Taiwan Docs

The whole piece is based on a photograph of an execution by dismemberment in China, taken by the French military in the early 1900s. Not long ago, in 1996, Chen Chieh-jen made use of the same photograph, reworking it as a "Genealogy of Self." The torture/ execution revealed in "Lingchi" is a theater of cruelty, full of unenunciated violence. The film's purpose is not to search for evidence or to revisit a historical scene, but to revisit this form of punishment, giving it a fresh look and a fresh portrayal. The film also enlarges on the theme, taking this ancient practice as a metaphor to express the relations of a hegemonic, globalizing First World with a disempowered Third World.

The ruins of the Summer Palace in Beijing, the site left over from Unit 731 in Harbin, and Luchou Village on Taiwan's Green Island (Taiwan's foremost political prison during the martial law era) -- all appear in the film. In addition, Laborers from the RCA Taiwan electronics factory and the local processed textiles factory's dormitory for women workers in Taoyuan, who have suffered from occupational injury, diseases, and sudden unemployment, and who can no longer work, served as actors. These are all helpless victims of this slow "death by dismemberment." (Commentary bu Chia Jason Wang)

Source: Taiwan International Documentary Festival