Path of Destiny

The Sikawasay of the Amis community of Lidaw in Dongchang Village, Hualien, are people who carry spirits. Their particular calling has them maintain the traditional rites year after year; living in daily contact with the spirits, they show a mutual dependence of fate and feeling, and bear witness to a beautiful culture now fading. Following the two decades in which the field researcher Panay Mulu has accompanied them, the film uses the image to rescue vanishing ritual and to leave behind the rich landscapes and stories of these shamans’ lives — while Panay herself comes to feel, through many of her own experiences, that the spirits are guiding her onto a road she cannot avoid taking.

Screenings of this film