Hunter Brothers | College of Liberal Arts, National Taiwan University
Hunter Brothers | Indigenous Peoples Research Center, National Taiwan University screening
Time: Wednesday 19 November, 19:00–21:00
Venue: Room Lit-16, College of Liberal Arts, National Taiwan University
About the film
Lin Hsiang and Lin Cheng are brothers. An accident while hunting in the mountains with their father changes everything, and the two go down different paths in life. Lin Cheng goes to prison after a gun goes off by accident, while Lin Hsiang qualifies as a doctor and serves in the tribe. Years later Lin Cheng is released and comes home, upsetting Lin Hsiang’s settled life. With the familiar valley no longer what it was, their values at odds, and the contested truth about past wrongs close to collapse, the hunter brothers return to the forest. In the place where it all began, can they find the bond they lost?
Speaker
Su Hung-en was born in Taiwan of mixed Indigenous and Hoklo heritage. Moving between the two identities lets him look at the world from different angles. He often went up the mountains to work with his Truku grandfather, and likes to write about the relationship between people and the land. He currently focuses on work about social and environmental issues.
Films screened
Hunter Brothers
Hunter Brothers, by the young director Su Hung-en, is set in a Truku family and follows two brothers, Lin Xiang and Lin Zheng, whose differences in life choices and values turn into conflict after their father dies in a hunting accident.
Through the feeling and the friction between them, the film examines the identity of contemporary Indigenous people between traditional culture and modern society, and the pull between family, cultural continuity and personal choice — a Taiwanese drama with both humane concern and cultural depth.