County Road 184
縣道184之東－－交工樂隊菸樓唱歌
This film is Taiwan’s first documentary on music contention, recording the members of the “Labor Exchange Band,” returning from the city to Meinung countryside making music. They start caring about peasant and farm village issues after the reservoir debate had declined; their music is also more matured.
Taiwan’s farm youths now are in an embarrassing situation: those to the city for better future miss home; those who came back after the bubble economy went down are being urged away by the elders. These farm youths had to go to south-east Asia for “foreign brides” because of their funny social status. In the film, the foreign brides talk about their feelings of coming to Taiwan; and their album recording process in cooperation with the band members.
Through the musicians, the camera goes into the life of the band in their Meinung hometown, showed them offstage, and the recording process in the deserted tobacco building. How can these five totally different top musicians gather along and play the music? How do they interact? All these images are captured in this film.
Directors
Ho Chao-ti
Ho Chao-li hi a documentary Filmmaker and director. Her works have addressed a broad range of subject matter, from traditional folk music to disadvantaged groups to contemporary cultural fusion. She formerly worked as a magazine editor, newspaper and television reporter, and community-college lecturer on media and gender issues. In the 1990s, she conducted a field survey of indigenous theater and traditional culture on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, and researched child prostitution in the newly developed special economic zones of East Asia. The works of Ho Chao-ti were invited to Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival, Women Make Waves Film Festival in Taiwan.