Father (紅盒子)
Title: Father (紅盒子)
Time: 2.30pm, 8th April 2019
Venue: Curzon Soho
2018, 99min, Taiwan
Director: Yang Li-Chou
Language: Taiwanese, Mandarin
Q&A with Director Yang Li-Chou, Producer Michelle Chu
About the film
This is a documentary film about the art and the inheritance of Taiwanese traditional puppetry and the relationship between father and son.
The production of “Father” lasted for ten years. It not only recorded the inheritance mission of the eighty-year-old elders, but also explored the conflicts between the two generations. This film shows the master’s intelligent skills to give the puppet life on the big screen, trying to inject the unique charm of the traditional puppet show so as to bring it back to ordinary people. Over the ten year shoot, due to control of language and diversity in entertainment, they saw the dying of this traditional puppetry culture. The film says goodbye to it in the most glorious way.
Synopsis
Chen Hsi-huang is the eldest son of the puppet master Li Tian-lu. In 2009, at the age of 79, Master Chen left the Li family and set up his own troupe, which soon earned recognition all over the world. Nevertheless, this traditional art declined rapidly and Chen found no one to pass on his great skills…