TPNWCP Chen Singing Series 陳芯宜系列 (II): Arts in Focus 藝術焦點: The Walkers; Mountain Spirits; The Moving Tent (2-Day Screening); Ears Switched Off and On (6-Day Screening)

*As part of the 2021 Taiwan Post-New Wave Cinema Project, we kindly ask that you register to view these films through Eventbrite . (For UK email registrations only, such as: ac.uk; co.uk; org.uk; gov.uk etc.) Alternatively, please fill in and submit this form if you are currently residing in the UK OR a student of an UK institution but do not have a UK domain email address.

Please Note: Due to licencing regulations we are required to prioritise audiences based in the UK for these films. As such, only those who have registered with a .uk email address will be provided with screening links. Those registering with non-UK domain email addresses (e.g. gmail.com, hotmail.com, or edu.com.tw) will not receive links.

**Registration closes 11:59PM BST Thursday 24th June. Links to view these films will be sent out at 12AM BST Friday 25th June.

Synopses

The Walkers

2014｜147min｜Color｜Documentary｜Mandarin

2016 Vladivostok International Film Festival

2016 Göteborg Film Festival

2014 Taiwan International Documentary Festival - Audience Choice Award

The deep rumble of drums opens the gate to the underworld and Sea Goddess Mazu gracefully leads the spirits towards it. A scene from the ritualistic dance piece Miroirs de Vie (2006), created by internationally renowned choreographer LIN Lee-Chen and performed by her Legend Lin Dance Theatre. LIN has devoted her life to creating work that blends modern dance with religious ritual. Drawing from her own life, LIN turns her outlook into a calming physical strength in her choreography, giving the audience a chance to glimpse her inner strength and creativity.

(Photo credit: Chin Cheng-Tsai)

Filmed over the course of ten years, this documentary is a poetic expression of the persistence and creativity of LIN Lee-Chen, capturing the internationally renowned choreographer’s meditations on life itself. Exquisite images of layered cloth and the contours of dancers’ bodies during the ritualistic performances enable the audience to explore the choreography with a tactile eye, while LIN reflects on her attitudes towards dance and aesthetics. Unlike much Western dance that emphasizes speed, LIN’s oriental aesthetic emphasizes the slowness of body movement and a reflexivity towards slowness itself.

Mountain Spirits

2014 | 72min | Colour | Taiwan

2014 Women Make Waves

2014 Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival - Taiwan Competition

2014 Chiayi City International Art Documentary Film Festival

2015 Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF)

Having grown up in the mountains of Chiayi, installation artist Wang Wen-chih weaves his memories of mountains and forests into his work. Using natural materials such as bamboo, rattan and wood, Wang creates his art with hands and collective labour. The huge spaces he constructs emit such deep and strong power that surprise and move countless visitors. This film follows Wang on his journey of creation.

The Moving Tent

2018 | 118min | Colour | Taiwan

2019 Nice International Film Festival – Nomination: Best Director of a Foreign Language Documentary

2019 Singapore Chinese Film Festival – Documentary Vision

2018 Taiwan International Documentary Festival – Taiwan Competition

2018 Women Make Waves Film Festival – Taiwan Competition

A truck drives into a square and a moveable tent is set up. Audience members enter and hear the faint voices from the cracks in society. As the tent becomes a convergence of the thoughts of those both on stage and off, we feel the power of resistance that the entire action entails. Tent theater is theater occuring in a temporary tent. It originated out of experimental theater in post-war Japan in the 60's. "It aims to bring those voices and memories that have been relegated to the bottom of the society into the tents." Functioning both as observer and participant, the director documents the tent’s movements around Taiwan in the past decade.

Ears Switched Off and On

Taiwan | 2009-2011 | HDV | Colour | 16:9 | Stereo | 93mins

“You can close your eyes but never the ears.”

Ears Switched Off and On is the attempt to track downs the Taiwanese sound art context, those active, off-mainstream but ignored artists: Dino, Wang Fu-jui, and LIN Chi-Wei. This documentary, which is still an on-going project, delineates these pioneers who have been devoted to sound art since the 90’s. This documentary is a 2011 edition.

Director Chen Singing

Director Chen Singing is a film visual artist whose works cover multiple disciplines, such as feature films, documentaries, experimental films and film scores, through which she expresses her long-term observation of contemporary society and portrays her profound depiction of people, characters and their living situations. She is also an expert in adopting the magic realism approach to highlight the absurdity of reality and society in order to highlight bigger societal issues. For her, there are no boundaries between the disciplines of drama and documentary, or reality and fiction, as they are not antonyms. They are merely aspects of media for her to explore the essence of life.

Her 2014 documentary The Walkers, took ten years to record one of the most significant Taiwanese dancing institutions, Legend Lin Dance Theatre. The film has received mush critical acclaim and was nominated for the Golden Horse Award and the Taiwan International Documentary Festival. Her 2007 film, God, Man, Dog, was selected for The Forum at the Berlin Film Festival, and subsequently awarded the Tagesspiegel Readers’ Prize for Best Film. It was nominated in three categories and screened at more than thirty film festivals including at Pusan and Fribourg. In 2000, her 16mm feature film, Bundled, won the Best Drama and Best New Director awards at the Taipei Film Festival, the Best Original Film Song at the Golden Horse Awards, the Ecumenical Jury Award and the Prix du Jury de la presse politique at the Festival International de Films de Fribourg while being screened at dozens of film festivals.

Organiser: SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: bc18@soas.ac.uk

Sponsor: Taiwan Ministry of Culture & Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute X Taiwan Docs X Taiwan Cinema Toolkit & Spotlight Taiwan