Ananas à Miami: 賽德克‧巴萊 Seediq Bale

This an upcoming Taiwanese historical drama film directed by Wei Te-Sheng (魏德聖). In 2003 Wei made above short film with 2 million NT dollars (about 58K US dollars) to hopefully attract investors but failed so the project was on hold. In 2008 Wei made a box office successful movie called Cape No. 7 (海角七號) which I still refuse to watch, but in return Seediq Bale was able to be made.

In order to understand the movie you will need to know this piece of history about Taiwan. In 1895 Japan defeated the Qing Dynasty and in return Taiwan was ceded in full sovereignty to Japan. Japan then ruled Taiwan for 51 years. In the 30s Japan started island-wide Japanization, forcing it's language and culture on Taiwanese and Aborigines. For that my grandparents are fluent in Japanese. During WWII tens of thousands of Taiwanese even served in Japanese military.

The movie is taken place in the 30s when Japanization was enforced and it's about the conflict between Aborigines and Japanese military called Wushe Incident (霧社事件). The story that got me the most are the group suicides that took places durning this time. Women, children and elderly would commit suicides so the men out fighting will have no one to worry about back home. There were a good amount of the mummified bodies found in the 40s. The Aborigines held out for more than 50 days, more than 800 dead. Photos below are all from Wushe Incident.

I usually don't write on this blog but I've been waiting for this movie to come out for at least a good 5 years. I learned about this project through ChthoniC's Seediq Bale album which was inspired by We's project. I'm full of emotion right now thinking about my homeland actually did something that I can speak proudly of. I'm not a very political person but I'm usually disappointed with the decisions Taiwanese people had made for themselves in the recent years... but that's for another time... Anyway, I can't wait for the movie to come out and hopefully it will be also released world wide.