When asked how he and his expensive equipment survived absolutely torrential typhoon conditions, Tseng laughed and said, “I put up an umbrella - a very strong one.” Essential and standard video equipment has little protection from natural elements; the waterproof camera jackets often inhibit the operator’s ability to reach important controls that adjust light settings and also, in Taiwan’s humidity, tend to cause too much condensation. What this means is that there is a constant physical and mental struggle to protect equipment, while aiming to catch that all important story element. Then there is the physical and emotional toll on the human body. Tseng could have just as easily not taken on this challenging and hugely time-consuming side project and been content with his regular monthly roster and salary. But like so many people in the documentary world, for him, this is clearly a labor of love . . .

“It’s impossible to prepare for every possible event that could happen when making such documentaries . . . You have to be prepared to go with the day-to-day situations, like following a stream or current . . . So I am adjusting my course all the time. However, it is possible to get closer and closer to what becomes of obvious importance . . . In the first year, I filmed a little of many things, spoke to people off-camera, read about the tobacco industry, learned what the long-term issues were . . . In the second year, I knew exactly what I needed to get on record. The third year was putting the skeleton of the story together, getting additional footage and this eventually leads to the final editing process.”

Tseng says that during production, not one of his subjects ever expressed a desire to get any personal message across to the external audience . . . He says that Taiwan farmers accept that they are “just farmers” and were willing to be filmed living their regular lives; nobody he says “wanted to be a star” . . . The premiere was in a local village in Meinong - in a tobacco shed. In attendance to witness three years of filming were 500 locals, including all the people featured in the documentary. All agreed that the production depicted how life really was, and remains. Like all producer/cameramen/directors interviewed, Tseng feels as if he is preserving important history about people, and making recordings that can act as evidence for both policy and research . . . Although the WTO price regulations were a backdrop included for current analysis, he says the future value of the documentary will be its ethnographic role, being a detailed recording of relationships between people and how they - as a group - get though “financial hardship, grief, suffering and so on” . . . Tseng says this documentary is like “a record of many moments in time.”

Futuru Tsai (pictured left)
Tsai, a member of the Amis community, recently premiered his new documentary, ‘The New Flood’ . . . Whereas the work of Tseng makes reference to Typhoon Morakot, Tsai’s film reveals the connection that many indigenous people made between Morakot and a popular folk legend . . . The legend, from hundreds of years ago, tells of a big flood that pushed people out of their village. Evacuating to a hillside, the people stood stranded for weeks. A crab, who had swum in with the flood, spoke with the people, learning the details of their plight. The crab finally said that he knew what was stopping the water from draining away: an eel that the crab would kill, in return for a reward from the people (What got cinema audiences laughing was that the reward had to be some pubic hair from a young maiden). The reward was agreed to, and the crab attacked the eel, pulling out its guts, at which point the water slowly drained away and the people returned to their land, and the remains of their village.

In The New Flood, which took two years to make, Tsai takes parts of the flood legend, connecting them to the progression and effects of Morakot, including rebuilding and other stages of recovery. It was obviously a difficult task combining an old work of fiction with a modern day disaster, and the film does not use any real narration. Instead cultural beliefs, feelings and modern events are told by retelling the legend against the pictures of Morakot. But, as Tsai explains, the documentary nearly didn’t happen, due to his typhoon volunteer commitments -

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