Director
Directed by 蕭菊貞
No matter where you are, not just in Taiwan, international movie fans can easily watch too! The first wave of films from emerging creators are now live in our international section. Featuring top selections from prestigious film festivals like Golden Horse Awards and Golden Harvest Awards, as well as many highly anticipated emerging works for you to explore anytime, anywhere!
Veteran Taiwanese documentary filmmaker Chu-chen Hsiao has long focused on Taiwan’s history, grassroots culture, and collective memory. Through a deeply humanistic lens, she captures overlooked stories with nuance and care. She won the Golden Horse Award for Best Documentary for two consecutive years with The Legend of the Red Leaf and The Silver Hairpin. Her films The Dove Project: 20 Years of Taiwan New Cinema and How We Make Films document the creative journeys of dozens of Taiwanese filmmakers, and are considered essential works in the study of Taiwanese cinema.
What is the relationship between art and society? Is it possible for art to exist outside of society, as a kind of “pure land”? How does art reflect the evolution of an era—or even move ahead of its time to drive change? This has been the central question I’ve explored since I first began creating. From the great creators of East and West, to protestors striving for change, and finally to local actors taking action on the ground. “Living in this era, what dreams can we still hold on to?” In pragmatic despair, I pragmatically believe that both creation and action, like water, can flow into and fill the cracks that our times so urgently need.
The land carries memories. From afar, I often think of Hong Kong’s sea and Taiwan’s mountains. The days of my childhood—doing nothing, daydreaming in the warm summer breeze—remain vividly etched in my mind. Only after growing up, only after feeling lost, did I come to realize that beneath the soil lie many complex and thought-provoking stories: stories of colonialism and postcolonialism; stories of escape and homesickness. Through stories that flow between sea and sea, mountain and mountain, we hope to invite everyone, in the new year, to reflect across nations on the meaning of land and identity.