TPNWCP Cheng Yu-Chieh Series: "Do Over (一年之初)" 5-Day Film Screening

*As part of the 2020 Taiwan Post-New Wave Cinema Project, we kindly ask that you register to view this film through Eventbrite .

Synopsis

If you had the opportunity to reverse the course of your life, how would you like your story to end?

A lowly assistant who works on a film set, Pang is trying to level his low self-esteem in order to muster enough courage to talk to the actress he is falling head over heels for. Just when he thinks his luck is about to change, things take a dramatic turn…

Ding-An, an illegal immigrant, has been waiting for eight years to get his citizenship so that he can finally go home to visit his sick father. He then realizes that his ID Card has long ago been issued but has been kept away from him. Determined to claim his identification, Ding-An is willing to do anything, even if it means costing his life.

A small-time crook and drug addict, Rat wakes up to find himself in a deserted hospital ward with no recollection of the previous night’s events. His shirt is stained in blood, but a wound is missing, and so is one of the girls he partied with the night before. As he steps outside to retrace his footsteps, he finds himself in the middle of nowhere, not quite sure where he is, or whether he is still alive….

Boss hasn’t slept in three days and is starting to believe that everyone around him is plotting to take his life. After being threatened at gunpoint, he decides to visit his brother, the last person he feels he can trust, only to be confronted with further disaster. Lixiang is directing his first feature film, but he can’t decide how he’d like his movie to end, and at the same time, he is struggling to make peace with a past that continues to haunt him.

Written and directed by newcomer CHENG Yu-chieh, DO OVER follows five characters over twenty four hours on the last day of the year. As the interrelated stories proceed, the connections between the lives of the five characters begin to reveal themselves and their stories unravel. By weaving together multiple stories of different characters at emotional crossroads, DO OVER examines the struggle of overcoming our greatest fears; the unknown of what lies ahead in the future, the fading value of our existence in the present, and most of all, irreversible mistakes made in the past that may catch up to us.

Director Cheng Yu-Chieh

Born on the 27th of Nov. 1977 in Tainan, Taiwan, with BA in Economics at National Taiwan University, Cheng started experimenting with V8 when he was a freshman and participated in several student productions and 16mm film productions for practical training. In junior year, Cheng shot his first 16mm short, Babyface, in which he worked as director, screenwriter and actor. After Babyface, he temporarily left school to concentrate on his second 16mm, short film Summer Dream, which entered several international Film Festivals, and Cheng was seen as one of the most promising Taiwanese young talents. In 2006, his first feature Do Over was selected for the International Week of Film Critics in Venice and invited by various international film festivals, such as Vancouver, Athena, and Pusan. In addition to directing, Cheng is also passionate about acting. In 2008 he played a major role in the TV drama, Police et Vous, and gained enormous popularity. Now Cheng is active in Taiwan’s film and TV industry as an actor and director.

Organiser: SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: ml156@soas.ac.uk