2020 CTS Film Week: "Panay" (太陽的孩子) Film Screening

2015｜99 min｜Color｜Narrative Feature｜Mandarin, Amis｜

2015 Golden Horse Awards - Best Original Film Song

2015 Taipei Film Awards - Audience Choice Award

2015 CMS International Children’s Film Festival - Best Children’s Feature Film Award

Synopsis

Dressed in traditional Amis clothing, a young girl, Nakaw, rides a scooter past a succession of tour buses into a beautiful, ethnic coastal village. But the fields have long been abandoned. A large corporation is coveting the area and persuading residents to forego the land. In the city, single mother Panay works on her own. Her ailing father’s hope of rehabilitating rice fields motivates her to return home where she painstakingly learns to farm, hoping to galvanize the people into guarding the golden fields of their homeland.

The film is based on Lekal Sumi Cilangasan’s mother’s experience of rehabilitating terraced wetlands. When residents were informed that their lands were to be bought and exploited, life became a battle for survival and they were forced to deal with a deceitful corporation. Reflective of real incidents on the east coast, the story addresses the Indigenous residents’  attitudes towards land development, population outflow and the authority’s buck-passing. Behind its storyline is the calling for people to rethink the value of Mother Earth.

Director Biography: CHENG Yu-Chieh, Lekal Sumi Cilangasan

Born in 1977, CHENG began shooting on 16mm in college and debuted with Babyface (2000). His other directing-writing credits include the features Do Over (2006) and Yang Yang (2009) and TV series Days We Stared at the Sun (2010). CHENG is also an actor besides making TV drama, films and music videos.

Born in 1985, Lekal returned to his mother’s Amis ethnic group after completing his military service. In 2011, he began filming the rehabilitation of terraced fields that have been abandoned for 20 years, and completed his first documentary Wish of the Ocean Rise in 2012, and has since become a filmmaker.

* All SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies are free and open to all to attend. We suggest you arrive a few minutes early at the venue to secure your seat.

Organiser: SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: ml156@soas.ac.uk

Sponsor: Taiwan Film Institute & Taiwan Cinema Toolkit