The Woman Carrying the Prey
Country:
- Taiwan
- DCP
- Indigenous people
- Culture
- women
Synopsis
As winter approaches, Heydi takes her nephew to the hunting ground to explore new trails. During hunting season, Heydi shows her nephew her hunting world, on the land she has guarded for a lifetime.
The film documents Heydi Mijung's daily life as a female hunter, she connects the relationship among human, ecology and animal. Following the ancestral tradition Gaya, she guards the forest on her ancestors’ land.
Director Statement
The film is an extension of the story of Heydi Mijung, a female hunter from one of the families in “Mgaluk Dowmung, Connecting with Dowmung— The stories of Dowmung families”, produced by director YU Hsin-lan in 2020. In this film, the director's mother, Heydi, as a hunter, sees the important role of women in hunting culture. From Heydi's philosophy of hunting and her female vision, we observe the interplay of multiple relationships among humans, animals, ecology, and even traditional cultural beliefs, intertwined with Heydi's own narrative of her life experience. She is both a Truku hunter and a practitioner of Gaya, and as Heydi encourages herself, “Kuyuh dmaduk nii wah! I'm simply a woman who hunts!”. Her story as a hunter and her practice of Gaya are presented in the documentary, breaking the public's one-dimensional image of a hunter and entering the world of women's hunting from Heydi's story.
Festivals & Awards
2023 LA Independent Women Film Awards - Selected for Best Documentary of the Season
Team
Gallery
