The Boys from Fengkuei opens to a static shot of a near desolate thoroughfare in the bucolic, fishing village of Fengkuei in the Penghu islands, as a slow moving bus momentarily stops to open its doors off-camera – seemingly to accommodate or disembark some unseen passenger – before continuing on its unhurried journey along the […]
In 1962, at an anonymous Taiwanese village, a somber, lackadaisical man curiously dressed as a clown and laden with advertising billboards promenades through an array of indistinguishable city streets on a sweltering summer day, trying to attract the attention of the occasional passerby with the constant beating of a toy ceremonial drum before momentarily wandering […]
In an early episode in The Wayward Cloud, Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi) spends an aimless afternoon watching television news reports on the ongoing drought and the coincidentally timed falling market price of watermelons, leading the anchorman to jokingly remark that drinking watermelon juice has become more economical than drinking water. The theme of essential substitution proves […]
What Time Is It There? opens to a long, unbroken static shot of a middle-aged man (Tien Miao) preparing the kitchen table for a meal, then calling for his son, Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) to no avail, then biding time waiting for his family to sit down for dinner by smoking a cigarette, before walking […]
The final days of the year 1999 prove to be a bleak and chaotic time in Taipei. A widespread virus, “Taiwan Fever”, has crippled the city, reducing its victims into exhibiting unusual, cockroach-like behavior. Quarantined areas have been established, and the uninfected residents are repeatedly encouraged through news broadcasts to evacuate into government arranged temporary […]
An unemployed young man named Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) passes idle time at a local Taipei mall when he encounters an old friend (Chen Shiang-chyi) on the opposite escalator. With time on his hands, he agrees to accompany her back to the location shoot where she is working as a production assistant for a film. At […]