All tagged Taiwanese Film

When Image Becomes the Salt of Life – Cutting through the Narrative of Heroization in Lau Kek-huat’s Taste of Wild Tomato

The Kaohsiung Film Archive commissions the creation of documentary films on the city of Kaohsiung, to exhibit “local people’s identification with the land, and display Kaohsiung’s local cultural scene through visuals”. Twenty-five documentary films have been made over the past ten years, which touch on aspects such as folk customs, industry, military dependents' villages, indigenous people, migrant workers, and landscape transformation. Taste of Wild Tomato, which was nominated in the 2022 Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) competition, is one of the latest commissioned works. The film breaks free of the longstanding framework of discussing and recreating the February 28th Incident, extending from this singular focus to the furthest realms of visual language. Through a loose and poetic narrative, the film casts light upon the multifaceted, uncertain and unstable history of the city, and indeed the country as a whole.