Activity report of the screening and discussion of the documentary “62 years and 6500 miles between”

The screening and discussion of “62 years and 6500 miles between”, TSA’s contribution to Pan Asia 2005, successfully attracted sixty people from various ethnic groups. Approximately one third of the audience is Taiwanese, another one third is probably Asians, and the other third being Americans/Europeans and even several African Americans. We are happy about this turn out, in which we successfully attracted people from different cultural backgrounds to a documentary that displays a portrait of Taiwanese culture.

The event began with a short introduction to the director and was followed immediately by the screening of the movie. During the 52 minutes of screening we heard occasionally that people burst out for laughter. As the movie ended, 10 pizzas and a variety of drinks were served and people lined up for free food.

When people where half-way done with their food, the facilitator, Shu-Yao Sheu, introduced the two discussants to the audience. They are Cheng-Yi Huang, a Taiwanese Ph.D. Student in History, and Anya Bernstein, a Ph.D. student in Anthropology who does research in Taiwan’s suburban development and had spent two years in Taiwan.

Cheng-Yi raised an interesting point that male characters and voices are complete absent in the film. Moreover, all the characters are narrated by women voices that do not clearly show the distinction between the individuals. Huang suggests that this movie is meant to be a portrait of “Taiwanese women”, not just a biography of the director’s own grandma. Huang is also curious about the grandma’s definition of “politics” which she has been enthusiastic in. The film, however, does not try to seek an answer to that. So Huang suggested that this is a film about women. Bernstein, as a foreigner to Taiwan, provided some different thoughts about the movie. She thinks that this movie is a search for personal identity, and a debate on the extent at which the linkage between immigrants and their “homeland” is broken. She mentioned herself as an example, a Russian-Jewish who immigrated to the United States at the age of 5, is she Russian? Is she American? And she thinks that the director was trying to ask herself: “Am I Taiwanese? Am I American?” To be short, this is a film about a young woman yearns to know why she lives her life like she does, and where should she go next.

Some of our American friends complained to us after the screening that they do not know anything about Taiwan History, for example, the 228- incident that was talked about a great deal in the movie. We did planned on having a short overview of Taiwanese History at the beginning of the discussion, but gave up the idea because we did not want to make this discussion like a lecture. Perhaps we should have printed out a chronology of Taiwanese History and a brief description about the 228 incident and distribute them before the screening.

We are especially thankful to Ms. Chih-Lan Lu, who personally knows the director and helped us on getting the film and organizing the discussion. We would also like to thank our two discussants, Cheng-Yi Huang and Anya Bernstein, for being willing to put in their time to preview the movie and prepare for the discussion. Thanks for Chih-Pin Chuu, Entzu Lin, Sherry Huang, Debby Yang, and Jung-Jen Huang for helping us distribute the posters. And we would like to thank Susie Wang from the Pan Asia 2005 Coalition for putting the Pan Asia week together.

Written by Shu-Yao Sheu