This Shore: A Family Story (Tzuan Wu, 2018)

[TajSamKojiJesam]

Stories had been told repeatedly, their shapes changed by the narrators. Memories revisited each time in different form like the waves beat on the shore, then vanish. THIS SHORE is an experimental documentary which opens with a story of my family: my American aunt found a painting of my grandmother by chance, in a random Chinese restaurant in the middle of nowhere - she said she cried. By tracing this story and reproducing its meaning, the film wonders through different topics: the construction of the Cold War, USA and Taiwan relations, different generations of Chinese diaspora since the 1950s, contemporary immigration and cross-nation fluidity, family romances, religion, and ancestors...

The distance of memory is the distance of diaspora; the experience of narration is the experience of migration. This film uses various formats: 16mm, Super 8, VHS/Beta home video, and digital video. Through the reassembling and expansion of the heterogeneous sounds and images, the film aims to capture fragments of emotions in this restless, changeable world. Through the interviews of characters under the mask of the Flying Dutchman, the film gradually turns to another tale. The “real” histories, personal or collective memories, gradually being reformed into a fictional fantasy of “The Flying Dutch Man”. - Tzuan Wu