Taiwan: Films

Cape no 7:

Wei Te-Sheng 2008 – Ars Film 

Cape No. 7 portrays the rise of a small-town rock band and the discovery of a cache of undelivered love letters from 1940s Japanese-occupied Taiwan that become the catalyst of another inter-cultural love affair 70 years later.

The film begins in 1945 with the extradition of a Japanese teacher from Taiwan at the end of the Japanese colonial period. In seven passionate letters, the teacher reveals his previously undeclared love to a Taiwanese woman he must leave behind, forced to be separated by the end of the war.

Providing a lavish presentation of south Taiwan’s breathtaking scenery through its top-notch cinematography, Cape No. 7 also explores the unwavering pursuits of music, dreams and love intertwined with themes of generational differences, cultural diversity and small town life.

Cape No. 7 is the highest grossing film ever produced in Taiwan surpassing even Ang Lee’s Lust: Caution and Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon and it was the official Taiwanese entry for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar in 2009.

Island Etude

Chen Huai-en 2007

Zoom Hunt

A young man with a bike sets out on a once-in-a-lifetime trip in this road movie from Taiwanese filmmaker Chen Huai-en.

Ming (Tung Ming-hsiang) is a college student who was born with serious hearing loss, though despite this he has taught himself to play guitar by touch. With a few weeks off, Ming is in the mood for adventure, so he hops on his bike and pedals around the coast of Taiwan, starting at the port city of Kaohsiung.

As Ming travels around the country, he encounters a variety of fellow travellers and interesting characters, including another cyclist (Yuen-lun) who has left his home in Canada to visit his mother (Chen Hsiu-hui) as she struggles to deal with the collapse of her marriage; a bus driver (Wu Nien-chen) who is taking a coach full of elderly travellers on a tour; a model from eastern Europe (Ruta Palionyte) who is having trouble with train schedules; and a filmmaker (Teng An-ning) working on his latest project, an ambitious dreamlike fantasy.

Lianxi Qu (Island Etude) was Taiwan’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2008.

52Hz I Love You:

Wei Te-Sheng 2017

Ars Film 

From the director of Cape No 7, comes this light romantic musical set in Taipei, a crowded metropolis in which lonely people are everywhere. They yearn for love but are afraid of it because love is like a rose with thorns.

It is Valentine’s Day and everyone is celebrating love in the streets of Taipei, including a young lady in her thirties who is looking for love, a young man who is almost 30 waiting for love, a 30-something couple who have been together for ten years and are living under financial pressure, a middle-aged baker who lost his wife, a florist in his fifties who still longs to be loved and a lesbian couple who experience disapproval but don’t care what others think of them.

On this day, anything is possible, so the characters step onto the stage to sing their humorous and romantic love songs. In love, everyone will be heard sooner or later, and loneliness is but the beginning of every story.