Taiwan Docs

After "Beautiful Boys", gay director Mickey Chen presents his new work, "Memorandum on Happiness". This is a documentary about the sweetness and pain of life, about pursuit and loss. It is a bluebird's song for gay people and their joy, tinged with melancholy premonition-a song that comes from afar for an amazing encounter with real life.

The happy life is to come. The film presents Taiwan's first gay couple to openly hold a marriage ceremony, Hsu Yo-Shen and other in 2002, changed the lives of the four protagonists. Tom's lesbian identity was revealed when she decided to marry Hannah; Tom lost three jobs. Hannah faced no less of a struggle, as a divorced woman arguing in court to get custody of her 7-year-old son. She would have made a fine Erin Brockovich. In June, 2001, the Justice Ministry announced that homosexual couple may establish their own families and adopt children. Hsu Yo-Shen, half-recovered from depression, was surrounded by the media and asked for comments. "I don't know what place can be our home!" Hsu and Harriman have been together for ten years. From Buffalo to New York, Taipei to San Francisco-as long as gay marriage is not provided legal backing, gay people still have a long way to go, to wander...

This is a story of two marriages, the men's and the women's. The parallel structure lays bare the complexity of homosexual love and the cruelty inherent to love itself. The film honestly captured the violence in Tom and Hannah's married life. It's a deep silent river, cutting out its course and leaving a path of marks and scars. The survivor is like a child who cannot explain, but can only remember.