Projects
Wind and View
HSIEH Sheng-Hung
- Taiwan
- 80min
- DCP
Synopsis
Wind and View is a story about an elderly couple running a grocery store called, roughly translated, “Landscape Store”. Grandpa Kang (Kang Chen-Kuo) is 97-year-old, born in Northern China and spent his youth in the scourge of war. After he fought in the Korean War, he was brought to Taiwan as a prisoner of war by the U.S. military. Deep in the mountains of Taiwan Grandpa Kang met and eventually married Grand Eleng Pacekelj, a princess of the Paiwan tribe - one of the many indigenous tribes in Taiwan. Since then, Grandpa Kang has settled down in the tribal village of Sandimen and runs a grocery store called “Landscape Store” with his wife. It is open all year round and has been running for almost 50 years. There is always Chinese with a Huabei-accent and Pinayuanan (Paiwan language) intertwining in the store. How do their children and grandchildren, who are proud of their indigenous heritage, view their grandfather? The film follows family Kang’s daily lives, captures their multilayered conversations and shows how this forms their family bond and history. A history that travels across East Asia and informs about East Asian geopolitics and the link to modern Taiwanese history.Review
“Landscape” means “wind and view” in Chinese characters. When I stepped into Landscape Store for the first time, I saw an antique map with stickers hung on the wall. Kang uses stickers to mark his hometown and the locations where he has participated in battles from Eurasia to Korean Peninsula. The latest sticker placed where Kang stays from decades ago is a small tribe in Southern Taiwan. I imagine every memory underneath these stickers, trying to figure out what was undercovered by him and the reason why he resided here. Today, Kang and his wife are still running the grocery store and opening it all year round. Even though Kang can’t speak Pinayuanan and his wife is not good at Chinese either, this couple live together for over 60 years. I want to record this story of their encounter because I can see through them to tell the history in East Asia after World War II, how the geopolitics affected, and what kind of cultural reflections were brought to impact Taiwan's modern history.
Director
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HSIEH Sheng-Hung
Credit
- Producer황인유 HUANG Yin-Yu
이나 혼 Ina HON