Chien Wei-ssu
Directing
Biography
Chien Wei-ssu (簡偉斯) is a Taiwanese filmmaker born in 1962 in Yilan. In 1993, she graduated from Ohio State University with a Master degree in Photography and Cinema. Later, as an independent filmmaker , she worked as a director or producer for many years. Since 1997, she has also been a part-time lecturer at the Department of Radio, Television and Film of Shih Hsin University. Since 1998, she has served as a member of the Woman Make Waves Film Festival's (Taiwan) direction.
Known For
Echo with Women's Voices Their Involvement in Political Movements examines the women's movement and women's political participation in Taiwan over the past thirty years.
Echo with Women's Voices Their Involvement in Political Movements
"I'm a cultured woman, travelling about footloose and fancy-free…”So begins a lilting tune from Taiwan's“Dance Age”of the 1920s and 1930s, a paradoxical time when the island's occupation by Japan also brought youth culture and a measure of artistic freedom. Women smoked cigarettes, love scandals were rife, and risqué Taiwanese pop was born. Embarking on a voyage to visit the surviving singers, composers and record aficionados of the era, this lively historical documentary mixes engaging interviews with catchy songs, haunting period footage, and reenactments of the unrequited romance between the adored chanteuse Chun Chun and her songwriter CHEN Chun-Yu.
Viva Tonal: The Dance Age
Structured around a dancer's routine, the film unfolds in four stages: hope, fear, anger, and longing for stability. It interweaves these emotions with those of locals of Matsu, the military, and first-time-visiting photographers from Taiwan island.
Shadow Dancing at Ma Tsu
Chien Wei-ssu documents her and her friends' perspective, studying abroad in Ohio State University, being there taiwanese students keen of structuralism, Claude Levi-Strauss and Jean Rouch. She delves into women's relation to men, to women, to their own body, to the menstrual cycle, historical national identity, gender identity and sexuality. In the process, she captures the silence and displacement of living overseas, as well as the intense intimacy between friends. Waiting for a menstrual period that never comes becomes a metaphor of suspension and the freedom of living in another country.