Taiwan

This is a movie about searching and losing.

Two threads intertwine and form the whole of the story. One of which is about my husband, a man from a Ji family in Muzha Village, Neimen Township. He could be a descendent of Pingpu tribe, but neither he nor his family remembers their origin. A look at a few of old pictures of Pingpu people sent him off to the search of his origin. The other is about the tragedy in which Xiaoling Village, one of the few places in Taiwan comprehensively preserving Pingpu culture, was destroyed overnight during the Typhoon Morakot disaster. In an attempt to restore Pingpu culture through audio and visual media, I set off on a journey of searching. Not willing to let this part of history wiped out in the catastrophe, I tried to record the trauma and sorrow of the locals to produce a documentary.

The Directorate General of Highways lends an impetus to build the road no.26 from An-Shuo to Shu-Hai by 3.8billion in 2006. The villagers in the tribe have many different kinds of opinions.”Tribe’’ is the main point of this documentary. It’s filled with rational and perceptual and it describes the relationship between the land and people deeply. It makes people have thoughts and heart-searching between building and preserving. People have two kinds of opinions of this case, but no one is wrong. The real problem is this policy. Will it have a win-win situation of ecology preserved and economy developed by something more specific?

There were historical facts that passed down orally indicating Orchid Island and Batan Island had interactions in marriage and leather armor trading in the past couple hundred years. In recent years, five official “ethnic cultural interaction events” were conducted between the two islands, which can be considered as quite frequent for two countries. However, “root finding” has lead to new topics and interests in these two places’ historical connections, and one ought to further clarify what exactly these relations are.

In 1997, Pu-u Akuyana resigned from an advertising firm in metropolitan Taipei, to seek a new life as she returned to her hometown Laiji Community. Putting academic training she received in the fine arts to use, Pu-u embarks on a creative journey. Pu-u pays attention to the future of Laiji Community. She consults the elders on how to fabricate useful yet beautiful household equipment, with materials accessible right where they live. She hosts a community workshop as a platform for talents in the community to be involved in making art and crafts. Their results become the presentation at the art fair held in the forest. On a more personal level, Pu-u remembers what her heart has always clung to – the deep friendship with her pet wild hog. She values wisdom of the nature she acquired from the animal, and the good times they spend together. Through art, she continues to visualize wild hogs around the wilderness to watch over the land, and people of Laiji Community.

Cina Alis, 74, who now resides in Hucida Tribe in Kaohsiung in Taiwan, is one of the few Bunun natives who have refused to move into the prefabricated houses offered to them by the insensitive charity organizations for free. As a matter of fact, the tribe that Cina Alis belongs to has been evicted and placed to a new location on a total of six occasions by different authorities. Since 1939 while under the Japanese reign, their unwilling migration took off from their origins in the deep of the Central Mountains Range, and each time they moved they would settle closer to the lower mountain zone. But this time Cina Alis and her son will no longer concede to the deal to be forced to live on “other people’s land.” They are currently living in a town near Hucida, and they hope they’ll be able to come home one day…