “Each content creator has a dream, which is to have their creative works be seen by more people. In this era of excessive audio-visual content, we sincerely invite you to come and share your entrepreneurial, creative, interactive, or fundraising projects, and let’s join together to work hard and take our creative works to reach further…We won’t be talking about how to get into the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, venture capitals, or editing techniques. We will focus on creative work, talk about life, and discuss what you usually don’t want others to see, which is what really happens behind the scenes.”  Su was asked by some friends whether she was overburdened by the editing process and was wishing to hop on an ark to escape from the overwhelming flood-like footage in front of her. What sort of sparks would ignite when cynical social activists cross paths with yuppie venture capitalists? Would successful elements of social activism and venture capitalism be noticed through the sharing of such experiences? Hopefully, this ark would continue to sail forward and nurture new breeds of talents.   It is inevitable to be confronted with different “people” issues when making a documentary, and without an understanding of how to deal with people, it would be difficult to probe deep into the inner world of the film’s subjects and to gain their trust, and it would also be hard for the filmmaker to realize what they are seeking to respond to by making the documentary. After Passing Away is no exception. Without Yang’s extraordinary determination and stubbornness, it would be impossible for him to continue to build this house for 18 years. However, when facing his own family, his stubbornness is also sometimes hurtful. The documentary ends on a gentle note with Yang lovingly looking at a new member of his family. New life is added to the family’s story, and it continues to evolve. With the post-production completed and the documentary openly screened, the natural progression for any documentary at this point should involve expanded social outreach, with the ideas and philosophies of the filmmaker and the subjects documented shared with as many people as possible. However, life is often not quite so predictable. This wooden house and the legendary tale of its construction were covered by both the print media and online news outlets which turned it into a hot destination in Southern Taiwan, and it sparked various imaginative thoughts and expectations from various people in society. Having endured an extended period of hardship, the family’s house was finally finished, but they were also confronted with new problems. Some of the issues that unfolded in reality took place beyond the camera and did not make it into the film, so was only the good side shown to the audience? After Passing Away film-still. Yang’s eldest daughter, Chi-Shu, uses cultural and creative-oriented tactics to pitch proposals to help her father Yang San-Eii realize his dream.  (Courtesy of Su Yu-ting) Su explained that the interaction with the subjects being filmed when making a documentary is a long and extended process. It is integral for the director to remain true to their creative vision and to also respect the subjects’ willingness to be filmed. The signing of a “Filming Consent Agreement” is demanded by some documentary commissioners, which would confirm the subjects’ willingness to be filmed. It is also recommended by lawyers that the consent form should be signed at the initial stage of filming. However, Su mentioned that even with a consent agreement signed in the beginning, if a subject has a change of heart during the filming, it would still be impossible for the director to force the subject to follow the terms listed in the agreement. A documentary is a real story, an extension of life, and even with a legal agreement signed, it still doesn’t mean that everything will happen accordingly. In order for the subjects being filmed to accept the filmmaker, the process involves more than just a singular point of view, and it is also not about which side to take; more importantly, a documentary is not a tool; it requires thorough and trustworthy communication. What about when an audience disagrees with the filmmaker’s perspective? Su believes that it is impossible to have everyone in the audience to share your point of view. Creative work is not a service that aims to please everyone. The making of After Passing Away originated from her own anxieties about finding a dwelling place for the family she has made in the city. After seeing different types of houses, she then met Master Yang by chance, which then opened up this visual document about the Taiwanese people and the notion of “home,” which shows people’s obsession with home, a story of a family’s bond, and also many open imaginative thoughts about what makes a place home.  A big tree grabs tightly onto the land with its complex roots, as it aims to stand tall and thrive. After Passing Away is also about a unique and complex ongoing story that is deeply rooted in this land. In the words of Yang San-Eii’s eldest son-in-law, Yu-Chien, “Home is a forever ongoing project.” As a filmmaker who had accompanied the family on a part of their journey, Su said with great sentiment, “Images are highly illusive, but they can also realistically present people’s lives. I have the ability to express and communicate. If this ability is used for the pursuit of money and fame, I will never feel content. If it is used for the preservation of what’s kind and good, to defend against evil, and to seek the truth, the passion within me will continue to burn and fill my spirit with great strength.” *Translator: Hui-Fen Anna Liao

The development of socially relevant realist photography in contemporary Taiwan has its own zeitgeist factors, and one of the most important and far-reaching influences occurred amidst the rapid changes before and after martial law was lifted in Taiwan, when society was filled with burgeoning movements that instilled a sense of mission in photographers to witness, expose, and document what was happening. “Seeing” became a mainstream proposition of photography at the time, which led to the peak of reportage and documentary photography in the 1980s, making photography not only an extension of one’s sight but often also an act that attempted to intervene in reality. Due to the environment that they were in, many photographers born around the 1950s and 1960s also worked in news media outlets as photojournalists in the 1980s and 1990s. Although they all had their own unique visual styles, they were, nevertheless, all impacted by what was happening at the time, and to various degrees, they also inherited the genre of realist photography’s socially oriented consciousness and ways of thinking.From the projects selected for the grant category of “Publishing - Print Publications” offered by the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) in the past ten years or so, we see many photographers have been reorganizing their works with the intention of reviving Taiwanese society’s visual memories from the late 20th century. Amongst them, Bachimen: Representing the 2% of Hope and Struggle (八尺門：再現2%的希望與奮鬥, 2013) published by the Nanfan Chiayuan Co., Ltd. is a project that stands out. The book is a recompilation of Guan Xiao-Rong’s well-known investigation report on the rights of the indigenous people in Bachimen, Keelung and includes numerous photographs and texts. It first appeared in the press in the mid-1980s and was later chosen as the cover story of the inaugural issue of Ren Jian Monthly and then published in installments in the magazine’s subsequent issues. This opened up the public’s awareness for the problems, including economic, land, and cultural oppression, faced by people of indigenous descent. This recompiled monograph also includes records of Guan Xiao-Rong’s return to Bachimen in 1996 and 2011. Ren Jian - Documentary Photography in the 1980s (人間現場—八〇年代紀實攝影, 2016) is a compilation of the 33 photo features shot by Tsai Ming-Te during his time working as a photojournalist at Ren Jian Monthly. Tsai was in his 60s when this book, his first monograph, was published; however, many of the pieces included have long been considered impressive and familiar visual records of Taiwan’s development in the 1980s. The book is a testament to the assertive action taken by those at Ren Jian Monthly to be at the forefront of reportage photography at the time. Chuang Cheng-Yuan’s A Disappeared River (2017) extends from documentary photography’s distinctive thematic format and topics of concern and includes visual documents captured by Chuang of urban indigenous people over a period of 20 years since 1994, with field research done on the Amis people living in the Zhongzheng Public Housing in Xindian District, New Taipei City and investigation done on their indigenous tribal lifestyles and cultural changes in the midst of modern urban development. Shen Chao-Liang’s Taiwanese Vaudeville Troupes (2016) was shot between 2005 and 2016 and documented unique local touring performing groups, depicting Taiwanese grassroots culture’s festive rituals and the lives of the troupes’ singers and dancers outside of the dazzling show stage. Different from the other abovementioned books which are divided into sections and employ a traditional reportage narrative format, this book demonstrates a continual pursuit toward a contemporary way of treating thematic documentary photography. The Party Is Over (2014) is Hsu Tsun-Hsu’s photography work from his time working as a journalist which began in the late 1980s. The book shows his attempt to shift the focus away from news events and includes, instead, the various peculiar people, things, and events that he saw at the scenes of various social events and affairs. The work shows a satirical personal style, and the humorous use of the line “the party is over” suggests that after the heightened commotion experienced in Taiwanese society (with photography also included) at the end of the century, the energy from social movements and reportage photography gradually dissipated with the change of political power in 2000. Hsien San-Tai’s Salty Mists In Memory of Penghu (2020) shows his hometown, Penghu, from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s and uses a prose-like visual approach to recount how the local land, people, and culture have changed along with the passing time. It should be noted that photographer Chang Chao-Tang contributed to the photo-editing of these three books, Taiwanese Vaudeville Troupes, The Party Is Over, and Salty Mists In Memory of Penghu, which shows Chang’s prominent influence on this generation of photographers. In reviewing the publication of photography books, we can find some contextual links to the development of photography in Taiwan, with some interesting insights and references for understanding the formation of our own visual culture also gained. Perhaps we can also think of these documentary photography books as documentaries on the development of “documentary.” Extended Reading At the Edge of the City – Traces of Life at Bachimen https://youtu.be/eISbkmRpgY8Using the Camera to Document Life: There is a Story Behind This Photo – Photographer, Tsai Ming-Tehttps://youtu.be/-zID_DFt_LgPhotographer, Chuang Cheng-Yuanhttps://youtu.be/bmH0DGXl7hMHsu Tsun-Hsu, The Party Is Over, Photo Book Eventhttps://youtu.be/6gcLB8GFnR0Warmth of the Land, Mr. Shen Chao-Liang | TEDxYilanhttps://youtu.be/mk2xAXx4FOUPhotobook Hour: Hsien San-Tai x Chang Chao-Tang x Salty Mists In Memory of Penghuhttps://youtu.be/66G26DvTBYc*Translator: Hui-Fen Anna Liao

Taiwan's government announced in 2019 the opening of mountains, lifting the host of hiking restrictions and allowing nature lovers to explore further secrets within the heart of the island. The post-COVID-19 era led to a boom in domestic travel and many people began to engage in hiking activities. We couldn't move as freely as before, but this pushed us to live with more care, appreciate each moment with family and friends, and attach importance to the land they live in. It also meant more opportunities to show concern for, document, and behold the environment we grew in and examine our connection to it.The Beauty of Mountain ForestsMountains account for 70% of Taiwan's geography, endowing it with plenty of forestry resources. One of the three largest tree plantations since the Japanese colonial era is that on Taiping Mountain. The historical background of the area is expounded in the Historical Context of Writings on Mountain Forests—Journal of Taiping Mountain Literary Studies Research and Writing Project by Chung Yi-Fen. It documents the unique landscape literature inspired by mountains during Qing dynasty rule, the Japanese occupation period, and the post-World War II era. Chou Li-Chun's (Hedwig) novel Mountain Spirit (山神) tells the story of a mountain warden, what we usually call a "mountain ranger". We might simply imagine them strolling through the mountain in an idyllic manner, yet there's much to do beyond that: manage recreation areas, maintain forest trails, prevent illegal logging, care for seedlings and wildlife, and so forth. They stand at the front line, our deputies in protecting the mountain forests with utmost respect and humility. Theirs is a life of devotion, a dance to the beat of nature.The Struggle of Mountain ForestsChronicles of Jiaoban Mountain Over a Century by Yung-Sung Chien Lee (Thomas) deals with changes in the lifestyle of the Atayal indigenous people over a hundred years. It touches upon the modern understanding of indigeneity, shifts in living environments, and even the brutal acts committed during the Japanese colonial era, in order to self-reflect and ponder on cultural changes and extinction and ethnic identity. Llyung Topa: In Search of the Defense Lines Against Savages and Survivors of the Topa Settlement Massacre (拉流斗霸──尋找大豹社事件隘勇線與餘族) published by Walkers Books recounts the struggle of the indigenous inhabitants of the Llyung Topa Federation against, first, the Han Chinese settlers, and later, the Japanese colonial government and its indigenous pacification policy. By revisiting the "defense lines against savages" from the past, we unearth stories of blood mixed with tears.The Roads of Mountain ForestsFor most of us living in the flat lands, there is nothing special about going back home every day, but for indigenous individuals, it is often an arduous trip that could take days. Ting-Yuan Wang's A Century of Taroko: Finding the Road Back Home (百年太魯閣：尋覓歸鄉路) traces the course of the Liwu River, Tkijig in Seediq language, to discover a series of major events until reaching the "headwater". It is more than a study of the historical background. It encompasses interviews to community elders and includes passages from historical documents and legends told by elders, helping us understand the past and ancient culture, as well as journey through a century of events in the mountains of Taroko. Anxi Zhang's The Vanishing Line: In Search of the Bunun's Old Takebanuad and Isbukun Settlements (消逝的中之線：探尋布農巒郡舊社) is a survey of the remains of the Takebanuad and Isbukun settlements of the Bunun indigenous people on Mt. Guntai, or Ludun-bukun or Uhais in the Bunun language. It documents their present status, the roads used by the Japanese colonial officers to control the inhabitants, and the settlements nurtured by the Jyunda, or Aul misnabukun, river basin. The later Revisiting Guanman—On the Road Back to the Bunun Take Vatan Settlements (重返關門：踏上布農丹社歸鄉路) by Anxi Zhang goes even deeper inside the mountain, exploring the history of the Guanman old trail, which starts in Zhushan Township, Nantou and finishes in Yuli Township, Hualien. In the past, it was home to the cluster of settlements called Take vatan by the Bunun people. The book allows Bunun individuals from later generations—who did not get the chance to live in that environment—to find back their roots, and also reveals the glorious past of the Bunun to mountain lovers.The Emotions of Mountain ForestsIn his book Indigenous (山地話╱珊蒂化), Yi-Hang Ma turns those beautiful yet ephemeral memories we all cherish into subtle, unsettling accounts of fragmented time. The changes encountered when growing up, quest for identity, and conceptions of family are a sort of reminiscence that serves as prelude to the many questions posed in the text. People feel loneliness. What about mountains? Liu Chen Chun's The Mountain I'd Share With You (我所告訴你關於那座山的一切) is a forthright encounter with the self. It would seem that in order to take a good look at this world, it is necessary to first satisfy the physiological and safety needs proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow in his hierarchy of needs. Is this really a prerequisite for seeing oneself and facing one's most profound emotions and minutest thoughts? We might take different paths when setting out on journeys, treading the mountains, and expressing with words—even drag each other down at times, but we all arrive at the same destination. We only have to walk ahead with courage.Further Readings"About Salizan's Carrying a Mountain With a Headband", NCAF Online Magazinehttps://mag.ncafroc.org.tw/article_detail.html?id=297ef7227b067884017b4dcb054b0008"About Liu Chen-Chun's The Mountain I'd Share With You", NCAF Online Magazinehttps://mag.ncafroc.org.tw/article_detail.html?id=402888376e6f05ab016e8bb3db8c0006*Translator: Linguitronics

The first project name for the documentary And Miles to Go Before I Sleep was "Nine Shots", alluding to the violent death of absconded Vietnamese migrant worker Quốc Phi Nguyễn—after realizing that a police officer had arrived to arrest him, Nguyễn attempted to escape and fell victim to 9 consecutive shots. The name indicates clearly what the production and interviews in the documentary wish to convey: the attitude and behavior that most Taiwanese demonstrate towards migrant workers. That is what prompted an entry-level police officer to pull the trigger 9 times on Nguyễn.Director Tsung-Lung Tsai's desire to make films related to the judiciary, human rights, new immigrants, and migrant workers dates from long before this film. From news reporter to investigative journalist and author of in-depth and research features, step by step, his time working in the media endowed him with a strong sensitivity towards news and social tragedies. It was seminal to his way of interpreting society. This solid set of skills, a keenness on specific subjects, and the ability to dig deeper into a topic or its background, as well as his concern for incidents, people, and their conditions, led him to create a series of documentaries after switching careers: Taipei Licensed Prostitutes, Formosa Homicide Chronicle 1-2, Marriages on the Borders, Oil Disease: Surviving Evil, and so forth. Tsung-Lung Tsai's works prompt viewers to look closely at social issues and their protagonists, beyond the often fleeting and unreliable media reports within our reach.Creative ShiftThe experience accumulated both as journalist and documentary filmmaker have made Tsai a distinguished figure in the realm of investigative documentary filmmaking. Sharing his life with his wife, new immigrant Kim Hồng Nguyễn from Vietnam, in their adopted home of Chiayi caused a shift in his creative outlook, nonetheless."When I served as the director for documentaries of PTS (Taiwan Public Television Service), work was very formulaic—submit a project proposal and go do the filming. Filmmaking was radically different outside the system, after I left PTS. It was not so premeditated. I could follow my intuition more."Leaving the production schedules and approaches of a TV station meant entirely new possibilities in terms of field research subjects, preparation, and production time. Tsung-Lung Tsai mentioned that at the time, Kim Hồng had already started to entertain the idea of making documentaries based on her own life story and culture. Tsai felt that playing a supportive role in a production from her "insider" perspective as a new immigrant could be an interesting process. It was in this manner that Kim Hồng Nguyễn finished her two documentaries, Out/Marriage and See You, Lovable Strangers.After moving to Chiayi, Tsai and his wife co-founded Khuôn viên văn hoá Việt Nam1 (Vietnam Cultural Hut in Chiayi), a home for migrant workers to gather and hold activities during holidays and weekends. Tsai gained a chance to frequently interact with Vietnamese immigrants and migrant workers in his daily life, engaging in mutual conversations and discussions. Combined with his understanding of Vietnamese migrant workers as relayed by his wife, Tsung-Lung Tsai shared:"The depth with which I got to know new immigrants was considerably different from that I experienced in My Imported Wife, when I was working at PTS... It was more like watching news or shining a light on topics I believed were worthy of attention at the time. That was my motivation to approach these people. Now, it is the opposite: I come across them in my day-to-day."During filming in Vietnam, Tsai asked the elder brother of Quốc Phi Nguyễn to stand in front of their childhood home to take a shot of his back, a symbol of his younger brother's reality as a migrant worker.These immigrants and migrant workers are not just a group representative of certain issues anymore. For Tsung-Lung Tsai, they're people made of flesh of bones, with dreams, life stories, and a wide range of emotions, part of our surroundings and everyday life. It was with this kind of perception and interactions that he assisted Kim Hồng in completing See You, Lovable Strangers, a film centered on the human side of Vietnamese migrant workers. Some people commented during screenings that the documentary could have focused more on the systemic faults and brokerage issues. But Tsai believes that See You, Lovable Strangers is about the stories of people like us. It was never intended to emphasize systemic and structural problems."The point of departure for films made by my wife and I is daily life, people's stories. I've done enough films about systemic problems or research and interviews in the past. These serve a meaningful purpose, of course. Nonetheless, I have since come to increasingly believe that perhaps we cannot use reason to deal with everything. The emotional side is very important, too."Reason and emotion are not mutually exclusive. Films can achieve a balance of both. That could be the ideal for many filmmakers. In this regard, Tsung-Lung Tsai brought up his previous experience filming Formosa Homicide Chronicle 1-2. The films center on the judicial system and miscarriage of justice. It naturally requires a lot of logical arguments and gathering of data. But Tsai stressed that the emotional side, people's stories, could not be missing. A documentary that only presents cold logic will fail to catch viewers' interest. The ratio of reason to emotion is still in favor of the former in Formosa Homicide Chronicle 1-2.The films produced alongside his wife after moving to Chiayi, however, mostly focus on people and their life stories. Those who appear in these documentaries are also part of their everyday. They often listen to the experiences of migrant workers and immigrants in daily conversations, how they left their homes and moved to an unfamiliar land, and the unfair or differential treatment, even discriminatory behavior, they've had to endure in Taiwan. This transformed his point of view on the lives of migrant workers and new immigrants:"If we want to influence people with our documentaries, the emotional side cannot be sacrificed, even if a balance between reason and emotion is not possible. I am progressively aware that merely amending the law or adjusting the system will not solve the issues encountered by migrant workers. Prejudice and discrimination, or even chosen ignorance, of migrant workers are present in our day-to-day...Sometimes, they relate how their supervisors or co-workers treat or talk to them with disdain at work, often using abusive language. Seemingly small matters speak volumes of the views of the Taiwanese on migrant workers, how they're alienated. Even colleagues who are blue-collar workers, too, don't see them as equals. In this kind of circumstance, trying to convince them or amend a system or law to prevent this from happening might not accomplish much."This taught Tsung-Lung Tsai that trying to dispel prejudices, or even hidden or outright discrimination, through systemic or legal changes would essentially be ineffective. We should first look at the mindset with which Taiwanese individuals or the entire society view these immigrants and migrant workers. The first step is to elucidate the problem and present it clearly.OpportunityIn August 2017, absconded Vietnamese migrant worker Quốc Phi Nguyễn was shot 9 times as a police officer tried to arrest him. The first thought that crossed Tsung-Lung Tsai's mind when he saw this piece of news being broadcast on TV everywhere was, "Was it necessary to fire 9 shots? Would that officer have done the same if the fugitive had been Taiwanese?" This question motivated him to further understand the situation. The tragedy of Quốc Phi Nguyễn ignited tensions between migrant worker associations and the police force, making them hostile to one another. Voices in support or opposition joined in the heated argument on values like human rights and equality.The response he'd received after the screening of See You, Lovable Strangers prompted Tsai to contemplate including systemic problems in future productions. What happened to Quốc Phi Nguyễn put into relief the attitudes of many Taiwanese towards migrant workers. Aside from Quốc Phi Nguyễn, Bảo Trân Huỳnh was another migrant worker who fell off a cliff and died when escaping from the police. The stories of these two men served as windows for Tsai to address the wider topic of migrant workers. From the very beginning, Tsai didn't set out to simply talk about isolated situations. What he wished to achieve the most when making this documentary was to simultaneously discuss the overall system and the attitude of Taiwanese people towards migrant workers through these incidents."When I saw the news about what happened to Quốc Phi Nguyễn or Bảo Trân Huỳnh, I think I had a better understanding than most people. It was on this basis that I thought to myself, 'if I don't take the opportunity to discuss some relevant contexts through these individual incidents, there might not be a better chance in the future'."Cameraman Hao-Zhung Zhan and the crew filming the problem of migrant workers-turned-illegal loggers in the Alishan Mountain Range.Key PointsBy a twist of fate, Tsung-Lung Tsai managed to get the video file from the body camera (bodycam) worn by the police officer at the scene of the Quốc Phi Nguyễn incident. Screenshots or excerpts of the bodycam footage had been shown as evidence in several court hearings in the past. Seeing the entire 30 minute-long video from the bodycam forced the director and his production team to bluntly face the interactions between Quốc Phi Nguyễn, the police officer that fired the shots, and everyone in their surroundings, including government workers that accompanied the officer, paramedics, and even bystanders—the way they treated Nguyễn as he was lying on the ground, bleeding to death from gunshot wounds. These images have tremendous power. It is hard to resist the impulse to cover one's eyes. Getting through the sequence can shake viewers to their core. The team even discussed whether or not to directly make the stirring footage public. That would speak louder than any explanation or metaphor decrying the discriminatory and differential treatment.But in the opinion of director Tsai, taking the bodycam footage out of context would most likely exacerbate the hostility between the two parties involved. It might turn into a conflict between an individual migrant worker and a cop. Appropriately including the footage in the documentary could help the audience realize that the problem is not entirely a needed overhaul to the system and the law, but might be rooted in the collective psyche. This is what the documentary wants to point out."That is how we think of migrant workers. This incident only sets off those attitudes. One aspect of the happening is that the officer fired 9 shots. Why did he do that? Other than his nervousness, there is a mental state that backdrops the moment. Perhaps he has a negative impression of migrant workers and never attempted to understand them. The two groups of policemen that arrived at the scene later did not give importance to life despite their seniority. Even government officials did nothing to improve the situation. After Quốc Phi Nguyễn was shot, bystanders shouted derisively, 'Try to fight back now'. That is our collective psyche."From Individual to SocietyYet what is a so-called "proper" context that can connect the incident, bodycam footage, and central story?Firstly, an individual occurrence is juxtaposed with the overall environment. The main thread of the story in And Miles to Go Before I Sleep deals with Quốc Phi Nguyễn, but Tsung-Lung Tsai also overlaps layers of experiences: occupational injuries endured by migrant workers and attempts to escape those terrible working conditions while being chased by the police. A complete picture of this incident is gradually painted by including the perspectives of all those involved, migrant workers, firefighters, senior police officers, lawyers, unlicensed taxi drivers, mountain rangers, immigration officers, and so forth. Everyone is given a voice as news images then lead to their personal interviews. Whether the migrant workers are staying legally or absconded, they oftentimes toil under harsh work environments and poor working conditions. It is them that support Taiwan's modern buildings and transportation to our world-leading electronics industry. While posing to the world as a bastion of freedom and human rights, Taiwan chooses to ignore migrant workers' labor rights, right to survival, and human rights through ruthless arrests and unfair treatment. A multitude of migrant workers' associations have called Taiwan an "island of slave workers" from early on.With this multitude of incidents and news excerpts weaved together, the audience slowly goes from the Quốc Phi Nguyễn tragedy into an entire overview of migrant workers' life and work in Taiwan. Systemic deficiencies and structural problems become apparent, but the chief reason we cannot overlook is still the way many Taiwanese behave towards migrant workers and deep-rooted discrimination.Incidents blend and intertwine with four sections of the bodycam footage in this context, lending strength to each other. The beginning of the bodycam footage enshrouds the audience in an uncertain mist, with the veiled facts being revealed one after another. This narrative thread composed of incidents, news reports, and interviews complements with the bodycam footage to portray the reality of migrant workers in Taiwan from a rational perspective.Quốc Phi Nguyễn is the protagonist of the other storyline. It begins at his hometown, from his childhood to adulthood, family, and why he chose to pursue work in Taiwan. His Facebook posts expressing his feelings serve as off-screen commentary to help the audience get to know Nguyễn the man. The documentary is the story of a real person. Tsung-Lung Tsai said bout this approach:After absconding from his employer, migrant worker Quốc Phi Nguyễn led a group of Vietnamese friends to build houses for Taiwanese people around Zhubei, Hsinchu County."How can this documentary help you visually and emotionally realize that migrant workers are not tools, but human beings, with families and dreams. We often say that one should pursue one's dreams. That is why they came to Taiwan, to make their dreams come true."This narrative thread centered on Nguyễn's life story is interwoven with footage from the body camera. The news reports about migrant workers' occupational injuries and interviews offer yet another different perspective from the bodycam footage. As we become acquainted with Quốc Phi Nguyễn through images and videos, it is impossible to regard that migrant worker from the bodycam footage, virtually naked and lying on the mud, as simply a blurry face and dismiss him with a label. Viewers cannot pretend to ignore the struggle and pain that overwhelm his body after being shot so many times. Likewise, we will no longer treat migrant workers as merely animals or pieces of flesh instead of humans, stripping them of their human rights. This personal narrative combined with the bodycam footage act on the emotional level, arising empathy in viewers while also eliciting psychological shock.The bodycam footage alone can shake one profoundly. The rational probe and emotional empathy resulting from And Miles to Go Before I Sleep make it difficult for the viewer to watch from the sidelines or feel it is a distant happening. Even more so for Taiwanese viewers—we cannot pretend we have no hands in the matter. The documentary catches us unawares, forcing us to bear the guilt of this tragedy alongside all of Taiwanese society. The cruel yet authentic images of the bodycam footage are painful to watch. Tsung-Lung Tsai hopes that this pain can bring about tangible actions and power for change. This is the primary intention of And Miles to Go Before I Sleep.Narrative Adjustment and BalancingAnd Miles to Go Before I Sleep set out to interweave narratives from two different perspectives since the very start. One is that of Quốc Phi Nguyễn, the perspective of a departed spirit (roaming in the shadows); the other is that of Tsung-Lung Tsai, director and researcher of the incident (finding the pieces of the puzzle). Being able to obtain the bodycam footage and Nguyễn's social media posts chronicling his emotions increased the amount of materials available on the protagonist. The overall narrative structure thus had to undergo considerable adjustments. The pieces of the puzzle in the documentary consist chiefly of interviews to Li-Ching Lin—blue-collar worker and writer, senior police officers, and other interviewees. Albeit unseen, the director collects these fragments and attempts to piece together a host of systemic issues and uncomfortable truths. The structure built on these two pillars can be discerned in many aspects of the film.In the opening sequence, when Quốc Phi Nguyễn's family members are interviewed, we are shown the director and cameraman sitting opposite to Nguyễn's family, filmed by another camera. They are about to start the interview. Tsung-Lung Tsai mentioned that this arrangement intends to represent the perspective of the departed spirit, looking on all the research and interviews. This is also meant to create certain distance, so that viewers can shift between subjective and objective viewpoints to get a better understanding of the matter.In the interview, Nguyễn's father expressed that had it not been for his deteriorating health that prevented him to continue attending court, he would not have settled the dispute through conciliation."It is as if he was standing next to us as we conducted the interviews and research. To put it in stronger terms, perhaps all our effort will amount to nothing... As a researcher and journalist, this process is also being observed. The perspective of that spirit is like a bird's-eye view for me, taking in the entirety of the matter."Another effort to balance the narrative can be seen in the interview to the police officer's family. The media often framed the death of Quốc Phi Nguyễn as a polarizing event, with both sides finding fault with each other. But there's more to the narrative planning of And Miles to Go Before I Sleep than the migrant worker killed by 9 shots and the problematic migrant worker system that backdrops this incident. The statements by the involved policeman's family member and interviews to senior police officers broadened our perspective to show us the situation and challenges faced by junior-rank police officers and the police administrative system, as well as the scene of the act.In one post-screening Q&A session, Tsai was asked why he did not interview the involved police officer himself. Tsai answered that personal factors played a role in the death of Quốc Phi Nguyễn in addition to social ones. But the documentary's mission is not to deal with these personal factors, but to position this incident in a social context. Therefore, if the replies of the entry-level policeman who fired the shots do not contribute to our understanding of the structural problems, this might unintentionally place too much emphasis on this individual officer instead of shedding light on the more essential issues. That would also turn the narrative into a conflict between two disadvantaged parties, a more black-and-white situation. In the interview, the officer's family member expressed the other side of the story quite clearly, so interviewing the officer himself would not add any significant content to the film.Furthermore, when discussing the problem of absconded migrant workers in Taiwan, it is easy for fingers to start pointing at each other, especially with regard to problems in the brokerage system. In And Miles to Go Before I Sleep, director Tsai included remarks by a broker stating that they, too, are subject to pressure by businesses, employer demands, and commissions. This statement is perhaps too simplistic and idealized, failing to fully depict their responsibilities and duties, but it is enough to give viewers some awareness of the brokerage problem, so that they are able to grapple with the messy web of problems in this gargantuan system.Migrant worker advocacy groups organize a migrant workers' parade every two years, with their main request in the last years being to abolish the brokerage system.Bringing People TogetherWhen the Quốc Phi Nguyễn incident took place in August 2017, Zhi-Lung Zhang, in charge of in-depth documentaries for news program PTS IN-NEWS, also attempted to document and perform interviews on the matter. He began researching news coverage and ended up finding Nguyễn's hometown and family in Vietnam. He also got in touch with Nguyễn's younger sister, A-Tsao, who is also working in Taiwan. As an old colleague, Tsung-Lung Tsai asked Chang to keep the footage and data to serve as preliminary research materials for And Miles to Go Before I Sleep. Also with the assistance of Zhi-Lung Zhang, he managed to contact Nguyễn's younger sister and gain the opportunity to travel to Vietnam and film his family.At the same time, Tsai recruited some senior-year students to help with collecting a wide range of information for preliminary research, including news reports, incident data, and footage of migrant workers in Taiwan. Emma Lee joined the team in the film's planning stage. Another later recruit was Elvis Lu, with whom the director was not familiar at first, as well as cameraman Hao-Zhung Zhan—an old partner of Tsai's, film editor Hsuan-Kang Tsai, and music producer Min-Chieh Shih. They made the team of And Miles to Go Before I Sleep an assembly of renowned industry figures.The crew filmed the 2019 migrant workers' parade, with Elvis Lu as cameraman and Hsuan-Kang Tsai as executive producer (the documentary's film editor).Maybe this is related to the cumulative experience interacting with young students and artists as a professor in National Chung Cheng University. Tsai remarked that from the initial conception of And Miles to Go Before I Sleep, he looked forward to adopting different creative approaches to develop the project, such as collaborative filmmaking. Every member who joined the team did so for more than just fulfilling some specific technical need of the film. They consciously contributed their specialized skills as part of a creative collective, sharing opinions, discussing, and finishing a work together."You could say I approached them quite early. I later had an idea: a documentary is not enough. In order to change the mentality and values of Taiwanese society, it must be a diverse artwork. For instance, the film editor can use materials to make their own shorts, and the music producer can take these theme songs as their own independent music. And Miles to Go Before I Sleep is a work we completed through joint collaboration. We're calling it 'documentary' for now. Songs, short films, or even plays—they can turn it into whatever they wish. It's like shooting arrows in all directions, but they share a common theme, that is, migrant workers."Everyone who joined the production of And Miles to Go Before I Sleep was able to bring their expertise into full play. That might be the reason why no matter whether it's the narrative, ideas, images, or music, these masters in their fields engaged in dialogue and inspired one another, giving birth to a superb, powerful film that doesn't fail to impact viewers.Annotations[1] Khuôn viên văn hoá Việt Nam was co-founded by Vietnamese new immigrant Kim Hồng Nguyễn and her Taiwanese husband Tsung-Lung Tsai in May 2017. They have long devoted attention to issues of new immigrants and migrant workers in Taiwan, as well as the education and culture of second-generation immigrants. Their aim is to build a space for cultural exchange that transcends stereotypical perceptions of Vietnamese people, such as cuisine and performances.https://www.ydachangemaker.tw/post/1465-yue-zai-jia-wen-hua-zhan。​​​​​​​*Translator: Linguitronics

My first formal meeting with director Chu-Chen Hsiao was on December 2. It also happened to coincide with the opening day of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2022. It is perhaps best to begin this article with that fateful happening.A glance at the list of past Best Documentary Feature winners of the Golden Horse Awards will reveal that Chu-Chen Hsiao's name has a special significance. From the early days on, virtually all nominees or winners had been government-funded film studios, such as China Film Studio and Taiwan Film Studio, as well as the Forestry Bureau and Ret-Ser Engineering Agency. Across more than 30 editions of the Golden Horse Awards, Hsiao was the first Taiwanese director to win Best Documentary Feature as an individual, two years in a row! That was for the documentary films The Red Leaf Legend in 1999 and Grandma's Hairpin in 2000. This is a record that no one has surpassed ever since.1 I originally wanted to begin the interview with this topic to break the ice. I thought it'd be a casual and fun conversation starter, but when we met in person, her actual response on this achievement differed radically from what I expected. Surely she was the envy of many with such accomplishment, but personally for her, it was a source of much anxiety rather than pride.After her win with The Red Leaf Legend, all the talk was about what topic this young creator would choose for her next work. That attention opened the door to many filmmaking opportunities and someone even offered a large amount of money to her, asking her to make a documentary on a famous war-horse of the Tangwai movement (a political movement of opponents to the then one-party rule of the Kuomintang over Taiwan). It was the year 2000 and Taiwan was for the first time ruled by a new party. Contrary to the decades prior, a Taiwan-centric perspective was on the rise at the time, with many media outlets reporting on the topic. However, Hsiao decided to swim against the current and shine a spotlight on a group of old veterans that'd been forgotten by most."Perhaps I am a rebel soul indeed. Everyone wanted to erase this group of people from memory and cast off the historical burden. This further convinced me that it was necessary to make a documentary on the topic. It's not because I myself am the daughter of a war veteran. From the point of view of contemporary history, these soldiers have lived in Taiwan ever since the end of the Chinese Civil War—they are part of Taiwan's history, whether they fit in or not." When talking about the reason why she filmed Grandma's Hairpin, Hsiao recalled the following.Going Against the MainstreamChu-Chen Hsiao's "rebelliousness" goes way beyond merely opposing uncritical mainstream thought.It was a historic low for the Taiwanese film industry when The Red Leaf Legend scored its victory. That was because under the influence of multiple politico-economic factors, Taiwan slowly lifted its restrictions on foreign films in the 90s. Hollywood commercial films took the market by storm. With a large portion of viewers being lured away, the yearly output of Taiwanese films dropped drastically and so did their box office earnings; their annual market share was down as low as 0.2% at a point. That was the case even for the Golden Horse Awards, where Chinese-made films gradually started gaining a foothold.Purely 16 a film carnival was born out of this dire economic situation. Co-organized by Chu-Chen Hsiao and several other friends, including now renowned film professionals like Te-Sheng Wei, Wen-Tang Chen, and Hung-Ya Yen, only locally-made independent films were screened at the festival. It manifested a strong independent creative spirit disproportionate to its small scale. It can even be said that Purely 16 a film carnival was a courageous stand against trends at the time, reflecting the creative personalities of its co-founders.Senior figures disapproved and were pessimistic when Hsiao turned down the large sum of money and filming opportunity proposed to her. Yet she remained intent on listening to her voice within and made her work a response to those who criticized her.Hsiao was only 28 when Grandma's Hairpin won her a second Golden Horse Award. Most classmates and friends her age were still enjoying the pleasures of youth, but she couldn't—she'd witnessed more woes and tragedies than any other of her peers, death and parting of the human exodus from China to Taiwan upon the Nationalist regime's loss. It was precisely because she documented these stories that she gained such great recognition as director. The acclaim, however, made her increasingly apprehensive of the world. She felt incredibly lonely and even considered stopping to make documentaries.The memory is still vivid even today. Whenever she visited those she'd filmed at the veterans home, she saw the condition of these dear seniors deteriorate by the day. She thought to herself that despite she'd immortalized their stories and even reaped success as a result, there was nothing she could do about their hardships and regrets. What's more, she felt puzzled and didn't know how to deal with this helplessness."I witnessed so many things at a young age. The life stories of those I filmed or the waning of Taiwan's film industry—everyone's enormous struggle to survive and move up the ladder raised in me a lot of questions about humanity, life, and even the idea of country, but no one around was able to discuss these matters with me", she remarked.Guilt, Not GloryThe ability to think profoundly is often one of the characteristics that sets outstanding artists apart.The Red Leaf Legend and Grandma's Hairpin launched Chen-Chu Hsiao into fame, but simultaneously put a huge burden on her shoulders. Many documentary filmmakers have to deal with the guilt of reaping success from others' stories and the powerlessness and self-doubt of being unable to change reality with their work. This prompts some to give up or try a hand at other creative genre. To overcome this hurdle, it is necessary to set out on a personal quest for an answer—there is no ready-made solution.The answer to Hsiao's unease was found in the Buddhist teachings.She was on the verge of giving up on documentary making. By a twist of fate, she was invited to film a documentary on Dharma Master Cheng Yen, who had just received a Presidential Culture Award. Listening to Cheng Yen speak about the Lotus Sutra while making the film and learning about the sacred text's views on the world taught her different ways to acknowledge and understand her wariness and anxiety. She then went on to serve as a volunteer at Cheng Yen's Tzu Chi Foundation in disaster rescue work at home and abroad for a long time. Members of film circles at the time were bewildered upon noticing her absence from film-related events and the hiatus in her film output—it was as if she'd suddenly vanished from this world!Her volunteering experience was life-changing, but it is barely ever mentioned when discussing her films and creative oeuvre.The years she spent as a disaster rescue volunteer helped her reflect on her role as a filmmaker. She came to discover and face her limitations. As human beings, our understanding of the world is very restricted. "I" is frequently what artists think about the most: How do "I" see the world? How do "I" express myself? How do "I" create works that are thrilling, outstanding, or transcendental? There tends to be too much ego in their minds.That overemphasized "I" becomes so tiny when everything before one's eyes is suffering and torment.From that moment on, she decided she did not want to be a creator or artist, but she no longer refused to tell other people's stories. She would just follow the flow. She was now able to both let go and carry the burden of those things that used to trouble her in the past.Following the Flow and Feeling at EaseOther than continuing to make documentaries in the last several years, Chen-Chu Hsiao has produced retrospective works on several significant films from the history of Taiwanese New Cinema: Our Time Our Story: 20 Years' New Taiwan Cinema and Face Taiwan: Power of Taiwan Cinema. Hsiao has also made a series of outstanding television series for Tzu Chi Foundation's Da Ai Television. Additionally, she began teaching film-related courses at National Tsing Hua University. Her life came to spin around filmmaking, and it has been so until the present.With time comes maturity, yet Hsiao's creative impetus hasn't stalled a bit. This year (2022), she accomplished yet another mind-blowing feat, finishing two films, including On the Train, a National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) grantee and nominee for the Busan International Film Festival 2022.In contrast to speaking of her past exploits, she is quite relaxed when discussing her latest film.Director Chu-Chen Hsiao documented drivers' stories aboard the train, but beyond that, she was searching for a life answer.  (Courtesy of Chu-Chen Hsiao) When asked why she chose railways as the theme for her latest documentary On the Train, her reply was simple: She herself is a hardcore traingoer. Chu-Chen Hsiao is a Kaohsiung native. She lived there until high school graduation, when she moved to Hsinchu for studying at National Tsing Hua University. She had to rely on a lengthy train journey to move between home and school at the time. Afterwards, her parents moved to Hualien and the train became nearly the only way to go back home.For her, space-time on a train is unlike any other. One is usually surrounded by strangers. One sits at an intimate distance from other passengers, even when traveling alone, so there is no choice but sharing some emotions and "little secrets" with other passengers in the closed train cabin. It is common to hear soft whispers of love at times or the heated argument of some passenger with their call on speaker, even people confiding something to someone on the other end of the phone while adding "I'm only telling this to you and you can't let anybody else know"—they're entirely oblivious to the crowd of strangers sitting around them.Since she had to travel by train quite often, there were plenty of opportunities to observe incidents and changes that took place either on the train or around train stations. In particular, the two experiences that left the deepest impression on her are connected to death.She related how once, someone in the same cabin had a sudden heart attack. The person couldn't breathe and their heart stopped. Luckily, the friend she was traveling with happened to be a doctor and quickly proceeded to perform CPR on the afflicted passenger. Hsiao rushed across the cabins to reach the train driver and several other passengers also left their seat immediately to help as they could. In the end, the train stopped at a minor station for the passenger to be sent to a hospital on an ambulance. The other experience was when she took a train from Hualien late at night. Hsiao felt exhausted and quickly began dozing off, but soon after, the train made an emergency stop and she was thrown forward and hit the seat in front, per physical law. The sudden braking caused the entire train cabin to shake and startled passengers' screams could be heard coming from all directions. For a brief moment, she thought the train had derailed and was about to turn over. Fortunately, the train then began to slow down and it was announced that the reason of the incident had been someone lying down on the train tracks. The journey had to pause for nearly two hours and passengers could only wait on board for the situation to be solved. Despite the train began running again, the journey afterwards felt very bumpy. The driver kept stepping on the brakes. One could feel their nervousness and unease; they were like a rookie on their first time behind the wheel. The only thing she wanted to do then was to run into the driver's cabin and sit by their side to keep them company. She could easily imagine the tremendous fear and stress the driver must've been under after the incident, alone in the dark, with nothing in sight but two tracks extending limitlessly.Retracing the Tracks of HistoryWhen riding a train, people don't notice much except the train station and whether it's beautiful or not, the scenery outside the window, or the nostalgia of train meals. We rarely ever think about or get to see the driver or maintenance workers that take care of railways across the island. Many railway employees go unseen by passengers, yet they work so hard for everyone's journeys and life schedules to go according to plan.Taiwan has a profound and intimate connection with railways. There are countless fascinating stories to unearth either from the perspective of history, development of settlements, or everyday culture. Yet if we comb through existing dissertations or relevant records, trains and railways serve merely as a backdrop in the majority of scripts, including in many Taiwanese movies. This is common imagery across films, such as Dust In The Wind and A City of Sadness. These have memorable scenes featuring trains and railways, but very few works document or discuss railways and the lives of railway employees."Trains are an excellent point of departure. You can practically write a chapter on Taiwan's history by looking at railway culture and the context of railway development", she remarked.History is central to most of Hsiao's past oeuvre, whether the protagonists in front of the lens are men whose lives are fraught with uncertainties despite being members of a legendary baseball team in their youth, or veterans in the dusk of their life that were driven away from their hometowns by war and never able to return decades since. What she sees from behind the lens is not people, but rather, the flow of history roaring behind these individuals. On the Train might be themed on railways, but it is the same at the core.Director Chu-Chen Hsiao only wanted to document the shifts in the South-link line at first, but ended up stepping into the world of frontline railway staff.  (Courtesy of Chu-Chen Hsiao) When asked about her strong interest in history, she replied that maybe it is due to her incompetence in mathematics since an early age. She never considered pursuing a career in the sciences for this reason. It could also have been that she inherited her father's love of books. She would spend all her spare time reading as a child. She probably went through every page in the books from her hometown's small library. Her conclusion was that she loved history books best—they show us that history repeats itself and that the success or failure of history's actors and history's revolutions have reasonable explanations.When taking the Joint College Entrance Examination, Hsiao's number one choice was National Taiwan University's Department of History. However, she shared, her math grade was too low and back in those times, one had to respond essay questions on the Three Principles of the People. Her final grade fell short and she was scolded badly by her teacher. In the end, she opted for National Tsing Hua University's Department of Economics. She said it was because when doing research on the department, she saw a lot of social analysis and macroeconomic studies—close enough to history. It was only after enrollment that she realized it required lots of accounting, calculus, and statistics credits, in other words, math, just what she fared worst at!"The result was that my university grades were terrible. I only cared about student publications and participating in feminist movements, constantly picking quarrels with school", she remarked.Trust Is the Fuel That Propels UsChu-Chen Hsiao is quite straightforward and jovial in conversation, without much flourish or formalities. It is perhaps because of this character that she comes across as someone approachable and trustworthy. That is a natural advantage for a documentary filmmaker.When filming On the Train, one of her greatest challenges was the scarcity of archival footage on the South-link line. Later on, she became acquainted with Ming-Cheng Liao, Section Chief of the Duoliang Section Rerouting Project, during the filming process. In a conversation, Hsiao learned that Section Chief Liao had been personally involved in the construction project for the South-link line. This is not the only surprising coincidence Hsiao encountered. She lived a series of similar happenings throughout the filming process. For instance, she also discovered that one of the persons she'd been filming actually came from a family of railway employees. The experiences of three-generations amounted for a touching story. In fact, many of those filmed enthusiastically introduced Hsiao to more individuals that had participated in the South-link line's construction. It was thanks to such goodwill and trust that she had the chance to document so many heretofore unheard stories of the railway line.Only with a tiny bit of hope, Hsiao asked Section Chief Liao whether he had kept some photos from the time of the construction, and he only casually agreed to go search for some back home. Never did she imagine that after some time, he'd come back and personally deliver two large bags filled with photos from the construction period of the South-link line.With utmost care, she carried the two bags with precious pictures in her arms and estimated how long it'd take to scan them all. She was worried that the task could not be completed in a day. It turns out that Section Chief Liao gave her a moving reply, "These photos I keep in my house are just memories, but if I hand them over to you, they can turn into history."Section Chief Liao gave her more than just pictures. To her, they were fragments from the lives of many people and pieces of the priceless puzzle we call this land's "collective memory".The items collected by retired railway employees, those train scrap parts, bear witness to a bygone era.  (Courtesy of Chu-Chen Hsiao) Railway networks were extremely dense on the island of Taiwan for a period in history. Trains would carry not only people but also lumber and metals. With the land dressed in fine, intricate lines of rail tracks, one could even have called Taiwan the "kingdom of railways". As time moved on, however, these industries began to wane and so, the trains and numerous railway lines fell into disuse. Furthermore, after the 90s, Taiwan's transport policy focused in substituting railways with highways. People from younger generations might find it hard to imagine the central role that trains played in the past. The lives of the working class were also deeply affected by the shift. From train stations and waiting platforms to train cabins, these are filled with memories, both sweet and sour, reminiscences cherished by people regardless of the emotion.One can observe this in Hsiao's documentary: crowds of people competed to buy tickets and board the last trip of the now-defunct ordinary train with blue exterior. Even if many of those passengers were past their prime, their eyes were shining with excitement when sharing memories from their youth on the train with younger companions, as if they were transported to the past. It is not scenery that flashes before passengers' eyes from outside the window—they're reliving their youth.The Railway Encircles the Island, Why Choose the South-Link Line?The railway encircles Taiwan, why the South-link line then?Hsiao recalled that in the beginning, even the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) asked her the same question. Why choose to film the South-link line, that few people pay attention to, instead of the more state-of-the-art North-link line? This kind of response made her feel that not even TRA shows appreciation for the South-link line. It fails to recognize the importance of this railway line.The South-link line was the last railway line to be completed in Taiwan. The rest began to be planned and built during the Japanese colonial period leveraging Japan's technical prowess. From onsite surveying and route measurement to the construction stage, a Taiwanese team completed all the necessary tasks for the South-link line. The process began in 1980 and the line began operating in 1991. It has the highest altitude among all of Taiwan's railway lines and it crosses tall, craggy mountains with relatively less settlements along the way. Not only did this make construction work more challenging, but it also significantly increased the difficulty of delivering supplies across such long period of time.The South-link line was also Taiwan's last railway line to undergo electrification, so it preserved many expansive railway sceneries that were only possible with legacy facilities. In comparison, railway lines that were electrified early on had their sights spoiled by messy, intertwining cables hanging from forest-like electric poles.What matters most is not why Chu-Chen Hsiao chose the South-link line; we should simply feel lucky that she did, because a lot of the breathtaking sights along the South-link line have now vanished behind the electric poles and cables. On the Train preserves that untainted beauty for posterity.The sights of the tracks in the documentary are now just a memory.  (Courtesy of Chu-Chen Hsiao) Perhaps it is because she's older that filming is no longer merely artistic creation for her: it is about keeping records for this land we live on, so that we may look back on them and develop a closer connection to our homeland. This was her original goal when deciding to make this documentary, but not everyone shared her ideal in the initial stage when seeking production funding. In the review committee meeting for certain grant, a reviewer stated that, considering the consecutive safety incidents that have occurred in Taiwan's railways in recent years, they'd be concerned that the documentary is interpreted as publicity on behalf of TRA.Documentaries are fated to encounter this problem: they are always expected to be filmed from a critical perspective. This expectation almost certainly exerts a great influence on a documentary's performance in Taiwan. In the beginning, documentaries were controlled by political organs, serving as tools to promote their ideology. When the Tangwai movement gained momentum in the 80s, they were weapons for the people to protest against authoritarianism. In more recent times, many documentaries are created for the purpose of bringing attention to people at the bottom of society and the underprivileged. This evolution has made it nearly impossible to separate documentaries from politics and social issues. Some viewers still hold this stereotype of documentaries.Hsiao felt deeply frustrated about the reviewer's worries. She knows that documentaries don't necessarily have to be about criticism. They are products of the art of filmmaking and thus should be open to all sorts of possibilities. This is the principle she keeps in mind every time she reviews grants or acts as judge for a film festival. She firmly believes that there is merit if a documentary extensively revisits and criticizes the railway safety incidents from Taiwan's recent history, however, this is not the story she wishes to convey. The shifts and disappearance of railway culture are the closest to her heart. They are the traces of a bygone era and an important part of collective memory in Taiwan. This is what makes them precious cultural assets that won't fail to move audiences when compared to critical documentary films."Cultural identity" has become a hot topic in Taiwan in recent years. Hsiao believes that it is imperative to first be acquainted with the shifting appearance of the land we live on and its historical footprints in order to discuss our cultural identity. It cannot simply be born out of thin air, with people ignorant of these facts. She puts these beliefs into practice, too. It is conspicuous in her oeuvre. From Face Taiwan: Power of Taiwan Cinema to On the Train, she constantly attempts to present the changing faces of Taiwan through film, simultaneously expressing her care and recognition of this piece of land.A Person's Solitude Dispels the Loneliness of ManyIn On the Train, the story is not told from a single person's perspective. It features a large number of individuals. The protagonists range from railway employees and train passengers to train connoisseurs—even the train itself is a major character. The huge size and racing speed of this central character made filming the documentary even more challenging.Chu-Chen Hsiao admits that the railway is the toughest theme she has tackled to date. It was particularly tolling on her body. She laughed as she mentioned how glad she is filming started five years ago. If she had to embark on this project today, her body might not be able to withstand the strain, no matter how strong her will is. She had to squeeze herself into the already narrow driver's cabin to get shots of the train driver. She could only enter a gap of around 50 cm behind the driver, so she had to give up larger devices in favor of a compact camera and her mobile phone. Through a three-hour ride, she had to stand continuously behind the driver, with barely any chance to even move her legs.Filming railroad maintenance workers was an entirely different trial. She had to go film after the last train departure and before the first journey the next day. Maintenance workers perform repairs and service the rail tracks in those five to six hours before daybreak. Besides working through the night, they must race against time to ensure the train can operate safely and punctually. These tasks are both physically and mentally taxing.As for the breathtaking mountain and ocean landscapes along the train route, she had to seek advice from train connoisseurs and reach remote areas without cell signal to take those shots. They had to dispatch a number of cameramen to stand by for half a day at various small train stations where no passengers would even alight or board, only to film seconds-long shots of the train passing by. If the result was unsatisfying, the cameraman had to wait for another half day or simply come back another time. Even cutting-edge drones were unable to keep up with the train's speed—by the time they identified their objective, they'd already have missed the chance to film the best sequence. All these circumstances made staff deployment a delicate task and pushed the production costs through the roof.The film crew was deeply moved at seeing the phrase "Have a safe trip" made from scrap parts of the train head.  (Courtesy of Chu-Chen Hsiao) Even with the NCAF grant, there were still more than NT$1 million in production budget to be covered. At the moment, Hsiao has taken on the expenses herself to finish the film successfully and meet the 2023 deadline of the screening project. On the Train has begun online crowdfunding in the hopes of bringing this distinctly Taiwanese railway story to more people through audience support.I remember how by the end of the interview that day, Hsiao brought up that as she was writing texts for the purpose of raising funds for the project, a phrase stood out that she especially wanted to feature on the poster: "A person's solitude dispels the loneliness of many." This encapsulates Hsiao's feelings from seeing the arduous effort by many railway employees these years. The train driver sits alone on the tiny driver's cabin, carrying travelers on a holiday or itinerants on their way home back and forth across the rail line. It is the solitude of railway staff that fulfills people's yearning to move and meet, dispelling passengers' loneliness.This phrase could also be used to describe Chu-Chen Hsiao herself.With camera in hand, chasing the stories of Taiwan's railways day and night, she also dispels the loneliness of cinemagoers through the artist's solitude.Annotations[1]Director Hao Zhou also won Best Documentary Feature two years in a row in 2014 and 2015, albeit these were in the name of a company.*Translator: Linguitronics

"Lonely as we may feel, we are like millions of stars, merging into a boundless universe, quiet and eternal. We are so tiny, yet act as bearers of the universe's infinite hopes. We hurt others and are hurt at times, as we slowly find the best way to survive." —Dear Uranus by Taiwanese songwriter Enno ChengThe surge in popularity of online video streaming, offering easy access to a plethora of science fiction (sci-fi) movies with an even wider variety of themes, has gradually aroused interest in cosmology among a larger demographic. This is not restricted to a basic understanding of physics, but has even sparked novel ideas in religion, philosophy, and esotericism.The pursuit of uncharted territory in the cosmos is naturally accompanied by an urge to seek spiritual truth deep within the mind. The vastness of the universe and all its galaxies reminds us of how tiny we are as humans, and awakens our yearning for eternity and curiosity about the unknown, helping us identify the value of existence. The limitless universe outside drives our soul to wander freely in our inner microverse. The diverse works produced by artists from all fields also reflect inspiration from the exploration of the outer and inner universes. The recipients of grants by the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) are no exception: many artists have delivered stunning and unique "astronomical" works based on the theme of the "universe".Start of an Interstellar JourneyA thrilling, even breathtaking, musical motif usually marks the beginning of an interstellar journey in a sci-fi film. Put your headphones on and press the "Play" button. The curtain is lifted to the crisp beating of percussion, revealing an ocean of stars that backdrops this intergalactic trip.In the Star Wars concert series by Taipei Percussion, the "stars" are the central theme of the entire program. The pieces chosen or commissioned for the performances are all related to the stars, ranging from string ensemble to percussion ensemble music, and taking listeners on a mind-blowing journey across the stars. The music is restless at times, as if quickly hopping from one planet to another through a star-studded firmament. It is enigmatic sometimes, an immeasurable darkness that enables listeners to feel the infinite quietude of the universe.Spell a Personal Galaxy Through PoetryRecipients of the Literature grant transcript and build their "mind-verse" through words. In Sang-Yiing Chang's book Mercury Sonata (水星之歌), the universe's natural phenomena act as protagonist, painting a picture of the small moments in life, life philosophy, and mental and spiritual growth. Chang believes that as we wade between the known and the unknown, we are looking for "meaning", not just "understanding". It is therefore adequate to say that Chang's poetry is also his personal philosophy.Poetry also brings to mind popular music—both often deal with love, a subject that doesn't fail to make people fall head over heels despite remaining intrinsically the same through the ages. Yu Lu's poetry collection Luminant in the Galaxy (星系明體) expresses feelings of love and frustration through elements like water and the stars. The poet mumbles in conversation with heart and soul to disperse the mist and persuade the beloved by exposing the voices of the inner mind.Cosmic Children's Stories by Bing-Hwang Hwang, on the other hand, adopts a sci-fi perspective of the universe, presenting magical narratives starring the cosmos and planet Earth through the creative project. The reader returns to childhood and is transported to a fantastic tale. For Hwang, as long as there are facts that elude us in this universe, there will be no limit for inquiry by kids or adults. We will always be children in this unfathomable cosmos.A Cosmic Philosophy Dictated by HumansVisual artists often look to philosophical ideas to find answers concerning this perplexing, voiceless universe. Creators turn to experience and intellectual literature to adapt a central philosophy for their art through constant deliberation and reinterpretation, as shown by the content of their works. Among the grantees, Yin-Ju Chen's Stellar Evaluations series, Extrastellar Evaluations III: Entropy: 25800, and Liquidation Maps attempt to discuss the mysterious energy of a virtualized universe and connect it with historical facts of the human world. Chen's art conveys apocalyptic prophecies of a dystopia. Just like the universe's entropy1 phenomenon, Entropy will eventually pull the universe down into perpetual chaos, implying humanity's pending doom caused by fatal greed and desire. Whether intentionally or not, the viewer is forced to face and listen to the universe's objective discourse and history's queries.The invisible energy of the cosmos is replicated and presented in concrete works visible to the eye. Tzu-Hsun Lee is adept at turning abstract fantasies into machine-like physical objects through art. A NCAF grantee, the Alien Space Craft Series consisted of manmade physical objects in the semblance of "quasi-organisms", something between a living being and a still object. The serial arrangement of a mechanical structure evokes the harmony present in life forms and the universe. Gravitational Wave by Te-Mao Lee uses the theoretical framework behind gravitational waves—energy released from the collision of black holes or neutron stars—as basis. The mechanism of the Michelson interferometer serves to produce a visual illusion of the space shaking, proving the existence of gravitational waves by allowing viewers to observe this otherwise invisible phenomenon.Projection of the Moon and StarsElon Musk (1971-), founder of both automaker Tesla and spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX, started the SpaceX Mars program at the turn of the century to achieve the mission of bringing humans to Mars by 2026. Such declaration made global headlines as the first bold statement of its kind. People's fascination with sci-fi is not only restricted to conscious thinking, but often comes true in dreams. Both technology and the imagination are in constant flux, rendering the boundaries between fact and fiction blurrier by the day.To the Moon, a resulting work of the VR Theater—Moon project by the Virtual and Physical Media Integration Association of Taiwan, and its exhibition were presented during the 50th anniversary of humans' first landing on the moon (2019). Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chieh Huang harnessed VR technology to revive the legendary moment: viewers could be astronauts wandering in space by simply wearing a VR headset. Myth, literature, science, and politics were all part of the imagery until the viewer had to bid farewell to their astronaut body and walk alone into the farthest frontier of this virtual universe, enjoying a spectacular sight.Riverbed Theatre received an International Cultural Exchange grant as it was invited to perform The First Time I Walked on the Moon at the 25th BeSeTo festival in Korea. With elevated seats and slanted image projection, the audience had the perspective of someone looking down on the Earth from the moon. The performers below were like a doppelganger of the self in a dream, a third-person perspective. The yearnings and limitations hidden deep within the mind manifested through shifting scenes of somnambulic trance. The First Time I Walked on the Moon prompts us to dream boldly, as what matters most is our experience overcoming darkness.Remember Your Roots, Carry Love and LightWhereas some works take people on a fantasy-like experience away from this planet, others lead us to focus on reality and the people, things, and events closer to us. The performance project 2017 Creation: Before we go to Mars by Open Theater Group tells the story of the Atu commune. Its inhabitants lead minimalistic lives of spiritual fulfillment. This conception of what human life could be in Mars is like a mix of sci-fi show Star Trek2 and the film Passengers, a utopian fantasy of future life in outer space. The protagonist Ikun from Mars and his mother have a heartfelt last conversation: "Our mission is to keep up with the pace of our imagination. We won't know until we get there. The farther you can tread, the larger your world is."Flying Group Theatre's Puppets Love Natrue series hopes to help people appreciate the beauty of our surroundings. Puppets Love Natrue is a trilogy in which The Heart of the Universe features a puppet actor as protagonist, a child who daydreams of the universe inside the mind. With a mute lead, the audience easily becomes immersed in the story and the visual light and shadow effects. This physical environment abounds with all sorts of sensory stimuli. Flying Group Theatre's goal is to shine a beam of cosmic light on the hope hidden within people's darkness.People Have Stars"People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you'll have stars like nobody else." —The Little PrinceThe abundance of accomplishments by NCAF grantees makes up a firmament full of bright stars. The many artists mentioned above in this article chose the infinite possibilities of the universe as the means to face the ceaseless metamorphoses, technological shifts between physical and virtual, life experiences, spiritual lessons, and other realities of our world. Their art is an endless journey of exploration and expression.As a star transforms into a supernova, it will emanate a strong, immense light, sufficient to illumine an entire galaxy. Despite death is its inevitable fate, its burst into light is the last exertion before extinction, because it knows that this is the true purpose of a star's existence.Notes[1] An entropy is a physical property associated with a state of disorder or randomness in a physical system. It can be viewed as an irreversible physical force in a thermodynamic process, reflective of the directed and irreversible quality of heat transfer processes in nature. (Quoted from the bilingual vocabulary list and academic terminology website of the National Academy for Educational Research: https://terms.naer.edu.tw/detail/1680044/?index=4)[2] Star Trek is a US sci-fi television series first aired in 1966. It was later adapted into a wide range of television series and movies.Further Readings"A Carcass Was Once a Living Being—Interview on the Publication of A Carcass Kissed by a Black Hole, the First Poetry Collection of Poet Chen Shao", NCAF Online Magazinehttps://mag.ncafroc.org.tw/article_detail.html?id=297ef7226f893862016f9dd52a6d000b*Translator: Linguitronics

The recent years have seen the emergence of “curating” as a trendy term in performing arts.  Borrowed from the visual arts, “curation” originally referred to a museum position to take care of its collection.  In the 1960s, with the rise of performance art, body art, live art, and happening, “curation” also expanded its realm from material exhibits to the immaterial media such as body and live performance.   The curatorial practice and position were introduced to the contemporary dance scenes in Europe to replace terms such as “artistic director,” “producer” or “programmer” in the 1990s, while a similar transition followed in Taiwan, as shown in the NCAF Online Grant Portfolio Archive that between 2013 and 2016, there were only one or two “curatorial project(s)” annually in the regular grant list but the number increased to 4 or 5 after 2017.    Curating as ProgrammingThe most common curatorial approach in dance found in the Grant Portfolio Archive is to put several productions together and to conceive a theme which connects all for marketing purpose and providing an integral narrative for the program, as a continuation of how “Dance Collection” and “Dance Festival” used to operate.  Similar examples include “New Choreographer Project” by MeimageDance featuring overseas Taiwanese dancers to “choreograph at home,” “CoDance Festival” by SunShier Dance Theatre which brought choreographers of different generations together, the biennial or triennial transnational micro-dance festival “Dance Round Table” by TTCDance, “Want to Dance Festival” by Shinehouse Theatre  staged at unconventional spaces  in the historic Wanhua district, and “Next Choreography Project” by Shu-Yi & Dancers as a platform for young emerging choreographers.   This approach is more like the programming of various dance productions together, and it mostly invites and presents conventional dance pieces, thus showing little difference whether it is under the work of a curator or an artistic director.  The curatorial concept is often proposed to polish the program, especially for the organizer to promote the event more effectively through such an interconnection among different productions.  Since the purpose is to connect, they will also invite the artistic directors, curators, and producers of major festivals or venues to establish and strengthen the network in production and marketing.  Curating as a response to the problematiqueHowever, since 2016, the NCAF Grant list has shown a different approach to dance-curating: the curator would first propose a certain problematique, and then invite artists from different disciplines to explore or respond to the raised topic via performance, workshop, lecture, idea exchange, or work-in-progress.  Their curatorial practice is to adopt dance and body as a medium to investigate the chosen topic, be it a specific issue or something interesting to be developed, and to collectively produce a response which is highly sensorial, experimental, dynamic, and organic. In this case, we see “Primal CHAOS - Dance X Sounds Improvisation” organized by HORSE exploring how body and sound improvised for an intuitive encounter, and “Body Archipelagos” by Bare Feet Dance Theatre where body became a point of departure for theatre companies, independent artists, and writers to gather and to develop a body-oriented interdisciplinary momentum and discourse.  Meanwhile, “Back to the moment Dancing Talking Bar,” another project by HORSE, invited senior dancers, choreographers, and critics to join in the screening of the recording of past performances, followed by an in-depth conversation with a purpose to revisit and recontextualize the history of the Taiwanese dance scenes.  The Pingtung-based Tjimur Dance Theatre started Tjimur Arts Festival to further its work with the local cultural communities in the indigenous tribes in the Sandimen area as it brought people of various professions from dance, cuisine, agriculture, to craft together.  “Seeing the Unseen - A Site-specific Creation Project” was another attempt by Bare Feet Dance Theatre which walked away from conventional stage to open up a contextualized conversation between the body and the environment, while Dancecology’s “Contours - Dance Film Exhibition,” featuring dance videos from both Taiwan and Australia, also touched upon the environment but it aimed to reflect on the reciprocal relationship between humans and ecology/nature.  Interdisciplinary CuratingThere are also projects exploring other possibilities of curating contemporary dance in the aspects of research, theory, and history: the choreographer Lo Wen-Chun participated the NCAF’s Curator's Incubator Program @ Museums, through which she collaborated with the new-media artist Wang Lien-Chang to visit France for a research on performance art and the contemporary choreography in Europe in the 2014-2015 project “‘Maintaining _ Body’ Movement Topology & Tracks in the City.”    In Dancing Museums: Research on Interdisciplinary Performance, the dance scholar Chang I-Wen traced it back to the experimentations by Judson Church and minimalist art in the 1960s to study how dance is related to performance art and live art, as later published in her essay “Choreographing Exhibitions: Performative Curatorgraphy in Taiwan” which could be read in the NCAF electronic journal Curatography.  “Digital Corporeality: Choreographing New Media Arts” was another research project conducted by Chang, with its first-stage research-in-residency funded by the NCAF’s Production Grants for Independent Curators in Visual Arts, in which she focused on “Choreography” and “Technological Phenomenology of the Body” to investigate the relationship between technological arts and the digital(ized) body.   The curatorial practices and research projects discussed above all employ dance and body as the medium for its ability to have an immediate reaction, physically and critically, to the time and space it inhabits, rather than simply a carrier of movements and emotions.  Such a perspective thus expands the historical, political, and social dimensions of curating contemporary dance, as it increases its interdisciplinary reach.  The curator Jo Hsiao included dance, performance, participatory art, online streaming, lecture performance, puppetry, document theatre, music, sound and video in Arena, organized by Taipei Fine Arts Museum, to create a loop of interplay between live exhibition and static display.  In “FW: Wall-Floor-Window Positions,” as a part of the ADAM Project by Taipei Performing Arts Center, the curator and performance artist River Lin invited choreographers and dancers in the time of the pandemic where arts could almost only take place online to reflect on how the Internet and online streaming had an impact on dance in terms of spatiality, performativity, and spectatorial co-presence.  Re: Play at C-LAB, curated by River Lin, Chuang Wei-Tzu and Powei Wang was another example with the body as its point of departure, as it revisited the 1990s to focus on the body which appeared in the visual arts and little theatre in Taiwan.   By examining the image of body in the 1990s, re-enacting and re-narrating the history, engaging daily spaces, and workshopping, it explored what the body could possibly indicate in our modern/contemporary society.   With the emergence of “curating” in Taiwan’s contemporary dance, it certainly deserves our continuous attention to expect how the Taiwanese choreographers, dancers, “body performers,” and dance researchers will develop their unique body-centric curatorial discourse and practice, which can further correspond to the wider Taiwanese context as a resonance or critique,       *Translator: Siraya Pai

 “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” —— Albert EinsteinEveryone agrees that there are no winners in war. One would think that since every nation in the world has been through war and all of its losses, peace should be the universal consensus. Yet in this very moment, there are still armed conflicts of varying scales ongoing in various countries. The Silent Generation lived through destruction of cities. What excruciating pain the bodies and minds of countless families had to undergo due to terror and anti-humanitarian persecution and invasion. "Rack and ruin" was not just an idiom for them, but their day-to-day, the feeling of suffocation they had to endure for a lifetime.Most of the people who experienced World War II are now in the dusk of their life. How can their progeny—in the prime of their life—feel and understand the hardship of those grim times? Ting-Chi Wang, a native of battle-scarred Kinmen Island, visited former battlefields across Europe in Frontiers, Conflicts, Memories, Reenactment—Art and Cultural Movements During International Conflicts, in an attempt to discover the sustained influence military conflict still has in the world and society, as well as its grim warning, through personal on-site investigation. Maggie Liao's The Cosmic Artist is a documentary that serves to shed light on Yuan-Chia Li, the "first Chinese conceptual artist" that left his homeland to escape from war and settled abroad to avoid persecution. His life of solitude and determination was dedicated to self-expression and to combat inequality due to modern forms of feudalism, racism, and classism.What is war like? Only war survivors know, but most will seal their lips about it. The first reason that comes to mind is the gloom that recalling such memories entails, but there's also the fear of sinking back into regret, guilt, or the vicious nightmare of "everything would've been different if I'd made other choices". Oral History Interviews to Taiwanese Soldiers systematically organized and studied historical data from Taiwanese veterans. Racing against time, several near-centenarians were interviewed to allow more people to better understand and care about the human rights situation of war survivors from the perspective of Taiwan's contemporary war history and victims. Oral History Project of U.S. Western Enterprises Inc. Intelligence Agents Stationed in the Matsu Islands During the Korean War interviewed Dr. Michal Korinek, a U.S. national, who happened to act as an intelligence agent in Taiwan during his military service amidst the Korean War. He carried out intelligence operations during the Cold War, serving as a witness of historical changes who, despite coming from abroad, experienced the process alongside inhabitants of the island nation.It is difficult to put into words battlefield casualties and the number of lives lost to military conflict, yet it is important to notice the gender ratio amidst all these and the disparities generally caused by biological differences under these extreme circumstances. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Shu-Yuan Kao participated in the exhibition Intimate Transgressions organized by New York's White Box Art Center with photography and video artworks based on the traumas and scars left by war on survivors and comfort women. A total of 15 women artists were part of the exhibition to remind the world of this dark chapter in history, by now nearly forgotten. The exhibition reflected on armed conflicts and demanded accountability from anti-humanitarian acts committed in relation to such. Using the gender lens, another facet of the human experience of war is revealed and contemporaries are called on to consider whether such bloodshed, which achievements are so limited, are really imperative or even necessary. After reading Yokohama Mary, the story of a legendary prostitute told in the documentary by director Takayuki Nakamura, Inred Liang realized that many women share similar stories to the documentary's central character, Hachiko, during wartime. For instance, the insincere words received by the first Taiwanese comfort women who demanded an apology from Japan changed their lives forever. This idea led the artist to start a script writing project and create The Dress of Queen Mary, allowing the audience to closely follow the main character's life to inspire reflection by broadening their horizons.Perhaps time is the only phenomenon in life not fraught with dualism. Whether it's the events currently happening in the land we call home or the power struggles with lethal potential across the world, war does not only consist of chapters in history books or stretches of consciousness—entangled therein are also lives sacrificed for no valid reason and chaotic, absolute violence. "Progress" is non-stop in the world, but so is armed conflict. Perhaps this is the time to sit down and think, what is the legacy of war?From one point in time to the other, ripples in the water will not disappear as long as wounds remain open and gunfire is still raging.*Translator: Linguitronics

ForewordInternational exchange has always been a major category of grants by the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF). The current results and statistical data on the International Cultural Exchange archive show continuous growth in the overall quantities  of international exchange activities. As for non-quantitative long-term trends, the international experiences of groups are not limited to production (final products), but are enriched by reflecting on the nature of cultural exchange/communication, thus achieving self-understanding through cross-regional and cross-disciplinary coordination and communication. The COVID-19 pandemic began to spread globally in January 2020. In response, NCAF offered project grants to artists and artist groups through the Beyond COVID-19 Program, which encouraged art professionals to develop innovative and diversified exchange projects during this transition period. Formally speaking, the project grant may be regarded as a grant program to encourage international exchanges in more diversified ways during the pandemic in response to its disruption of international travel and traditional (i.e., pre-pandemic) modes of exchange, that is, larger environmental factors. In my view, this program has two characteristics at first glance: one is economic. This program still has the function to provide "active relief" to artists to sustain their living and the operation of their teams during the pandemic. The other is "bricks and clicks". Through the incentives provided by this program, the wealth and diversity of exchange channels accumulated under the support of past international cultural exchange grants can be transformed or perpetuated via "digital transformation". This article summarizes the four editions of the Beyond COVID-19 Program (Performing Arts category) 1 implemented from 2020 to 2021 and preliminarily explores potential situations and issues in the digital transformation and online system building of artist groups during the pandemic, so as to provide reference for future international exchange activities.Classification and Summary of the Four Editions of the COVID-19 International Exchange Support Program (Performing Arts Category) Grantee ProjectsAs stated above, NCAF's Beyond COVID-19 Program encourages art professionals to develop innovative and diversified international exchange projects during the transition period of the pandemic. From 2020 to 2021, the Beyond COVID-19 Program (Performing Arts category) was implemented four times in total. Grantee projects included cross-national online exchanges, performances, preliminary research, and website and database translations into foreign languages.The grantee projects during these two years can be roughly divided into the following 8 categories: (1) Website updating (bilingualization/multilingualization and optimization); (2) Digital archiving; (3) Preliminary research or cooperative presentation of cross-national productions (preliminary research aimed ultimately at physical performances); (4) Online non-performance exchanges (artist residencies, forums, courses, workshops); (5) Online performances; (6) Content translation; (7) Work publishing (digital and print); and (8) Video production. Since some projects, such as those which published videos of online exchanges and digitized works on optimized websites, belong to multiple categories, the following section only describes the contents of each category without counting the number of projects belonging to each category.(I)    Website updating: This category can be roughly divided into three subcategories according to the content of individual projects. The first is bilingualization, platform building, and data uploading for integrated websites and self-media platforms, such as the online video archiving and website bilingualization of Flying Group Theatre. The second is the building of independent websites for existing international exchange projects and their outcomes, which simultaneously function as digital archives. For example, the contents of Shakespeare's Wild Sisters Group x Dainanagekijo x Mie Center for the Arts Present: Notes Exchange Anatomy Room are documented on a website and the links to the international network of the three-year Notes Exchange project are shared thereon. The third is the relatively simple website redesign and bilingualization, such as Müller x World: Müller Chamber Choir Website Upgrade and Digital Media Bilingualization Project.(II)    Digital archiving partly overlaps with website updating due to their shared requirement of data use and external communication. Other integrated digital archiving projects such as Bare Feet On-Line by Bare Feet Dance Theatre and HORSE Archiving Project by the dance troupe HORSE all include historical documentation from artists' written or oral accounts, website bilingualization, archive preparation, and other data compilation and archiving tasks from various stages.(III)    The main difference between preliminary research and cooperative development for cross-national productions is that the former still aims to put on physical performances after the pandemic comes to an end, while preliminary research or field surveys postponed due to the disruption of international travel during the pandemic are implemented through digital or online methods instead. In cooperative development, the resulting cross-national productions are directly made publicly available online. Projects of the former type include Ming-Hwa Yeh's Taipei x Bergen Co-Production Project: Preliminary Research and Development of Ming-Hwa Yeh's SHE: Images of Dance History According to Her. The latter includes the Taiwan-Germany Contemporary Music Co-Creation Project, a cross-national collaboration between the German flutist Katrin Szamatulski and Taiwanese composer I-Lly Cheng, which presented the final work in the form of a music video online.(IV)    Online non-performance exchanges (arts residencies, forums, courses, and workshops) include the 7 sessions of the six month-long online symposium Connect with SEA organized by Thinkers' Studio, in which conversations were carried out among owners, managers, and producers of independent organizations in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.(V)    Online performances include Studio Acht's 2020 Jeonju International Sori Festival Online Performance Project. While the international visit of this event was canceled by the organizer due to the pandemic, participation in the opening concert and other events by overseas artists was alternatively implemented in South Korea via live streaming.(VI)    Content translation projects include TOTAL Musical Theatre's script reading session and concert, which arranged the translation and adaptation of the musical You & It by EG Musical Company & Orchestra from South Korea.(VII)    Work publishing (digital and print) projects include Against Again Troupe's Against 18 Monograph Publishing Project, and the publication and international release project for Tradimento by the Italian publisher Ermes 404 in collaboration with artist Chia-Ying Lin.(VIII)    Video production can be roughly divided into two subcategories in terms of implementation method: The first consists of the filming and editing of existing works, which are made available through online performances or video platforms. Such projects include Formosa Baroque's Versailles II International Post-Production Online Sharing Session Project, which edited the video materials recorded during the ensemble's performance at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) in 2019. The second category refers to works produced in digital forms and methods during the pandemic, such as Hao-Yeh Wang's Several Interpretations of Home: An Inter-Disciplinary Digital Art Project Exploring the National Identity of Taiwanese People. The project was co-produced by Wang and four other artists based in three different locations, including choreographers Szu-Wei Wu and Yen Lee, video artist Yanina Isla, and sound artist Ng Chor Guan. The filming was done in Changhua, Taiwan, and Berlin, Germany. Two 6-minute solo-dance videos are expected to be completed and presented on a webpage on the existent website.Again, most of the Performing Arts grantee projects on the list encompass the nature and features of multiple categories. This is due to the complexity and diversity of creative processes and the mixed use of data more efficiently. Therefore, the classification above is a rough overall picture of the grantee projects for readers' reference and easy understanding, not a precise or absolute classification.NCAF's Beyond COVID-19 Program—HORSE Archiving Project, by the dance troupe HORSEObservations and Thoughts on Grantee ProjectsI.    The medium- and short-term "response to COVID-19" and the long-term "overcoming of COVID-19"When I was on the review panel of the Beyond COVID-19 Program, I considered the judgment criteria and the methods of assessing the effectiveness of a project. In summary, I believe the following requirements should be fulfilled at a minimum: (1) The work's subject-matter or contents should respond to the social conditions during/after the pandemic; (2) The delivery/exchange media should overcome physical limitations or offer innovative alternatives; (3) The project should compile its own developmental history and establish an archive to help write the history of the industry, thereby developing the capacity for subsequent exchanges; and (4) The business model should be adjusted to foster management of industrialized financial and legal affairs. Generally speaking, the grantee projects mostly possessed the features (2) and (3) mentioned above. Furthermore, international exchange depends on long-term communication, interaction, and empowerment, which cannot be achieved overnight. Most projects were based on existing international exchange networks or existing in-person exchange projects of applicants. During the pandemic, the mode of interaction was changed to online methods that overcome physical limitations (among the very few exceptions which did not involve any online platform was Against Again Troupe's Against 18 Monograph Publishing Project).The battle against the pandemic has lasted longer than any of us expected. Although there are signs of a temporary abating, it will still have a lasting impact on international exchange activities. In performing arts industry, individual artists, managers, artist groups, and venue operators or other stakeholders have adopted various strategies and policies with certain degree of effectiveness in response to the pandemic. At this point, I think these response measures should be defined as short- and mid-term plans, and it is too early to determine whether they are really able to overcome the pandemic and take advantage of transitional opportunities to create new demand, thereby becoming a plan fully adapted to the post-COVID-19 environment. For example, the multilingual websites or databases completed with the support of this grant still require human resources, funding, and other resources for future management and usage. Has this requirement been addressed in the long-term operational plans of the individual artists or groups, as to maximize their effect in international exchanges? Also, are the Internet platforms or online work models developed or established during the pandemic connected with the artist groups' sustainability strategy? All of the matters above must be observed and evaluated over a longer period of time to make fair judgments.II.    Physical-virtual integration of online systems and face-to-face modelIn terms of the availability of online systems at a global scale, 2020 was a historic year. Due to the disruption of physical international movement and the limitation to the scope of activities, online systems gained popularity as means of communication. To align with this inevitable trend, most of the grantee projects utilized various online tools such as Internet platforms to varying degrees in order to overcome physical limitations. At first glance, Internet tools seem to have done away with physical limitations and lowered the threshold for international exchanges, which is in turn conducive to the expansion of the exchange scope; however, international exchange activities through Internet platforms might also increase competition. Artists and artist groups must think more carefully about the purpose and method of communication, consider the diverse perspectives of the market and audience, and adopt steady and continuous implementation methods. Otherwise, in the absence of physical contact and communication, the content of an exchange could be difficult to "disseminate".The online systems and platforms used in the grantee projects and the content forms of these projects can be roughly divided into two categories: two-way simultaneous and on-demand. Events such as classroom-based lectures or forums and online performances are mainly two-way simultaneous. On-demand services, on the other hand, feature contents available on online resource platforms for the audience to view/experience whenever they please (on demand). Projects focusing on website optimization and archiving mostly belong to this category. Although both play the role of maintaining communications in the absence of physical travel, their operation methods and effects are very different.Two-way simultaneous online systems still have a synchronized character despite participants being based in different locations. This means that participants can only carry out communication when they are synchronized. On the other hand, communication via on-demand online systems or platforms neither takes place in one location nor synchronously, and the only element shared by the participants is the information (contents). Without in-person and synchronized meetings, communication happens very differently.During the pandemic, the biggest challenge for on-site stage performances, including theater, was that their physical, synchronized nature, heretofore a fundamental condition, was shaken. In summary, we may categorize the virtual and physical domains into three models, in terms of location and synchronicity: on-site experience-oriented (single-location and synchronized), two-way simultaneous (multiple-location and synchronized), and on-demand (multiple-location and non-synchronized). Before the pandemic, artists or artist groups probably only needed to take care of the "physical" matters. The pandemic has accelerated the trend of integration of the three aforesaid models and diversified operations by artists and artist groups. In the two-way simultaneous online stage, I think that the kind of "stage" experience viewers and listeners can share is still being explored. Such explorations include two-way experiments between artists who provide artworks/services and the audience members who receive the artworks/services. As for on-demand online platforms, the streaming service platform Netflix may serve as an example. This on-demand, subscription-based cultural consumer platform can be said to belong to a different cultural realm from that of the on-site stage experience. In performing arts, these two consumer models should be able to work together complementarily. The interaction and integration of the aforementioned face-to-face on-site experience, two-way simultaneous method, and on-demand service, I believe, are next-generation possibilities for international exchange in the post-pandemic era. This is not only an issue that performing arts industry must address, but also the key to the sustainable development of every arts group and venue.NCAF's Beyond COVID-19 Program—Studio Acht's 2020 Jeonju International Sori Festival Online Performance ProjectIII.    The absence of a market/audience perspectiveIf we regard the grantee projects as the artist groups' initial attempt to carry out digital transformation, a decisive difference in comparison to related issues in commercial or business management is the absence of a market/audience perspective. In short, the grantee projects mostly take the perspective of the artists and artist groups. The feedback from information or content users seems to be absent from the pre-project online tool selection process or in the follow-up project effectiveness evaluation. On the other hand, speaking of digital transformation in online sales from the commercial sector, the traditional strategy is usually to "build an official website and increase exposure of projects on different e-commerce platforms or on social media like Facebook and Instagram". The strategy most likely to be adopted by digital natives is "collecting various data online to understand the characteristics of target customers, including gender, age, occupation, and other related preferences, and then plan marketing strategies and select products that meet the needs of target customers". Its emphasis on data analysis can be regarded as what sets apart the pre- and post-digital transformation eras. Of course, this only represents a referential line of thought in the era of digital transformation, not the correct answer to our question. At this point in time, the grantee projects still seem to regard digital tools as a temporary alternative to on-site events or to existing work models during the pandemic. Their approaches are still similar to those of the early stage of digital transformation. They have not had the opportunity or time to explore a more advanced digital transformation strategy for the performing arts yet. One benefit of digital tools, in comparison to previous tools or platforms, is that they can record objective statistical data more easily. A business perspective aside, the significance of digital transformation is that digital tools are powerful enough to help performing arts industry understand consumers' behavioral patterns and reach more potential audience members. Therefore, to more effectively and efficiently exert the strengths of digital tools, it is necessary to incorporate market/audience perspectives.In addition, catalyzed by the pandemic, digital transformation or Internet-based diversification is to certain extent a conspicuous future trend. Therefore, the introductory text of Taiwan Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019-2023 published by PwC may be relevant, even though the performing arts are not included in its industry categories: "Entertainment & media (E&M) was the first industry to search for new directions amidst the revolutionary digital trend. However, this transformative endeavor still has a long way to go. Driven by technology and the constantly evolving consumer behavior, a more personal and personalized model of media interaction is continuously on the rise"2. In my view, the "personal" and "personalized" approach concurs with the emphasis on the market/audience mentioned above. While the performing arts industry is facing the issues of reshaping "liveness" and digital transformation, another key point is physical-virtual integration based on the aforementioned three models from (2). Since on-site experiences and online systems may have completely different audiences in either the international or domestic market, it is necessary to understand (or shape) the market/audience structure of the online platform as well as its difference from physical counterparts from the very beginning.IV.    Other topics related to Internet-based international exchange(I)   The content industry is closely associated with the management of "rights and privileges". The author believes that the performing arts industry can be regarded as part of the content industry in a broad sense, especially in the future Internet media environment. The leading position of the streaming service giant Netflix, mentioned for comparison with other online system models is currently being challenged by competitors. However, since its House of Cards in 2013, Netflix has adopted strategies that subverted industry conventions and may offer valuable suggestions for the performing arts industry. In short, Netflix boldly abandoned what may be called the golden rule of the film industry—the "window strategy"—which regulates the transition from public screening to subsequent screening on other platforms (TV, etc.)—and secondary product distribution, choosing instead to unwaveringly focus on an Internet platform. I believe that this approach can inspire the performing arts to think of different possibilities. Of course, this is not to encourage artists to adopt the business model of a pure Internet platform like Netflix. It means that the linear thinking to define live performance as a primary product, followed by secondary and tertiary products such as video releases, may no longer be fully applicable in the era of online media. For this reason, the diversified operations and international exchanges of the industry may require a different approach from the past. In addition, during the pandemic, the creative processes and phasic results of some international exchange projects were presented on the Internet as an alternative to on-site performances to some extent. In other words, this exchange method did not center on the finished work. It is worth exploring how this method can be developed or utilized after physical exchanges resume. Other issues that require in-depth investigation include how to manage the rights and privileges (copyrights, patents, broadcasting rights, etc.) of individual artists and artist groups in the Internet age, as well as the need to redefine and evaluate licensing in response to the rise of Internet media/platforms. (II)  The aforementioned Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019-2023 provides overall advice for entertainment and media as follows: E&M companies must reconsider their business and income models, be prepared for the advent of emerging technologies, adapt to regulatory changes, and build trust. Here, "trust" refers to the protection of personal data/information in the age of the Internet. It is not only a legal and supervisory issue but also an important reminder for the performing arts industry, which has begun to use Internet tools more frequently. Since individual artists and artist groups may reside either in the upstream, midstream, or downstream of the data/information industrial chain, it is important to properly protect the personal data they have obtained, pay attention to information security when transmitting personal data or streaming their works, and remain vigilant on issues such as digital addiction. These are all important issues to be addressed for building consumer trust and showing awareness on the importance of communication with audiences in the future age of media.(III)  With the rapid development of digital technology, profit-seeking businesses do not need to set up offices in countries where they seek to create markets. As a result, these countries have encountered problems including tax collection, tax base erosion, and tax loss. For this reason, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is committed to researching and developing the Global Profit Distribution Tax System, a global uniform solution of long-term taxation, which is expected to be implemented in 2023. Although almost all online exchanges or contents/performances from grantee projects made publicly available on the Internet were free of charge, it is expected that reasonable fees for these activities and content services will be charged in the future to pursue a more financially sound and sustainable business model. When non-profit organizations such as artist groups or venues are exploring new operating models, they are also under the sway of the global trend of digital taxation. In addition to content creation and aesthetic judgment, the financial and tax impacts on the operation management of online-based performances and exchanges should also be considered in the overall evaluation.NCAF's Beyond COVID-19 Program—TOTAL Musical Theatre's script reading session and concertConclusionThe COVID-19 pandemic that engulfed the world should not be regarded as a contingent event in international exchange. The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US in 2001, the global financial crisis caused by Lehman's collapse in 2008, Brexit in the UK and the Trump government in the US in 2016, and the global COVID-19 pandemic that has ravaged all nations since the beginning of 2020—all these events and changes seem unrelated at first. However, when viewed in the light of mankind's long-term development, they can be understood as reactions to the accelerated globalization caused by neoliberalism since the 1980s. The observations or thoughts above also suggest that terrorism, financial crises, or disease outbreaks may obstruct the physical communication and interaction between countries and people, but they also make us and other cultural groups or countries confront a common issue together. Moreover, on the shared space of the Internet, the technical, managerial, and financial and tax issues faced by individual artists or artist groups are more uniform than before. Therefore, concerning future international exchange activities, I believe that the most beneficial matter is understanding the limitations and boundaries of Internet tools and the operational logic of media communities. With the support of Internet and media tools, we may be able to propose a "Taiwan-style answer" to these universal issues through works/contents of performing arts or further raise a valuable and meaningful "Taiwan-style question".[1] NCAF's COVID-19 International Exchange Support Program has been implemented four times from 2020 to 2021 and supported a total of 131 projects. This article mainly focuses on the performing arts (music, drama, and dance).[2] For PwC's Taiwan Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019-2023, please see: https://www.pwc.tw/zh/publications/topic-report/2019-taiwan-enm-outlook.html*Translator: Linguitronics

Our house is our corner of the world. As has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. —Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space 18 years have elapsed since Flying Group Theatre was founded in May 2004. Centering on "non-human" characters, its name in a Chinese is a homonym for "non-human", in other words, puppetry. This troupe continues to delight audiences with stylistically distinctive works. Its brand image is defined by works such as: For All Age Groups —The Trilogy: A Sleep and a Forgetting, which has been repeatedly invited to stage performances; Close to You, which alludes to a connection between literature, history, and communities; and the continuously evolving Hear the House project 1. These works may also be seen as corners of the house of Flying Group Theatre, each safeguarding charming and distinctive objects and memories.At the end of 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic was a major challenge to performing arts professionals, Pei-Yu Shih, the director of Flying Group Theatre, was sitting quietly in their office, recalling the time when Flying Group Theatre was yet to be formed…The Kitchen, debut performance of Flying Group TheatreThe Kitchen 2 was first performed at the Crown Art Center Theater in April 2004 as a feature show in the 3rd Taiwan Women Theatre Festival.The play was about one hour long. Mixing human actors, puppets, and videos, Pei-Yu Shih wove these elements into symbolism for the Legend of the White Snake—a famous Chinese folktale dating back to the Tang Dynasty—to represent women's business in the kitchen, something always on her mind.When the curtain rose, dim light shone on the black box theater and a "kitchen" appeared before the audience. The play began with the sound of a cook's knife in the actor Chao-Chi Ma's hands. ...With certain hurry, the slicing of the knife can be heard as the ingredients turn from chunky into finely chopped ones; next, the clanging of music gradually becomes audible, mixed with a faint rumbling sound resembling a range hood. The woman wipes her hands and throws all the chopped ingredients into a pot, as if to draw a close to her work in the kitchen. She then takes out a book from the top shelf. Surrounded by the increasingly articulate human voices from the radio, she leafs through the book.Script files of The Kitchen (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre, written by Pei-Yu Shih)All of a sudden, a "Hello!" is heard, Spirited and energetic, the word pierces through the hitherto calm ambiance of the kitchen—that’s the sound from the radio, a masculine voice presenting The Legend of the White Snake in a new style of storytelling. What follows are a series of scene changes: At an unexpected moment, the radio host suddenly appears on stage, his body emerging out of the "refrigerator", and continues his story. In the next scene, another actor, Mei-Hua Hsueh, joins the stage with puppets in hand to perform her part. Pots, pans, and puppets are infused with life as The Legend of the White Snake progresses. With every corner of the kitchen involved in the drama, the play feels like an allegory of every stage of life, reflected by the shifts in lighting. During the performance, the audience often laughed out loud. Though emotion is the main appeal, The Kitchen is never without a sense of humor. 3Why The Legend of the White Snake? "Because I thought at that time that Su-Chen Pai (the "white snake") is a powerful woman and the master of her own fate, but she eventually chooses to become a housewife in the kitchen." When writing the play, Pei-Yu Shih was thinking about the inevitable "choice" that confronts Su-Chen Pai, whose case resonates with her own multiple identities as a director, puppet designer, and playwright.In the social climate more than 20 years ago, women were still shackled by strict and almost unchallengeable gender expectations, as if getting married and devoting herself to a family is the only reasonable life path for a woman. "I was also thinking, should I stop taking individual projects as a freelancer and settle down? It's like I had to think about working harder to build a family of mine, or…working harder to build 'something' that might truly be mine? It was time to take things seriously, but what kind of things?" When these thoughts occurred to Pei-Yu Shih, she happened to be working in the theater sector. In the meantime, the 3rd Taiwan Women Theatre Festival, organized by a crew of women, was just about to take place."… The curator then was Yu-Hui Fu. She talked me into this, so I joined the festival." When she was reaching the marriageable age according to conventional values, Pei-Yu Shih turned to theater, transforming her conceptions and aspirations for a "family".Since 1996, the Taiwan Women Theatre Festival4 has been held every four years. Its "all-woman crew" in curating, writing, direction, and project execution created an alternative and did away with the male dominance of Taiwan's small theaters in the 1980s, marking an exceptional chapter in the history of Taiwan's performing arts. However, what is a "woman"? Is there one unquestionable definition? How to be a "woman"? Should there be some kind of manual to must follow? These are key questions that merit continuous critical exploration. Pei-Yu Shih repeatedly asked herself such while taking part in the Festival and working on The Kitchen. As she confessed: "I must say that I have been lucky. Since childhood, I received education and training from my family that made me feel that 'gender' is not an issue . . . I mean, no one ever said to me something like 'hey, a girl can't do this, a girl should be like that'. So, I don't keep thinking that I'm a girl, or to put it differently, there's nothing I can't do as a girl. So, um, I felt a little awkward when taking part in a women's event (laugh)." As it happens, art is often a tool and channel to discuss this kind of dilemma.The Kitchen @ Crown Art Center Theater, 2004 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre)To match the Festival's emphasis on "woman", Pei-Yu Shih finally chose the "kitchen" as the central image to represent women as well as her life experience during that period. For her, it is a place with the strongest maternal aura: "The kitchen is the engine of the family. I mean, it needs to be ignited to make the house warm." Of course, the most important thing is that the "mother" is in there; at least it was so vividly in her cherished memories: “When I was young, my mum used to turn on the radio whenever she was cooking in the kitchen. So, whenever we heard sounds coming from the kitchen, we knew 'Mom's there!'. The kitchen was also the first place we children ran up to whenever we got home, sometimes to report things, sometimes just to get a snack (laugh) or to wait for dinner at the table outside the kitchen. So for me, many precious memories of my life come from there. For me, it really was a place of much warmth." She continues: "I was looking at her, the maker of all the warmth. Did she also feel the warmth inside?  My mom had a high educational background, but she ended up being a housewife. I couldn't help but wanting to know: is that what she wanted?" Recalling the kitchen in her house, Pei-Yu Shih pointed out that it was located at the far end of the house. One had to cross the living room and many other rooms to get there. "The ultimate concern of The Kitchen is: what exactly is happiness?"In this manner, Pei-Yu Shih seemed to raise questions for herself by having another conversation with her mother, this time as an image in her mind. Artists thus face their deepest concerns through their work.Although she did not study theater as a profession, she had been fascinated with drama. Pei-Yu Shih first worked as administrative staff for nearly ten years at her early stage of her career. The groups she worked for were all prestigious ones: Shiny Shoes Children's Theatre and Contemporary Legend Theatre, among others. From 1997 to 2002, she also served as manager and producer of Creative Society for five years.5  What does it feel like, debuting as a playwright and creator after working in art administration for so many years?She said: "Well, if you ask me, I don't think the real debut of Flying Group Theatre was The Kitchen!" The Kitchen, as it turns out, is not her first work.A Hidden Piece of History: B612, Before Flying Group TheatreIndeed, The Kitchen was the first production in which Flying Group Theatre applied for a grant, but the work that actually catalyzed the establishment of Flying Group Theatre, in Pei-Yu Shih's heart, is B612, which was performed at Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre in 2002. Performed before Flying Group Theatre was established, this play was the troupe's real debut for her.Speaking of her aspiration to create art, Pei-Yu Shih recalled how it was ignited during her time doing children's theater as a pastime. As a matter of fact, everyone in the theater scene was willing to put their all at the time, so as long as you wanted this, you could have a chance to try it out, to make a small work by yourself. Back then, the Shiny Shoes Children’s Theatre which I took part in had a theater called Small Shoes House that had regular performances every week. So the amount of performances was large, which means there was enough market demand to offer opportunities." Later, Pei-Yu Shih's administrative experience in various theater troupes also gave her the opportunity to learn how to produce a theatrical work and build a blueprint for her future career: "The wide range of my experience with theater made me understand the complexity of administrative affairs, of running a theater company. So, I wanted to actually make a play to figure this out, to figure out if I was able to form a theater company myself." So B612 was the testing ground for her "self-assessment". Program of B612, 2002 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre, hand-drawn by Pei-Yu Shih)The script was written by Huei-Na Lee, while Pei-Yu Shih acted as the puppet designer and director. "What about the administrative staff?", I asked. "No administrative staff! There was only me!" As there was a shortage of helpers, she did most of the jobs on her own. Recalling the crew of B612, she pointed out: "There were very few people; just a few designers, myself, and two actors. I also engaged Sheng-Ju Chao to help with the administrative matters, but basically, I had to deal with most of the matters on my own, the front desk and everything." Even the program was handmade by herself. The tickets were produced, copied, and then brought to the National Taxation Bureau for stamping. Her friends and family learned about the play through word of mouth. They left their contact numbers to express their interest, but whether they would actually show up was not ascertained until the actual staging. As for why they didn't register and apply for a grant before implementing the project? "Because I missed the deadline for grant application just when I made up my mind to do this. But, you see, the money issue cannot hold you back when you really want to do it! At that time, I thought that where there is a will there is a way. Just do it and see what happens." Those who know Pei-Yu Shih can probably feel the vivacity and energy inside her. There was a newspaper story with a heading that read "Produced by Pei-Yu Shih Out of Her Own Pocket". It not only exemplifies the straightforward style of news report titles of the time but also reflects Pei-Yu Shih's own upbeat charm.When B612 was officially performed, many friends and teachers who became acquainted with her in past theatrical projects came to watch the play. People from Creative Society, whom she playfully called "bosses", also showed up in the audience. The booking record show that many notable theater people, including Wei-Jan Chi, Ya-Hung Hsu, Ying-Chuan Wei, Yih-Fang Wu, Liang-Hui Shen, and Huan-Hsiung Li, purchased tickets.Although people are very likely to associate these puppet shows and objects with "children" and "innocent fun", Pei-Yu Shih  was targeting an adult audience when working on B612—as the opening sentence of the preface to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince states, "I ask the indulgence of the children who may read this book for dedicating it to a grown-up." Anyone who has seen excerpts of B6126  can feel that the rhythm, language, voice, puppet design, and the use of light and shadow are all full of an "adult" flavor. One can imagine how refreshingly original it was at the time.Pei-Yu Shih recalled her experience with Craig Quintero, whom she engaged to help with the video recording gave her memorable feedback for B612: "Craig Quintero, he even came to see my play twice. We were not familiar with each other back then. But after he finished watching the play he even walked me home from the theater, and during the journey, we had a conversation for more than an hour. He was much more experienced with small-scale theater than me. I guess he was probably thinking 'I have never seen a form of expression like this'. To be honest, at that time, there were indeed very few works which mixed human actors with puppets and had a relatively strong visual style." Pei-Yu Shih's insistence on making a puppet show for adult audiences broke with conventions at the time. This is probably a major reason why Flying Group Theatre has attracted people's attention ever since.B612 @ Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre, 2002 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre)The Challenge of "Starting a Family"Although B612 received positive feedback, Pei-Yu Shih did not immediately move on to form a troupe in 2002. On the contrary, she took a two-year break and continued taking freelance projects. "B612 made me realize that I really can do it. But I had other things in mind too . . ." She pointed out that, as an artist, she also spent a lot of time thinking about the "organization of a theater troupe"."Working in different companies allowed me to see many different organizations. We call the team of Shiny Shoes the 'Seven Immortals'. Each member is so capable that they can carry out their individual projects on their own around Taiwan and can assemble at any time to make a big show. Or take Creative Society, whose eight members are all owners, not staff, as an example. In short, troupe organization varies a lot. So actually, I kept thinking, if I started a troupe, how would I coordinate administrative and creative matters?" It takes more than just enthusiasm to build something. One has to be equipped with the basics, which in the world of arts roughly means production, publicity, and funding.Readers may gain some idea about the actual production and administration in theater's early days in 40 Years of Taiwan Contemporary Theater (1978-2018). This book mentions the human resources and financial management of 40-plus modern theater teams in 1993, recorded in The Catalog of Performing Arts Groups published by the Council for Cultural Affairs in 1995: "In the current year, government grants accounted for an average of approximately 39% of each group's annual budget, corporate sponsorship accounted for 16%, and performance revenue contributed 13% . . ."7  Although this survey result may be incomplete—it did not include "all" theater groups at that time for various reasons, we can still get some idea about the overall landscape of that time.We may take a different perspective: from Pei-Yu Shih's personal experience. Flying Group Theatre was taking shape in the early 2000s. At that time, Taiwan's theater had been developing for only a bit over a decade. Performance information was conveyed mainly through printed newspapers and in-person press conferences. In addition, ticket sales relied much on the word of mouth of family members and friends, the marketing channels were far less developed than at present, and productions required far more human resources. For this reason, it was crucial for a performing team to receive financial aid to complete productions. "In the early days, it was basically impossible to do anything without grants. Firstly, they accounted for a major share of the crew's income. The ticket price was low and the box office performance was inconsistent compared to now. The market was very small and the marketing channels were painfully scanty. At that time, the ticket price would be considered high even when set at just NT$250 or NT$300! Support from grantors is really important. This could even decide your fate, your ability to carry out your project. It was brutal." The self-funded B612 was a reassurance for Pei-Yu Shih. Thanks to this play, she had ample time to think over all aspects that she needed to take care of in order to be the "head of the family" before she "started a family" in 2004.Speaking of the dilemma in dealing with arts grantors, she remarked: "Even if we applied for a grant with success, we would still be worried. For instance, if the grant amount was small, wouldn't that mean we still should somehow make it happen against all odds? Our grant was really meager, so we couldn't do it. If we had continued, we would've gone bankrupt . . . So, in the early days, you had to abort projects occasionally because of this…" After being premiered at the Taiwan Women Theatre Festival in Taipei in 2004, The Kitchen applied for grants from NCAF and planned a performance tour across Kaohsiung (Spring Wind Art Theatre) and Yilan (Traditional Opera Hall, National Center of Traditional Arts). Later, although this work was supported by a grant of NT$150,000, human resources remained an issue. No matter how much it was streamlined, a tour would still require a crew of eight to nine people, including the cast. Four shows would require at least two to three days of expenditures. Coincidentally, Spring Wind Art Theatre was also moving out of the "Spring Cultural Underground", its performing space on the basement. After much deliberation, Pei-Yu Shih decided to give up on the endeavor.Did she not consider using her connections to draw corporate sponsorships and make up for the deficiency? She laughed and said that of course she had some connections, but "At that time, it was really difficult for you to explain to people what a 'modern puppet show' is. People's first thought on hearing this would be children's drama, but that was not what I wanted to do. Under such circumstances, we had to spend a lot of energy to explain this stuff to others and they might still not understand it, so it was quite unlikely to find a company willing to sponsor us. A typical scenario was that I sent dozens of proposals but got no reply at all, or just one, for which we would be very grateful. Oh, but the reply would normally be just a reply, not a promise to fund you. The general conditions of this industry were rough like that." But from 2004 to 2008, Pei-Yu Shih continued to produce works: Alice (2004), Mr. D (2005), Memory (2006), The Light of Darkness (2006), and The Bathroom (2007). In 2008, she was invited to the 2008 Beijing Cross-Strait Youth Theater Festival in Beijing on a grant of NT$180,000 from NCAF, thus further promoting B612, the company's real debut.Toward the Next Stage?Looking closely at works of Flying Group Theatre over the years, one can notice that since The Kitchen in 2004, subsequent works include The Bathroom, The Room, and Livingroomroute, all of which are components of a house. Does this mean that Flying Group Theatre was piecing together the image of a house with these works? "Oh, yes, yes. The kitchen is an engine of warmth. The bathroom can keep private secrets; you can cry over anything in there. When you finish, you get rid of it by flushing it down the toilet and come out. And the room hides other people's secret, not yours . . ." At this point, Pei-Yu Shih and the troupe manager Wan-Ping Chuang spoke in chorus of the future Prefab project: "We are talking about it. What we mean by prefab is an assemblage of these spaces into one unit. We can find a model house which is about to be abandoned. We will use it for a scene of the living room on one day and of the kitchen on another." It seems that the developmental trajectory of Flying Group Theatre has been true to its spirit from the beginning to present.Although the first hit series under Flying Group Theatre is likely to be Close to You since 2010, the interpretive framework of home space as mentioned above may draw our attention to the Hear the House performing project, which started in 2016 and is more comprehensively representative of Flying Group Theatre at present.The project was conceived to achieve the mission of "revitalizing old houses and abandoned places as artistic and cultural spaces". The troupe performed Treasured Fragment—first presented in the 321 Art Alley Settlement in Tainan in 2015—across seven old buildings in six cities in Taiwan. These buildings included Butt Mountain and Yue Yue Bookstore in Taipei; Hodala Cafe in Zhongxin Market, Taichung; Mix Art Center in Chiayi; the old principal's residence in National Hualien Girls' Senior High School in Hualien; Takao Renaissance Association in Kaohsiung; and Yunlin Story House in Yunlin8 . Bringing out the life of old things in response to the memories from old spaces, they reinstilled life into these old houses through the movement of puppets and the accumulation of images through time.Hear the House, 2016 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre)In this way, Hear the House has continued to develop and become another important series of Flying Group Theatre. In 2019 and 2021, this project was again sponsored by NCAF. Apart from performances, she continues visiting local old buildings and organizing lectures and post-performance talks. Seeing both Close to You and Hear the House, it seems that Pei-Yu Shih has a predilection for "lectures on local literature and history". She explained, "Well…I would say that in our past old house projects, we just performed our work at a location. After interacting with that place, you eventually realize that it also has its own needs and expectations, that is, a hope that something other than the performance can happen. Sometimes we come across an old house and sometimes the foundation to which it belongs has some plans in progress, so we just go in and participate in its reinvigoration in a different approach." These words show Pei-Yu Shih's aspiration for a deeper bond with local communities, which is also found in the following quote from a 2021 news report: "…Pei-Yu Shih pointed out that they will not only perform but also stay in old buildings during their tour in Kinmen and Kaohsiung to become closer to the spaces."9 . In the proposal for Hear the House, the wording "deep cultivation" was also added to the title."What I mean by 'deep cultivation' is organizing something like a workshop." For the 2021 Hear the House project, Shih-Chi Wang and Yen-Ting Tseng, two artists who are also familiar with object theater, were invited to host the two-day workshops in Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Kinmen, one day each. "What we were doing was picking a topic and getting everyone (local people) involved to discover something together, to see if these things could give something (to the work) and be incorporated into Hear the House?" The workshops focused on "objects".Hear the House, 2019 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre)Hear the House: Local Objects Creative Workshop @ Kinmen, 2021 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre)Hear the House: Local Objects Creative Workshop @ Kaohsiung, 2021 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre)Hear the House: Treasured Fragment, Vol. 2: Home, 2021 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre)So, objects and puppets should be understood separately after all? "No, no", Pei-Yu Shih replied. Not separately. "I would maximize the scope of 'objects', which refers to all non-living things, so puppets are included." The modern puppet show, according to her, explores the relationship between humans and objects. "'Puppet' shows rely very much on puppet manipulation, but object theater does not place emphasis on 'manipulation'. On the contrary, it's anti-manipulation. It focuses on 'meaning'. For example, what is a mobile phone to us? A way of contact? A type of relationship in modern life? In object theater, when I present a mobile phone on stage, what can I evoke? We have long been looking for this kind of connection between humans and objects. Having said that, I have to admit that it is very abstract." The idea of deep cultivation via workshops is also derived from such approach and observations: As an artistic genre which does not work by "telling" in plain language, object theater is not very accessible to most people. Therefore, through actual practice, puppet show performers extract the feelings of an "object" from within themselves. In doing so, the meaning conveyed by a work of art is no longer unilaterally defined by the artist. In object theater, one might allow things to naturally form a "channel" to speak for themselves without verbal mediation, so that emotions and memories can flow reciprocally. "Everyone has a different sensibility. For example, what do you feel when you see a cup? Everyone has a different perception. What about a red cup and a white cup? A big one? A small one? Everyone has a different perception, which reflects the personal history and habits of each individual. When we were doing the workshop, it is as if we are introducing participants to a brand new thing…" It's like what a mentor does, showing their students something: "Hey, there is a grassland here. Ah, you have already made a path over there, but you see, this grass can still be divided in the middle like this and you can walk over from here. Or, if you want to walk over from another place, you don't need to remove all the grass. You can just remove the grass in the middle, and then we can try it out together and see where we can reach and what can see there."Pei-Yu Shih is considering an even more profound next step: "I hope future workshops can be initiated even earlier to allow interactions for a longer time." Our target audience includes two segments. One is local residents and the other is young people with an idea of performing arts. In this way, more opportunities may be created to extend the influence of arts through deep communal connection.Brick by brick and step by step, the troupe has progressively built each component of the "house", which can now accommodate more "guests"—which not only refers to new friends from various places mentioned above, but also includes Chien-Tsang Hong, their artist-in-residence since 2020. "Let me put it this way. Before 2020, the life of this troupe overlapped with mine. Or, rather, the status of my work and the direction of the troupe overlapped to some extent. Since Chien-Tsang joined us in 2020, the troupe has been developing into new things, in new directions." See the response to Chien-Tsang Hong's The Desperado of Longxing 46, completed in 2022. The future of Flying Group Theatre will be even more open-ended.The Desperado of Longxing 46, 2022 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre, play made and performed by Chien-Tsang Hong)The Desperado of Longxing 46, 2022 (courtesy of Flying Group Theatre, play made and performed by Chien-Tsang Hong)Tough Challenge in the Age of the Pandemic?In many of the works of Flying Group Theatre, there is often a certain flavor and rhythm that is particularly "human", occasionally described as a "handmade touch" in some news articles. I asked Pei-Yu Shih, have the limitations brought by quarantines and the prevalence of going online due to the pandemic resulted in any obstacles to the persistence in delivering this handmade touch? She laughed and replied that she has never described the troupe's work as "handmade". In her view, the troupe has not particularly insisted on manual production when producing shows. She thinks that this rustic, handmade texture is a result of the overall aesthetic choice, which is not directly associated with the actual production method, handmade or otherwise. Therefore, going online is probably not a problem. However, "when I am in the audience, I don't like online stuff." Pei-Yu Shih confessed."Because no matter what incentives are offered to me, even gifts, I just don't like interacting with people via the computer screen. However, as an artist, I think maybe I need a shift in perspective. That is, don't regard the Internet as an alternative, but a radically different creative method. Maybe that can open new possibilities? It's just that this absolutely has something to do with 'equipment'. You have to get the equipment to be able to 'test' it and you won't know if it works unless you test it. But to get equipment, you must get funding first." However, funding does not mean one can buy and try the equipment, then throw it away and search for replacement simply because it is found to be unfit for the purpose. This is probably the more challenging aspect for the performing arts compared to other arts. The pandemic's impact was felt immediately. Even if artists' minds can theoretically adapt to such a rapid change, it is really difficult them to do anything substantially when it comes to physical equipment. No grants are provided to assist in buying equipment for going online. Even if we sought aid from our theater peers, most are in the same situation, unprepared to face such crisis."So you have to take a step back and think, fine, do I want to use this (online) medium? Is it fit suitable? Or, can it 'perpetuate' the current status of your work?" Perpetuate? "Yes. For example, if we still use objects as the key element, what possibilities can cameras bring to objects? What's the difference to the audience between sensing an object in person or through a camera? What kind of operability and performativity would that achieve?" If only low-level equipment is available, "how should we start? We have to try alternatives, like using only a mobile phone for the camera paired with very simple editing software, things like that." In doing so, she seems to be back to a certain starting point, from which she can explore the fundamentals of artistic creation and thus achieve a "handmade touch in a new era".Although reality may force one to make some compromises, Pei-Yu Shih has always been sharp enough to see the most effective and promising alternative: "let's just focus on overcoming geographical isolation for a start." By the time of our interview, Flying Group Theatre has already been working on Close to You, its next project, which connects with works of foreign artists that Taiwanese audiences have never had the chance to see before. The repeated exchanges with puppetry and object artists from foreign countries painted a picture of creators around the world under the pandemic. "We're just moving forward, inviting people out there, and learning about their thoughts. She recalled: "An artist from Israel sent a proposal to us and expressed his wish to come to Taiwan. I said, why, but how can you come to Taiwan under these circumstances? I made a counter proposal to them. We have an online alternative, are you interested? He said in that case he would have to rehearse his play in a different approach." Pei-Yu Shih continued, after a pause: "Well, let's wait and see how he's going to do it." This remark might be Pei-Yu Shih's most candid response to the current circumstances—if we say that COVID-19 is a paintbrush that fell from heaven and drew a box to circumscribe everyone, then why don't we use the vision of the little prince on planet B612 in B612, to take a closer look inside the box and see what is in there?References and Supplementary Materials[1] Supplements: Information on funding received by Hear the HouseHear the House—2016 Old House Reinvigoration Tour Project: https://reurl.cc/vdKz9l Hear the House—2019 Old House Reinvigoration Project: https://reurl.cc/YvkKlX 2021 Treasured Fragment 2.0—Old House Reinvigoration Project, Deep Cultivation: https://reurl.cc/VDmbX5[2] Excerpts of The Kitchen, 2004: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoMcQRlordw .[3] The full performance video is currently not available publicly on the Internet. The scenes described by the author are based on the full performance video provided by the troupe.[4] For more details about the Taiwan Women Theatre Festival, see Wu, Yi-Jung. "Women's Voices, Sisters' Theater: A Preliminary Study of the Taiwan Women Theatre Festival", 2014. URL: https://reurl.cc/ane5DZ.[5] Cheng, Tai-Chiung. "A Company Insisting on Travel in a Microscopic World". URL: https://reurl.cc/Wr8mye.[6] B612 (2002) Full performance video: https://reurl.cc/d2QVog.[7] Lu, Hong-Hui. "The Impact of Grants from the Ministry of Culture and NCAF on the Operations of Modern Theater Companies", 40 Years of Taiwan Contemporary Theater (1978-2018), p. 341.[8] Information of Hear the House (2016) performances on the Flying Group Theatre website: https://www.flying-group.com.tw/portfolio/2016-hear-the-house/.[9] The quote ". . . Pei-Yu Shih pointed out that they will not only perform but also stay in old buildings during their tour in Kinmen and Kaohsiung to become closer to the spaces." is from a report by Commercial Times in 2021: "Performing a Small Play in an Old House, Flying Group Theatre Tells a Home Story". URL: https://ctee.com.tw/livenews/ch/chinatimes/20211110005060-260405 .*Translator: Linguitronics

"Going to the cinema" has long been dominated by consumerism as a form of entertainment and has become a formal way of watching films. However, when we think about it, a considerable amount of resources and budget need to be invested to release a movie in the cinemas actually, such as publicity, scheduling, high-quality audio-visuals, and even theater rental. This is not an easy feat for documentaries or independent films. The formation of a "film culture" actually relies on a diversity of advances and pluralism, in which film festivals and competitions/awards play an important role, allowing space for different tastes or subjects. The production team needs to develop their own path towards screening in order to break away from these more conventional systems and find alternative methods that are more in line with the nature of their work, so that it remains conducive to dialogue and communication. The NCAF "Audio / Video Arts" grants provide funding for screening and are an important resource to support the development of cultural diversity in cinema. In particular, for documentaries based on the real world, how to provide social commentary, to bring about change or deeper communication, is something that many filmmakers are constantly thinking about. For example, in the 1990s, the Full Shot Communication Foundation, a documentary organization, advocated that "documentaries should serve as feedback to people's daily life and their living places". They also organized several local documentary screenings to express social concern through documentary filming and screening. This tradition of Taiwanese documentary filming and screening has been carried on by many directors. For example, film director Shu-Mei Huang, a former member of Full Shot Communication Foundation, has been working on local stories and centered on environmental issues for a long time. In 2015, she made a documentary on the 100-year history of mountain and forest development in Taiwan, A Letter to Future Children; a nationwide tour of screenings and seminars was also held at the Pingtung County Government building, Taitung Black Box Theater, and Hualien Cultural and Creative Industries Park. In 2017, she documented the campaign of villagers and environmental groups in Lingnan Village, Dongshan District, Tainan to fight against the Yongyang Business Waste Landfill site, making the film A Fight For My Hometown. They toured across the Anti-Matoushan Business Waste Landfill Association in Qishan District, Kaohsiung; Protect Tsengwen River Alliance in Yujing District, Tainan; Anti-Ou Hsin Business Waste Alliance in Niupu Village, Longqi District, Tainan; and Golden Chimney Cultural Promotion Association in Dalinpu, Kaohsiung. Through post-screening discussions over a long period of time, they practiced the cinematic ideal of "filming is action, action is power". In a similar vein, there were also the screening tour of Unveil the Truth 2013 by director Kevin H.J. Lee, and the screening and discussion tour of See You, Loveable Strangers by Vietnamese director Kim Hồng Nguyễn and Taiwanese director Tsung-Lung Tsai. The venues they chose were mainly independent bookstores, schools, and regular art/performance spaces. The directors were present at each screening and took the stage to exchange ideas with the audience in a solid, progressive dialogue. This also enabled them to obtain first-hand feedback and valuable lessons. The film The Lost Sea, directed by Chun-Hsiu Hung, which discusses the impact of human political and economic activities on the habitat of horseshoe crabs; director Li-Shao Lee's Southland Soldiers, Boundary Revelation, and Stranger in the Mountains, which make up the Yunnan-Burma Border Guerrillas trilogy; director Singing Chen's The Moving Tent, a documentary on the Taiwan Haibizi tent theater troupe; and Taiwan Women's Film Association's I Am a Woman, I Make Films—2018 Taiwan Women Directors' National Film Promotion Screening Project all received great acclaim after their respective tours. More invitations ensued, extending and expanding the life of the films. Unlike the commercial theater mechanism, the documentary screening tour emphasizes critical thinking, communication, and dialogue. It is more like the slow sowing of seeds and tilling of the land, taking place over a long period of time. The process accomplishes a necessary film-watching experience that is so important for the building of culture. Further Readings:Screening Is My Social Movement—Director Shu-Mei Huang's Touring Methodhttp://docworker.blogspot.com/2021/11/blog-post.htmlThe Internet as a Medium of Resistance to Power—Kevin H.J. Lee's Online Documentary Screening Experiencehttp://docworker.blogspot.com/2021/11/blog-post_25.htmlThe Lost Sea Documentary Screening and Post-Screening Discussion@Hoanya Bookstore, Chun-Hsiu Hung 2015https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZG62mQ5aD4See You, Loveable Strangers—Kim Hồng Nguyễn and Tsung-Lung Tsai Document the Plight of Migrant Workershttps://mag.ncafroc.org.tw/article_detail.html?id=297ef7227039739d01707a92427c0038Exile and Homecoming: A Memory Check of the Yunnan-Burma Border Guerrillas Trilogyhttps://mag.ncafroc.org.tw/article_detail.html?id=297ef722707b8a0401709e738bd0003aDocumenting as Confrontation—On Shu-Mei Huang's A Fight For My Hometownhttps://mag.ncafroc.org.tw/article_detail.html?id=297ef7227039739d01707a221e450027*Translator: Linguitronics