Hsu Ya-ting

On the outskirts of Taipei, there is a leprosy sanatorium built by the Japanese occupiers in 1930 to seclude thousands of patients and maintain sanitary conditions on the land. For the last two decades, Taiwanese authorities have decided to turn the sanatorium into a museum to commemorate the history of leprosy medicine. However, the sanatorium has slowly been destroyed due to constant construction that has overwhelmed the remaining aged patients. To cope with this struggle, they protest and build landscape models with their gnarled hands representing their accurate memories and experiences. They continue to fight against the authorities’ efforts to erase the history of segregation and discrimination and have not given up.

Over an extended period, a director engages in an ongoing conversation with Yu, a teenage girl trying to come out of her experience of sexual trauma. A dialogue built on trust, the film follows Yu as she gradually learns to assert herself while the director remains present and open in the process. Through her social encounters, her words, and the short films she makes, Yu reflects on how she has been seen and defined, and begins to reclaim control of her own story. Resisting the label of “victim,” she moves forward with a firm step into the world.

Director Hsu Ya-ting, along with her husband Geoffrey Hughes, explores childbirth and the physical and emotional toll that childbirth took on her personally. She uses her body as a canvas, providing viewers with a most intimate view of what the female body is subjected to when bringing a pregnancy to term.

Lo-Sheng Sanatorium, Taiwan’s only isolated hospital for leprosy patients, has become home to patients living here for 60 years. With the construction of MRT, the government forced patients to move out, tearing Lo-Sheng down for economic benefits. In the face of authority, patients encourage each other in their daily life.