"The Tunnel (地洞)," a 30-minute documentary on domestic violence by Taiwanese filmmaker Hsu Hui-ju (許慧如), will have its world premiere at the United Kingdom as part of the official selection of the 2020 Sheffield Doc/Fest.
In "The Tunnel," protagonist Yong-hong usually assists film crews with location scouting and occasionally plays characters on film. Meanwhile, he writes a script. The unproduced script becomes this documentary, a story about his family — himself, his overworked mother who died too early, and that person who gambled heavily, frequented prostitutes, and abused his mother.
A poet once wrote that family was "the first roof, the first torture platform, the sweetest place, the most painful thorn." This short film perhaps is a description of this complex combination, about family, about people, explained Hsu.
Born in Kaohsiung in 1975, filmmaker Hsu graduated from Tainan National University of the Arts' Graduate Institute of Studies in Documentary and Film Archiving. She specializes in documentary filmmaking, guided by a delicate and gentle narrative style.
Hsu describes herself as sometimes filmmaker, most often a mother of two children, whose films often explore life and death. Using a quiet but steady gaze to gain insights on the absurdity of life on earth, Hsu aims to re-examine the meaning of painful life experiences, whether it is within the intimate context of family, or from a cold and distant vantage that projects another kind of tenderness.
Her documentary films have won her a number of awards, including an award of excellence from the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival for "Hard Good Life (雜菜記)," and the audience's choice award at Taipei's Women Make Waves Film Festival for "Hard Good Life II (黑晝記)."
The international premiere of her latest documentary, "The Tunnel," will be screened in Sheffield this autumn and held online on "Sheffield Doc/Fest Selects" in parallel.
"The crisis we are living now point, and not for the first time, to the systemic failure of institutions and nations, and their need to be equitable in their capacities to give respect to life, freedom and care. It has given us an acute sense of what needs to change and a desire for stronger bonds between us," stated Sheffield Doc/Fest Director Cíntia Gil.
"This programme is our contribution to that: it comes from a collective effort to resist hegemonic views over cinema and its relation to the world and to our lives. It represents multiple conversations we want to continue in the near future, through different programmes and forms."