Synopsis
"Departure" is a collaborative video essay that looks at how the development of transportation extends form the histories of colonization and foreign influence in three Asian centers, Taipei, Shanghai, and Hanoi. Progress is a promise made by builders and occupiers. What are the costs of their promised modernity? The drive toward modernity is accompanied by nostalgia.
"Departure" is a story of the traveler, about visiting, about moving through. Shot from a moving car, cyclo, and trains, the video documents the changing and layered landscape, giving a window onto a place from other places. Five women narrate the interconnected stories of their cities in their native languages, the network of complicated language relationships, and the conditions of their understanding- evidence of politics of narration. The video is constructed to question the authority of telling; to unpack the way history is told.
Source: Taiwan International Documentary Festival
Team
- Director