Speaker: Darryl Sterk (National Taiwan University)
Type: Film Screening and Lecture
Organizer: UBC Modern Chinese Culture Seminar
Host: UBC First Nations House of Learning
Sponsors: CCK Foundation Inter-University Centre for Sinology, Department of Asian Studies, and the Centre for Chinese Research
About the event:
Watan, Chen Hao and Lin Shan are three Taiwanese aboriginal boys growing up in a mountain village. Miss Lawa, a physically challenged teacher, runs an afterschool class for the kids in the tribe. She has the most beautiful voice but has stopped singing until one day Watan discovers the old demo tape Lawa recorded years ago…
Hang in There, Kids! (in Mandarin, with English subtitles) is the second feature film by Laha Mebow, director of the two indigenous-directed feature films to be theatre-released in Taiwan. Following the screening, Dr. Darryl Sterk will discuss how the film differs from Avatar (2009, USA) or Atanarjuat (2001, Canada) or other “native features” in that it concerns daily life in a high altitude indigenous village in contemporary Taiwan from the perspective of young people. Dr. Sterk’s talk will share context for how to view Hang in There, Kids! through Taiwanese eyes, arguing that though marketed as “heartwarming,” the film manages to present a relatively accurate picture of Taiwanese indigenous social problems and the existential disappointments they produce.
About the director:
Laha Mebow (Chen Chieh-yao) graduated from the Department of Radio, TV and Film at Shih Hsin University. Trained in scriptwriting and directing, she became the first female Taiwanese aboriginal film director and TV producer. For 18 years, she has devoted herself to film and television production with a focus on aboriginal documentary and drama.
About the speaker:
Darryl Sterk (Ph.D., Toronto) teaches Chinese-English translation in the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation at National Taiwan University. He has studied representations of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples in film and fiction, and is now working on the translation of the Chinese language screenplay for the film Seediq Bale (Wei Te-sheng, 2011) into the Tgdaya and Toda varieties of the Austronesian language Seediq.