Le Moulin (日曜日式散步者)
Country Taiwan
Year 2015
Genre Documentary
Format Color / B&W / DCP
Runtime 162 min
Status Completed
Release Date Sep. 14, 2016 (Taiwan)
Director Huang Ya-Li
Producer Yen Hung-ya
Festival & Awards
53rd Golden Horse Awards –Best Documentary Award
2016 Taipei Film Awards—Best Screenplay Award & Award for Sound Design
10th Taiwan International Documentary Festival – Grand Prize of Taiwan Competition
2017 Essay Film Festival – Official Selection
9th Hong Kong Independent Film Festival – Indie Frontline
17th San Diego Asian Film Festival – Taiwan Film Showcase
25th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival- International Competition
14th Vladivostok International Film Festival of Asia-Pacific Countries – Documentary Screen. Professionals
6th Lima Independent International Film Festival – International Competition
2nd FILMADRID International Film Festival – Vanguard Competition
17th Jeonju International Film Festival — World Cinemapscape: Spectrum
18th Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente (BAFICI) — Avant-Garde & Genre Competition
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016 — Bright Future Section
CPH:DOX, 2015 — International main competition for DOX:AWARD
Trailer
Film Reviews
– Sight & Sound film critic Nick Bradshaw gave Le Moulin highly positive reviews total 5 STARS at CPH:DOX.
– “‘Even short-lived things like blossoms can achieve perfection’, read the closing words onscreen – which happens to sum up this riveting tour de force, a delightful example of avant-garde filmmaking at its finest (not to mention filmmaking style mirroring its surrealist subject).” —Lauren Wissot，Filmmaker Magazine
– “Intriguing, ambitious attempt to bring a written poetic tradition important to Taiwan’s cultural history to visual life.” —Carmen Gray，Senses of Cinema
Synopsis
It
was when Taiwan was in a stable period of cultural assimilation during the past forty years of Japanese colonial rule that the country’s first modern art group – Le Moulin Poetry Society – arose in the 1930s, with their poetic protest against the colonial power’s cultural superiority. The name reflected the group’s orientation towards the West while especially strongly influenced by France. Regarding the Surrealists as their absolute role models, Le Moulin poets composed poetry in an uncompromising and aesthetically sophisticated style to confront the turbulent era they lived in.
Le Moulin not only tries to record a historical period that paved the way for a new freedom and self-awareness, but also to explore how Asian Modernist writers reinvent Modernism through encountering foreign culture and their contemplation upon identities.
About Le Moulin Poetry Society (風車詩社 Fengche Shishe) and its members
“Le Mo
ulin Poetry Society was founded by four Taiwanese and three Japanese poets in 1933. Consciously veering away from the more popular trend of realism, which emphasized the writer as the spokesperson for the oppressed common people, Le Moulin poets developed a “pale-skinned aesthetic” (“Sea of Flowers” ﹝Hua zhi hai, page 65). Emphasizing the senses as the gateway to reality, these poets created a world filled with superimposed, often synaesthetic, images and subtle moods…… Although they sought harmony and unity between the flesh and the spirit, Le Moulin poets were besieged by ambivalence, confusion and frustration—in short, a sense of defeat—which is reflected in their works.”
— Yeh, Michelle and Malmqvist, N. G. D.. “Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry.” New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 16
Taiwanese members of Le Moulin Poetry Society:
Yang Chih-chang (1908-1994)
Li Zhang-rui (1911-1952)
Lin Yung-hsiu (1914-1944)
Chang Liang-tien (1915-)
Director’s Statement
What defines a film as a documentary / not a documentary? Where is the boundary between and is this the limitation of documentary film or rather a blurred division that full of possibilities where countless creative experiments may be born?
This is the issue that interests me the most, and will be my ongoing exploration in the field of documentary film.
Director Huang Ya-Li
Huang Ya-Li is an independent filmmaker in Taiwan, who is interested in the linkage between and extension of images and sounds. In recent years, he has been involved in documentaries concerning Taiwan during these Japanese colonial period, hoping to explore the possibility of interpreting reality in the form of documentaries through historical research and examination, and to reflect on the relationship between Taiwan, Asia, and the world. His experimental works include The Unnamed (2010) and The Pursuit of What Was (2008). Le Moulin (2015) is his first feature film.
Filmography
2010 The Unnamed (35 mm short film)
2008 The Pursuit of What Was (35 mm short film)
ABLAZE IMAGE / 光在影像 