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Online Film Screening: "County Road 184 縣道184之東"

Key information

Date
to
Time
12:00 AM to 11:59 PM
Venue
Virtual Event

About this event

*We kindly ask that you register to view this film through Eventrbrite .

Once registered, links to view this film will be sent out and available from 12AM GMT Tuesday 16th February until 11:59PM GMT Thursday 18th February.

Synopsis

This film is Taiwan’s first protest music documentary, examining Jiao Gong Band 交工樂隊. Jiao Gong Band initially received attention from their efforts opposing the Meinong Dam project. After a brief pause in the Dam issue, Jiao Gong began following farm and farming issues, with their musical style quickly gaining increased popularity.

This film discusses the uneasy situation faced by Taiwan’s farm youth. The youth that sets out to the city seeking to develop themselves carry feelings of homesickness from leaving their farm and land; on returning to their hometown after the bubble economy, they continue to push the elder generation to leave the village. Aside from this, because of their difficult social status, farm youth can often only search for Southeast Asian “foreign brides” when seeking marriage. Within the film, new residents (新住民) discuss their feelings and mindset in moving to Taiwan and collaborate with Jiao Gong throughout the album’s recording process.

In this documentary, the camera follows and enters the lives of these musicians, presenting the features behind the five people onstage. This group of five musicians form is worthy of being called a wonder band. Producer Chung Yong-fen who filmed through the duration of this film serves as Director of Kaohsiung county’s water conservancy. Percussionist Chong Cheng-da is also as a Nakashi master. Bass player Chen Guan-yu is a professional recordist. During the day, suona horn player Kuo Chin-tsai serves as Kaohsiung city orchestra’s head suona horn player. Lin Sheng-yang forms the lynchpin as lead singer and composer, decided many years ago to return to Meinong and become a professional musician and social movement activist. How did these five different master musicians come together to play? How do their situations interact? These images all emerge within the documentary.

Director Ho Chao-ti Biography

Ho Chao-ti is a documentary film maker and director, coming to the fringe of alternative issues for many years in order to document her subjects. Ho’s works have received numerous awards from European, American and Asian film festivals. Her image vocabulary is abundantly diverse, plainly stating human feeling by combining the qualities of warmth and poignance. Due to the outstanding artistic expression within Ho’s work, Ho was invited to exhibit during the New York Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) Documentary Fortnight in 2011.

Ho Chao-ti has previously served as Director of Taiwan’s National Film Centre and executive council member of the Taiwan Women’s Film Association. Outside her position as an independent director and filmmaker, Ho simultaneously serves as supervisor for the Taipei Documentary Filmmakers Union. Beyond producing, Ho also invests in training work for new generations of directors.

Organiser: SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: ml156@soas.ac.uk