Taiwan Docs

A documentary about a handful of environmental activists in Taiwan and the environmental issues they were involved in.

In 1976, the Department of Economics chose the ZhangHua Coast as a long-term base for the heavy chemical industry for Central Taiwan. Taiwan. However this so-called ‘Zhang Coast Industry Area’ was deserted for years. Then, in 1985, the American DuPont Company proposed a “TiO2” investment, and the government decided to use this area for the project. It took them only two weeks to pass the bill. DuPont was the biggest chemical company in the world, and its revenue ranked number 7 for the entire manufacturing industry in the USA. The total amount of the investment was NT$ 6.4 billion, which would have made the project the biggest investment in Taiwanese history. The American government had previously enforced DuPont to cease disposing waste water into the sea and adopt land filling/recycling methods instead. However the DuPont company was still going to apply the former method in Taiwan which caused deep concern among the local population. They initiated a protest, which went on for 13 months and 12 days. On March 12, 1987, DuPont announced its withdrawal from LuKang (the town where the investment was supposed to take place). It was a massive victory for the environmental protection movement and is a milestone in the history of the Taiwanese social movement. It has inspired the establishment of regional as well as national organizations such as the Association of Anti-No. 5 Naphtha Cracker Campaign, the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union, Greenpeace Taiwan, and the New Environment Promotion Foundation to name just a few. For “Beyond the Anti-DuPont Movement”, the filmmaker, Daw-Ming Lee, interviewed not only the people who joined the Anti-DuPont Movement, but also the social movement campaigners XiLin Nian, XiuXian Chen and JunYi Lin of Greenpeace, Syue Lu of the Labor Rights Association, and Chih-Chang Wang and MeiNa Lin who used to work in media and then turned their attention to social campaigns. The film also explores the sacrifices campaigners have had to make in their family life, their subsequent marginalized state in society as well as the many other struggles they have had to confront.

Source: Taiwan Int'l Documentary Festival
http://www.tidf.org.tw/tidfdb/EDefault.aspx