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Artists contributing to the 1966 Modern Poetry Exhibition included HUANG Hua-cheng, LONG Sih-liang, HUANG Yong-song, and CHANG Chao-tang; each artist chose their favorite modern poems and transformed them into imagery. This film is a time capsule capturing some of the exhibits, as well as the young artists.
An in-depth documentary on the reclusive Taiwanese artist Huang Hua-Cheng and his avant-garde legacy. Commissioned by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum for the retrospective exhibition: “An Open Ending: Huang Hua-Cheng” (2020).
Early collaboration between Chang Chan-tang and Christopher Doyle documenting the friendship of their inner circle in Taiwan during the early 80s.
An intimate two-person portrait of painter Hsieh Hsiao-te (謝孝德) and his illiterate, self-taught sculptor father Hsieh Chin-shou (謝金壽), exploring urban-rural tensions, generational differences, and divergences in their choice of media. A short documentary from Chang Chao-tang’s (張照堂) tenure on the China Television Company’s News Highlights (新聞集錦) program.
This landmark 1981–82 documentary series consists of weekly 25-minute episodes filmed across Taiwan using an ENG (Electronic News Gathering) camera. It documents local customs and social textures through a distinctly humanistic lens. The project also marks an early collaboration between Christopher Doyle and Chang Chao-Tang.
Using footage shot between 1974 and 1978, this experimental documentary offers an intimate portrait of Hung Tung, one of Taiwan’s most singular outsider artists. Born in 1920 in Nankunshen, Tainan, orphaned at a young age, Hung Tung worked as a laborer, fisherman, and spiritual medium before suddenly beginning to paint at fifty. His densely imagined world—filled with plants, humans, animals, gods, ghosts, and symbols—captivated the Taiwanese art scene of the 1970s and secured his reputation as a legendary folk artist. Combining observational footage, interviews, and a distinctive musical structure—from Tibor Szemző’s evocation of innocence to Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on the Wire”—the film traces a life of solitude, frustration, and pride, shaping a restrained yet poignant portrait of an artist who remained fiercely autonomous within his own inner universe.
This short documentary portrays Chang Yingwu (1921–1984), a man whose extraordinary body became a site where medicine, spectacle, and state power intersected. Born in Beijing and later relocated to Taiwan, Chang lived with acromegaly, reaching a height far beyond ordinary human scale. Once exhibited, later enlisted, and eventually turned into a public figure through sport and media, his life traces how an anomalous body is disciplined, displayed, and normalized by social institutions. Filmed with restraint rather than sensationalism, the work observes Chang’s daily gestures and silences, allowing his presence to expose the fragile boundary between individuality and social gaze.
"Wild Cursive" is the third piece of Taiwanese dancer and choreographer Lin Hwai-min's Cursive trilogy, a captivating series translating the development of the fascinating art form of Chinese calligraphy into dance. As Lin says himself, the final part marks the climax of the trilogy, because it corresponds to the completely detached, free and highly abstract forms of “spontaneous” calligraphy. The performance contains elements of Tai Chi and is musically accompanied by compositions by Jim Shum and Liang Chun-mei. The performance was recorded in 2009 at the National Theater in Taipei, Taiwan.
Documenting outsider artist Lin Yuan (林淵, 1913-1992), a self-taught folk artist from Nantou (南投), and his stone sculptures—works marked by simplicity, naturalness, and a vital rural vernacular spirit.
“Journey into the Mine” (礦之旅) is a 1981 documentary directed by Chang Chao-Tang (張照堂). Part of the “Journey Through Images” series (映象之旅), it documents the Ruìsān Coal Mine (瑞三煤礦) in Houtong, Ruifang (瑞芳侯硐). Using a portable ENG camera, the crew descended 600 meters underground to record miners working amid heat, coal dust, and gas hazards. Rejecting elite-centered television perspectives, the film foregrounds the resilience of working-class laborers. Its essayistic voice-over is paired with ECM jazz and blues, creating a distinctive tone. In 1982, it won the Golden Bell Award (金鐘獎) for Best Educational and Cultural Program. A rebroadcast added footage of the Neihu Futian Coal Mine disaster (內湖福田煤礦災變), producing a stark dialogue between policy narrative and industrial tragedy. Its footage was later used in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1986 film Dust in the Wind”(戀戀風塵).