No Man is an Island presents the first of a set of collaborations with Electric Soul, a Hong Kong-based electronic music magazine and ticketing platform. For our first cross-posted article, we spoke with Beatrice Wong, who DJs as Misty Penguin. Apart from being one of Hong Kong’s few transgender DJs, Wong is also a stand-up comedian and filmmaker. The following article was originally published on Electric Soul on September 10th Read More
My Missing Valentine surprised in 2020 when it swept the Golden Horse Awards, Taiwan’s top film awards. The movie took home not only Best Feature Film, but also Best Original Screenplay and Best Director. The film’s two leads, Liu Kuan Ting and Patty Lee, were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively, but did not win Read More
Gubuk, directed by So Yo-hen, is a unique look at the experiences of “runaway” migrant workers in Taiwan, mixing fact and fiction, realism and the fantastical. As an experimental documentary that hopes to highlight the experience of migrant workers, the film is highly Brechtian Read More
Inside the Brick Wall—a film that can no longer safely be safely screened in Hong Kong—will no doubt prove a worthy historical document of the Hong Kong protests. Not only does the film document a key moment in the protests, but it proves a film encapsulating the dynamics of the protest in microcosm—and the subjective struggle faced by Hongkongers as a whole today Read More
SEQALU: Formosa 1867 has been widely discussed in Taiwan in past few days, following its premiere last week. As the title implies, the television drama is set in Taiwan in 1867. SEQALU is the latest historical drama offering from PTS Taiwan depicting Taiwanese history. This follows suit from last year’s Island Nation, another big-budget work that dramatized the political history of Taiwan’s democratic transition Read More
The Soul stands out among recent Taiwanese film as an effective and well-executed commercial thriller. Though the film fails to stick the landing, with its convoluted and messy conclusion undoing some of the movie’s other merits, The Soul proves an entertaining watch—even a rather evocative one Read More
Brian Hioe spoke to Rainbow Chan, whose EP Stanley was released on November 25th. According to the EP description, “Stanley is her exploration of a love past, a farewell to a city that’s changed forever” Read More
Swingin’ aims to be a charmful, cute, and playful story, even as it touches on contemporary social issues still debated in Taiwanese society. The short film tells the story of eleven-year-old elementary schooler Qiu Qiu, who has two gay fathers, one of which is his biological father. However, the film focuses more on Qiu Qiu’s relation with his non-biological father, Wu Jia-hao. Read More
If you are like me and consider Crazy Rich Asians one of the worst Asian American films ever made, you might very well enjoy Minari Read More
Green Jail is a documentary that chronicles the twilight days of Hashima Yoshiko, the last living Taiwanese resident of Iriomote Island, the second-largest island of Okinawa Prefecture Read More
“Footnote,” directed by Zhengfan Yang, consists primarily of footage of Chicago cityscapes in 2020. The footage is mostly of empty streets, paired with audio from police radio in the background Read More
Taking Back the Legislature, produced by the Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers group, is a powerful document of one of the most dramatic events of the Hong Kong protests of summer 2019 Read More