2009 Taiwan Documentary Film Festival 台灣記錄片電影節

tsaiyuchun

2009 Taiwan Documentary Film Festival
台灣記錄片電影節

http://www.ercct.uni-tuebingen.de/AdTXP/index.php?id=116

The 2009 Taiwan Documentary Film Festival will be held on May 15/16. This year, filmmaker Ho, Chao-Ti 賀照緹 is the Festival's special guest. Among other, the following films will be presented and discussed:
The Gangster's God 炸神明

MasterHan Dan (寒單爺) is believed to be the embodiment of the wealth god. InHualian and Taitung Counties(花蓮和台東縣), a man or a child will play therole of Master Han Dan on the Lantern Festival. Being bare to thewaist, wearing a short red pants and holding banyan branches in thehand, Master Han Dan will stand on a small holy carriage carried byfour men in a parade for the crowd to throw firecrackers at him to prayfor wealth.(source: National Center for Traditional Art)
Thelegend has it that Master Han Dan is a military god of wealth, andthrowing firecrackers can drive the cold away from his body; the morefirecrackers one sets off, the more successful and wealthy he willbecome. The 「Bombing of Master Han Dan」 has now become an importanttraditional festival in Taitung. (source: expatintaipei.com)

El Salvador Journal 薩爾瓦多日記

Background material:
State,Civil Society and Transnational Class Politics in the Age ofGlobalization: A Case Study of Taiwan's Solidarity with CentralAmerican Labor Struggles. 陳信行 Chen, Hsin-Hsing. Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies vol.60 p. 35-110. (source: Chen, Hsin-Hsing's blog)

Culture Shock Strikes Again
Ihad one of my more disturbing moments of culture shock this morningwhile stepping into the back patio to use the toilet. One of therabbits the family is breeding died last night, apparently of naturalcauses, and its corpse was lying outside the door to greet me. Whatreally got to me, though, was that the family's cat had taken advantageof the rabbit's death for a little late-night snack last night, leavinga gaping, bleeding hole in the side of the body. I really freaked out.And then, the family started laughing at me, and someone said, "Hey,that's nothing. You should have been here during the war. There werepeople like that all shot up by the side of the road all the time." Ifinally regained my composure and ability to walk through the doorwaywhen one of them put a page of a newspaper over the body, but nothingin the world could cover up the comment about the war from my naïveforeign mind. I am still such a foreigner in this country. (source: Matt Corks' blog)

County Road 184 縣道184之東

"County Road 184" is Taiwan's first protest music documentary. It tells the story of the music band "交工樂隊",who were against  the building of the Meinung reservoir. In 2000,President Chen Shui-Bian declared a moratorium on the construction ofthe Meinung reservoir (美濃水庫). The band begin to pay attention to handover a completed project peasant and rural issues, has also becomeincreasingly sophisticated forms of music.

Taiwan News: 又逢枯水期 美濃水庫興建爭議再起
published at 2009-02-01 12:37 PM
又是河川枯水期，總統馬英九提倡節約用水，讓水利單位又想起興建水庫計畫，但美濃愛鄉協進會反對興建美濃水庫的態度一直未鬆懈，正反糾葛一時仍無法化解......

We may also commend Ho's blog. Here you are!