"See You, Loveable Strangers再見, 可愛陌生人" Q&A Session with Director Kim-Hong Nguyen 阮金紅& Producer Tsung-lung Tsai 蔡崇隆

Director Kim-Hong Nguyen 阮金紅& Producer Tsung-lung Tsai 蔡崇隆

Format: One week screening (10AM 4th July to 10AM 11th July).

Q&A with Directors: Open 5 minutes before the event starting time.

As part of the 2020 SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies Summer School, we kindly ask that you register to attend .

If you selected to view this film when filling out the registration form you will receive a link to access the film online in early July.

This event will be held online through Blackboard Collaborate.

*Please be aware that all Summer School event times follow British Summer Time (BST)

Synopsis

This film is the sequel of the 2013 film Lovely Strangers, a film that won the Outstanding Award of the Golden Harvest Awards in Taiwan. See You, Lovely Strangers continues to concern the work experience of Vietnamese migrant workers, to examine the reasons behind their numerous escape, and to track down the family circumstances of those who were deported from Taiwan. The film is not trying to propose a solution but to generate more understanding of the life context of illegal migrant workers with first hand witness records. The film is an attempt to stimulate proper response on migrant workers’ human rights from both Taiwan and Vietnam government and to reduce unnecessary conflicts and discrimination.

Motivation

In 2016, the total number of migrant workers in Taiwan has reached five hundred and eighty thousand people which is higher than the total population of indigenous people in Taiwan as well as the total population of new immigrants. However, the life and the labor experience of migrant workers are completely different from the rest of Taiwan society. The undocumented migrant workers, also known as the “illegal migrant workers,” are especially hidden from the society and unknown to most people. Under the negative portrayals in the press, they wander around the island and work in all corners of the society while concealing their identity to avoid the hunting from the police with the carrot-and-stick approach day and night. As of the end of 2015, there are almost fifty thousand illegal migrant workers in Taiwan and most of them are from Vietnam. The director of the film is a newly immigrated Vietnamese-Taiwanese who happens to know some of these Vietnamese workers living outside of their own country. With careful observations and many small conversations, she gradually understands this group of distant but familiar friends and their reasons for embarking on this money-making journey full of frustration, fear, and hardships.

Biographies

Director Nguyen Kim-Hong is a new immigrant in Taiwan from Vietnam. She was raised in rural countryside and was unable to complete elementary education due to poverty. In 2000, she was married to a man in Taiwan through a marriage agency, divorced in 2008 because she experienced domestic violence. She raised her daughter by herself since then. She was remarried in 2009 and started to volunteer with communities of new immigrants. Kim-Hong Nguyen won the first prize twice in the Beauty of New Immigrants Photo Contest and started to shoot documentaries since then. She received the grant from the 2010 Cloudgate Wanderer Project and another grant from the National Culture and Arts Foundation in 2011 to shoot her family story and other Vietnam sisters who experienced divorce. Out/Marriage is her first documentary and was nominated as Best Documentary in both Taipei Film Festival and South Taiwan Film Festival. It won the Best Newcomer Award of the South Taiwan Film Festival.

Director Tsung-Lung Tsai graduated with a law degree in bachelor from the National Chengchi University and a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan. He also studied in the Film Studies programme at the University of East Anglia in the UK. He had worked as a journalist in print media, a specialized correspondent for the corporate TV industry, and a documentary producer of Taiwan Public Television Service (PTS).

Tsai is currently an assistant professor of the Department of Communications at the National Chung Cheng University and works as an independent documentary producer and director. Tsai’s works take a rational analytical and humane approach to his subjects. Social issues regarding human rights, environmental concerns, and culture diversities have long been his concerns.

In 2006, Tsai and several documentary directors organized the first labor union for documentary workers in Taiwan. Tsai was the chief editor of the book “The Love and Hatred of Documentaries” which was published in 2009. It features the collected interviews of 12 middle-aged documentary directors in Taiwan. Tsai is endeavoring to promote the visibility and understanding of documentaries and has cultivated in training local image recoding experts as a lecturer. Some of his recent works were collaborated with his Vietnamese spouse, filming documentaries about new immigrants and migrant workers in Taiwan. He also participated in producing several films regarding current social issues, including judicial reforms, the Sunflower movement, and anti-air-pollution protests.

He is known for his film Killing in Formosa which won the Best Documentary for the 2001 Golden Harvest Awards. Behind the Miracle won the Best Documentary on Current Affairs of the Excellent Journalism Awards in 2002. My Imported Wife was invited to screen in the Best of INPUT, International Public Television Screening Conference in 2004 and was archived in the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. Oil Disease: Surviving Evil reveals the never-ending struggles of surviving victims of the 1979 PCBs Poisoning Incident. It won first prize of the 2008 South Taiwan Film Festival and was nominated in Taipei Film Festival, Kaohsiung Film Festival, and Earth Vision-Tokyo Global Environmental Film Festival. Sunflower Occupation, the latest film produced by Tsai, was nominee of the New Asian Currents Competition in the 2015 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

Organiser: SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: ml156@soas.ac.uk