Taiwan

In December 7th, 2003, the first nationwide organization of “foreign brides,” the Taiwan Southern Asia-Pacific Sisterhood, was established. The association calls for foreign sisters to actively interact with their local communities throughout the island.

Despite diverse nationalities, cultural backgrounds and languages, these sisters are inseparably bound by the fate they share. Languages in Taiwan—Mandarin, Hakka, Minnan—become their common tongue in daily communication. Now, after joining the association, the sisters will give a new meaning to their home.

The protagonist of this film, Shei-Ting, is a Hakka woman from Songkou Township, Meichow City, in mainland China. When she was 27, she met Mr. Chen, from Meinong, who was visiting China to look over prospective brides.Despite her entire family’s disagreement, Shei-Ting decided to marry him and emigrate to Taiwan.

This film aims to demonstrate the fighting spirit and the hopes of the people who live on this land. At the same time, it also manifests the truth that the success of a family depends not only on the individual’s attitude toward life, but also on the mutual support and love of all the family members.

Hey Jimmy is a short documentary about ‘Black Jimmy,’ a black Taiwanese drag queen. The piece considers the socio-cultural complexities of the protagonist’s mixed parentage. A contemporary urban narrative, the documentary incorporates animation to create affectionately comical insight.

Scars on Memory is Taiwanese queer documantarian Mickey Chen’s soothing and melancholy epilogue to his queer trilogy, which includes the famous Boys for Beauty (1999) and the controversial documentary on lesbian relationships Memorandum on Happiness(2003).

In Scars on Memory, Mickey Chen parallels and interweaves two gay love stories in a pretty diaspora and literaryway. Continuing his thematic focus on constructing generational perception and visibility of Taiwan’s gay community, this time Mickey Chen brings on two fabulous and vivid ‘gay senior citizens’–Madame Yu and Auntie Jiang. Madame Yu and Auntie Jiang recount their touching love stories in with both humor and pathos.

“City of Memories” depicts the lives of elderly people living in a Taipei nursery home: their agony, longing and loneliness. Images of winterly Taipei, with its drizzling rain and gloomy sky, reflect these aged women’s fading mind. In the midst of all the suffering, the women’s ballad singing and story telling bring back the emotional memories of their love lives. These women are trapped in the place where dreams and reality intertwine, and retrospection is their way to hold on to the eternity of love.

“City of Memories” is the third film in the tetralogy “The Realm of Womenhood”, after “Where is My Home?” and “The Ballads of Grandmothers”.