"A Letter To A'ma" Taiwanese Film screening & conversation with director

201 State Street,Madison WI 53703

12 April, 2023

Description

Awards ★ « Golden Horse » , official selection, 2021 ★ « Women Make Waves International Film Festival », best taiwanese film, 2021 ★ Festival "Les Rimbaud du Cinéma", best documentary film, best music, 2021 ★ "The SMR13 International Independent Film Festival" best documentary film, best photography, best music, 2021 About the film An art teacher returns to her childhood home to mourn the passing of her grandmother. As she pieces together the fragmented memories of her youth she finds herself coming face-to-face with the problematic issue of her country’s fractured history. An island on the edge of Asia, Taiwan has experienced four hundred years of colonization followed by a recent half century of dictatorship. Through a student art project guided by this teacher a representational portrait of the island’s collective memory begins to emerge; and in so doing, these young artists have initiated a process by which Taiwan, an island forgotten by the world and in the midst of forgetting itself, can now remember itself and construct a new postcolonial identity through art. About the Director Hui-Ling CHEN was a plastic art teacher in high school and left her post to study cinema in France. After studying cinema, she returned to Taiwan to found the educational project: "The collective memory of the island", while filming the documentary "A Letter to A’ma". She has cooperated with many schools across the country to guide young people to express their own story artistically. The film testifies to the achievements over ten years of the project. In 2018, she won an award from the Ministry of Education for her contribution to artistic education for the younger generation.