焦干丝带儿Freedom House Group

Director:  

Singing CHEN, Taiwan's most eye-catching and authentic talented female director born after 70s (1974/Aug. 3,Taipei). Most of her works are stylized and fast paced direction favoring issues concerning art and culture. Besides her talent as a director and a screenwriter, Singing CHEN has also composed for several theatrical plays and films.  As a result, her films are filled with impeccable rhythm and musical style. In 2000, her first 16mm feature "BUNDLED (Wo Jiao A-Ming La) " immediately raised interests leading her to win many awards from domestic, and international film festivals, including Best Drama & Best New Director at Taipei Film festival and Ecumenical Jury Award & ACAT Human Rights Special Award at Fribourg Film Festival…etc., At the same year, she also completed a 35mm experimental documentary "FLOATING ISLAND- WHO IS FISHING®?" which was invited to the Taiwan International Documentary Festival, and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. In 2003, she directed a TV single drama, "THE WEDDING" for Public Television, which was nominated for 6 Golden Bell Awards. 

Filmography  

2001 / 16mm feature "BUNDLED (Wo Jiao A-Ming La) ", 78mins

◎"Best feature film"  and "Best new director" of the Taipei Film Festival, 2001

◎"Best theme Song" of the Golden Horse Award, 2000

◎"Best New Actor" nominee of the Golden Horse Award, 2000

◎"Prix Special" and "Oecumenical Award" of the  Fribourg Int'l Film Festival, 2001

◎Vancouver Int'l Film Festival, "Dragons & Tigers Award" nomination, 2000

◎Creteil International Women's Film Festival, in competition, 2001

◎Brisbane International Film Festival, 2001

◎Flanders International Film Festival-Ghent, 2001

◎Fajr International Film Festival (Tehran,Iran), 2001 

2000 / 35mm ducumentary"WHO IS FISHING®? (Shei Lai Diao Yu®?)", one of FLOATING ISLAND series, 18mins

◎Taiwan International Documentary Festival, 2000

◎Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, 2001

◎Nominated for Best Documentary in the 38th Golden Horse Award, 2001

◎Fribourg Int'l Film Festival, 2001

http://www.viff.org/tixSYS/2007/filmguide/eventnote.php?notepg=1&EventNumber=1931 

GOD MAN DOG is a major accomplishment, and it's quite splendid. This ambitious multi-character drama, set in contemporary Taiwan, announces that an important new Taiwanese filmmaker has arrived. 

Ching (pop singer Tarcy Su) is a hand model suffering from severe postpartum depression. Her careerist husband A Xiong (Chang Han) is drawn to well-outfitted spiritualism. Niu Jiao (Hou Hsiao-hsien regular Jack Gao) fixes "gods" and feeds a pack of wandering dogs. He has a large truck full of animated, illuminated statues of Buddhist deities whom he drives to various local celebrations. On the side, he collects and repairs small statues of gods discarded by their owners: they (the gods) somehow inform him where they've been abandoned. Xian (Jonathan Chang, the young boy in Edward Yang's Yi Yi, now grown up) is a runaway petty thief who earns money winning eating competitions. Biung is an aboriginal carver struggling to recover from alcoholism; his tough daughter Savi is sent away to study kick-boxing in Taipei. 

God Man Dog achieves a small miracle: it keeps all these balls soaring in the air, criss-crossing in delightfully unexpected ways. Chen's compassionate eye for characters makes each come to vivid life. Her and cinematographer Shen Ko-shang's camera creates image after image of astonishing beauty, which build to a series of climaxes whose magic seems both gracefully easy, completely earned and uncannily rhapsodic. (Shelly Kracier) 

http://www.piff.org/eng/html/program/prog_view.asp?idx=12044&target=search&c_idx=13&m_entry_year=2007 

God and the dog each get respect and sympathy. Then why can't a human get redemption? Ching, a hand model, cannot get over the sadness of losing her child; an alcoholic native man Biung, his wife A-Mei, and their daughter who lives apart from them; the man who fixes the abandoned Buddha statue; and the wandering boy Xian - they are all trying to escape the grasps of despair with the help of religion.

Director Singing Chen places various religious images among the characters to question the role and social meaning of religions. Issues of the gulf between the rich and poor, social segregation towards the natives, spiritual impoverishment of modern society, and a dismantled family are brought to attention within the stories of characters. And he criticizes the present state of religion as only an image instead of consolation, solution, or unconditional faith. (Kim Ji-suk) 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/awards_festivals/fest_reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=9981 

Bottom Line: A road movie that connects castaway gods, stray dogs and spiritually homeless humans is visually arresting but structurally incoherent.

By Maggie Lee 

Oct 6, 2007

(Among the film's saving graces is the cast's understated performance.) 

BUSAN, South Korea -- It's hard to say whether "God Man Dog" ("Liulang ren gou shen") is a flawed accomplishment or an accomplished failure. Director Singing Chen is obviously gifted with an exceptional visual sense that makes nondramatic images move on an intuitive level. However, her attempt to fashion an allegorical tragicomedy about the crisis of faith in contemporary Taiwan out of a mosaic of characters and plot lines, which crisscross like telegraph poles, is jumbled and difficult to grasp. 

The film's attractive representations of Taiwan's coastline scenery and exotic religious spectacles could sit well with an art house audience. However, its unconventional narrative may try the patience of mainstream audiences. 

"God's" artistic vision can be described as a cinematic equivalent to the magic realism of Isabella Allende's novels, such as "The Stories of Eva Luna," in which the sacred and profane, social reality, dreamscapes and epiphanies co-exist on the same imaginative plane.

The film spins four tenuously linked threads, each following the hopes and disappointments of four "couples." Ching (Tarcy Su) is a hand model who suffers from postnatal depression. She becomes estranged from her husband after their baby's cot death during his absence. 

Aboriginal Biung tries to overcome alcoholism by trusting in God and his paternalistic pastor. While couriering some peaches, he and his wife hit a snag that leads to moral and spiritual chaos. 

Biung's teenage daughter Savi aspires to a career in a kind of freestyle kickboxing called "Sa Da Combat." However, she gets roped into her bosom friend Xiao Han's reckless (and wickedly funny) schemes to scam clients of S/M call-girl services. 

Yellow Bull (Jack Kao) is a one-legged psychic with the compunction to help stray dogs, homeless gods and shifty hitchhikers. When he gets tipped in dreams of where religious statues have been thrown away, he finds and mends them. On the Festival of Hungry Ghosts, he picks up Xian, a truant boy (Jonathan Chang, "Yi Yi") who hides inside the luggage compartments of coaches. Perpetually famished, could Xian be a hungry ghost? 

A fateful car accident brings these modern pilgrims together. 

There's a lot that Chen tries to cram in, like the emotional problems of urbanites, social problems of aboriginals, commoditization of the body, even a lesbian undertow. Yet, when she tries to pull everything together, the dramatic pieces just don't slot into place because there's no space for the characters and their internal landscapes to breathe. Just when you're about to lose yourself in a scenario, the narrative cuts back and forth to other scenarios. It's like making the audience play mental musical chairs with no chance to sit still and absorb everything. 

The film's saving graces are the cast's understated performance, distinctive production design and cinematography, which presents a splendid palette of graded colors and image quality of depth. Somehow, the ethereal beauty of certain silent shots wraps itself around you like a lover, making you reluctant to let go of the film's memory.