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Pioneering in Ordinary Life

·July 6, 2021·15 min read

New Bloom/No Man is an Island editor Brian Hioe interviewed Lance and Stuart Chen-Hayes, who recently published 兩個爸爸. This follows up on an interview conducted following the publication of Double Dads One Teen in English in 2019. Lance is Taiwan’s first out gay dad and their nonbinary teen, Kalani, became the first Taiwanese citizen with two father’s names on both an international birth certificate and an international marriage license Read More

Taiwanese Animated Shorts at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival

English Film

·June 25, 2021·10 min read

The following Taiwanese animated shorts for children were reviewed as part of the “Formosa Fantastica” section of the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival in Switzerland. The film festival will be held from July 2nd to July 10th in a hybrid format, with simultaneously live-streamed events in Neuchâtel and Taipei Read More

An Attempt to Revive Marx’s Workers’ Inquiry

Books English Life

·June 22, 2021·3 min read

Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives, edited by Robert Ovetz, is an ambitious book Read More

A Feel-Good Story About Two Gay Dads and Their Son

English Film

·June 18, 2021·3 min read

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

A Personal Look at a Young Activist

English Film

·June 16, 2021·5 min read

I Am Greta is a documentary film about climate activist Greta Thunberg, the central figure of the 2018 climate strike movement. Thunberg, a high school student, started protesting the inaction of the government in regards to climate change by skipping school and going on strike on Fridays. This simple act of rebellion, at first done only by Thunberg herself, slowly caught the attention of other students, and eventually grew into a global climate strike movement, participated by students around the world. Thunberg’s reputation was catapulted to celebrity status by the media, and as a result, she was invited to many UN climate meetings Read More

A Single Photograph, An Infinitude of Moments

English Film

·June 11, 2021·3 min read

According to director Huang Pang-chuan, the motivation for shooting Last Year When the Train Passed By began with a whim—he took a photo while passing by a town on train one day and later began to wonder about the inhabitants of the houses that he had photographed Read More

A Cacophony of Migrant Workers

English Film

·June 8, 2021·3 min read

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

Examining Man’s Relation to Divinity in Taiwan

English Film

·June 4, 2021·3 min read

In Trance We Gaze, directed by Singing Chen, proves a nuanced, complex portrait of man’s relation to divinity in contemporary Taiwan. It accomplishes this by working on multiple registers, touching on the many forms that man’s relation to religious worship can take within traditional Taiwanese folk religion Read More

What Happens When Activists Run For Office in China?

English Film

·May 28, 2021·3 min read

Lost Course (迷航), a 2019 documentary covering nearly ten years of the protests in Wukan village in China, is a tour de force Read More

The Hotel Between Life and Death

English Film

·May 25, 2021·3 min read

Taipei Suicide Story, directed by KEFF, is a beautifully understated short film. In this respect, the film is highly atmospheric without being effusive or overdone in the slightest. The film takes place during one night at a “suicide hotel.” The hotel is one in which guests spend one night; either they decide to kill themselves at the end of that night, or they decide to give life another chance Read More

Transitions, Articulated and Experienced

Art English

·May 21, 2021·6 min read

Hsien-Yu Cheng, a Taiwan-based artist, has been producing intriguing works at a pace hard for the Taipei tech arts circle to keep pace with Read More

Staying True In a World Bombarding You With Constant Influences

English Film

·May 21, 2021·3 min read

Nomadland, a film that won Chloé Zhao an Oscar for Best Director, is a film that follows a woman named Fern who takes seasonal jobs to make ends meet as she drives across the country in her minivan after her husband's death. Fern and her husband used to work for the US Gypsum Company in Empire, Nevada, where they shared a company-owned flat. The US Gypsum shut down its gypsum mine and drywall plant, forcing people who lived and worked there to relocate Read More