Thursday, May 31st , 6:30 pm
Venue: Taiwan Academy, B1 Screening Room
(1 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017)

【See You, Lovable Strangers 】(62 min. 2016)
This film is the sequel of the 2013 film Lovely Strangers, a film that won the Outstanding Award of the Golden Harvest Awards in Taiwan. See You, Lovely Strangers continues to concern the work experience of Vietnamese migrant workers, to examine the reasons behind their numerous escape, and to track down the family circumstances of those who were deported from Taiwan. The film is not trying to propose a solution but to generate more understanding of the life context of illegal migrant workers with first hand witness records. The film is an attempt to stimulate proper response on migrant workers’ human rights from both Taiwan and Vietnam government and to reduce unnecessary conflicts and discrimination.

【Towards the Sun】 (28 min. 2016)
A man loses his house because of a foreclosure sale, and he is forced to live in his truck. A Vietnamese woman, who only has one flight ticket and easy packages, gets on the man’s truck. They sit on the moving truck with their painful memories, follow signs directing all the way to North, and embark on adventures on the road trip. Director WANG Yi-Ling lives in Taipei, Taiwan. She graduated from National Taiwan University of Arts in Filmmaking in 2017. Her short film Towards the Sun was selected at the 70th Festival de Cannes Cinéfondation Competition and other prestigious film festivals.

This month the Taiwan Academy in New York will present a contemporary art exhibition [he’] and film screenings centered on “multiculturalism and immigration.” This series of events aim to capture the impacts of globalization on Taiwanese society through various lenses, and through the perspectives of the participating artists.

As of now, the foreign worker population in Taiwan has grown to over six hundred thousand people, yet they exist outside of Taiwanese society. Alongside the exhibition [he’], 3 films and documentaries, “See You, Lovable Strangers,” “Stilt,” and “Towards the Sun,” have been selected for screening, which examine the challenges new immigrants face in Taiwan, as well as the issues of the rural-urban divide.

In addition, the fourth film “Black Bear Forest” is also selected for this series, which addresses the relationship between humans and the natural environment by taking the audience into the world of an indigenous tribe—Bunun, and the life of Taiwan’s very own protected animal, the black bear.

The selected films focusing on the cultures of new immigrants, foreign workers, foreign spouses, and indigenous peoples, and on the issue of ecological protection, highlight the multicultural, inclusive and innovative spirit of Taiwan in relation to its geographical position in East Asia.