The Boat-Burning Festival (1979)
Overview
Shot by Chang Chao-Tang and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, The Boat Burning Festival captures the ceremony worshipping Wangye（王爺）, the local god of plague, held every three years in Sucuo Village（蘇厝） in Tainan（台南）, Taiwan. Chang timed the work to "Ommadawn", a Celtic-inspired progressive rock album by Mike Oldfield. Defying genre conventions and deviating stylistically from television or ethnographic documentary, the film testifies to the tense and complex coexistence of traditional rites, local folklore, and discourses about modernisation and identity in 1970s Taiwan.
Cast
Recommendations
Naqoyqatsi
Seduced and Abandoned
To Kill a Tiger
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
A Toxic Love Story
Trainwreck: The Real Project X
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
McQueen
Deliver Us from Evil
Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me
Being James Bond
Heart of a Dog
Fuck
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
Making Squid Game: The Challenge
The Curious Birth of Benjamin Button
Come See Me in the Good Light
Hell House
Extremis
Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story