Cinematic Taiwan
台灣電影櫥窗
MATA - The Island's Gaze
MATA - 影像之初
Aug 29
8月29日
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
About the Program
Scottish photographer John Thomson’s trip to Taiwan in 1871 is an important historical event.
In this film, the director selects a hunter photo to re-interpret that event and visit the Siraya tribe to find Elder Wan, who talks and sings well, bringing us back to the past through his plucking of strings.
Then we see the vigorous hunters holding their breath, staying very still in front of that weird machine for a long time, with a boy and a dog squatting at their feet.
The documentary invites the audience to witness these moments with curious eyes. On both sides of the river of time, the past and the future are speculated together, alongside the influence of images on this island.
Cheng was born in 1968 in Chang-Hua, Taiwan; graduated from Shih-Hsin University, then worked in a media company, the Golden Horse Executive Committee, and the Taiwan Film Institute. He is also a film critic and writer. The serial works Through (2007), Sorrow of City (2008), and Waiting for True Love explored the depth of time and space of the city.
His documentary film The astrolabe of text (2010) is about traditional Chinese printing industry in Taiwan, and Ita thao (2010) is about the catastrophic earthquake that occurred in Taiwan on September 21st, 1999.
Looking For Siraya (2013) and MATA (2016) are based on photographs and images of Formosa indigenous people taken by 19th-century photographer John Thomson; to watch and to explore the subject of ourselves.
Phantom Cinema (2017) and Film Dreams about her Childhood (2021) are based on Cinema ruins.
2025 Taiwan's 15th Experimental Media Art Festival
"A Wolf on Watch", Filmmakers in Focus: Cheng Li-Ming (12-14/Nov), presented by the TFAI- (Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute)
From the Curating Team
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TAIWANfest Toronto is grateful to be held on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, that is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We acknowledge our privilege to be gathered here, and commit to work with and be respectful to the Indigenous peoples of this land while we engage in meaningful conversations of culture and reconciliation.