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TPNWCP Thomas Lin Shu-Yu Series: "Zinnia Flower (百日告別)" 7-Day Film Screening

Key information

Date
to
Time
10:00 AM to 10:00 AM
Venue
Virtual Event

About this event

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

Please Note: Due to licencing regulations we are required to prioritise audiences based in the UK for this film. As such, only those who have registered with a .uk email address will be provided with screening links.

Synopsis

Wei and his wife, a piano teacher, are expecting a baby in three months. In three months, Ming will be married to Yuo, a cook and the love of her life. Yet all this ended in a horrible car crash leaving Wei and Ming alone to face the world in emptiness. Everything that was left behind seems unchanged, but is forever different. They choose different paths, different ways of mourning. Like two mice lost in a labyrinth, Wei runs around in circles, hitting walls, and still ends up where he began. Ming calmly and slowly creeps down a determined path, seemingly moving forward, but towards a fatal dead end. Days go on not feeling like days and the only thing that lets them know that time is still moving forward is the weekly seven-seventh ritual that they both go to up in a mountain temple. It is only there that their paths cross. In a crowd of hundreds of mourners, Wei and Ming notice each other and recognize the pain within the other. Embarking on separate journeys, Wei decides to visit the homes of all this wife’s piano students, returning their tuition fees for the lessons that will never be taught. Ming decides to go to Okinawa, the honeymoon she and her fiancée will never go to together. In the end, they discover that the only end to their journey is the end of the journey itself, nothing more.

On the 100th day, they travel up to the mountains again for the final ritual. After the last prayer, they meet again, finding both pain and comfort in the other person, a total stranger, but the only stranger who knows what the other has been through. Sunset, on the bus down the mountain, sitting side by side, they weep in silence.

Director Thomas Lin Shu-Yu

Born in 1976, Tom Lin Shu-Yu is commonly regarded as one of the most promising new filmmakers emerging from Taiwan. After receiving his M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts in 2002, Tom started working in the Taiwanese film industry as the first assistant director to filmmakers such as Tsai Ming-Liang and Doze Niu. In 2005, Lin directed his breakthrough short film, THE PAIN OF OTHERS and in 2008, his first feature film WINDS OF SEPTEMBER. Both films have been screened at various festivals throughout the world and both have been critically acclaimed and loved by audiences. Since he lived in the Unites States when he was a child, he grew up learning both Chinese and English, giving him the ability to communicate fluently in both languages. His films all carry a distinctive mix of cultural backgrounds. His works are often filled with dramatic tension, yet within the story explore the most basic problems of humanity, creating believable characters that touch the heart. He followed it in 2012 with STARRY STARRY NIGHT, an adaptation from Jimmy Liao’s famous illustration book. Because of his bicultural upbringing, his films all carry a distinct mix of cultural backgrounds, finding a balance between western narrative and eastern meditation.

Filmography

2012 Starry Starry Night
Taipei Film Festival – Best Visual Effects, Best New Talent
Asia Pacific Film Festival – Best Cinematography
Busan International Film Festival - Competition
2008 Winds of September
Taipei Film Festival – Jury Special Award, Best New Talent, Best Screenplay
Golden Horse Award – Best Original Sceenplay
Toronto International Film Festival
2005 The Pain Of Others

Organiser: SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: ml156@soas.ac.uk