Screened as part of NZIFF 2012

Return to Burma 2011

Gui lai de ren

Directed by Midi Z

Shot (beautifully) under the censors’ radar, this semi-autobiographical, semi-documentary by a young expatriate Chinese-Burmese director provides a uniquely close encounter with life in Myanmar/Burma.

Myanmar / Taiwan In Burmese and Mandarin with English subtitles
84 minutes HDCAM

Director, Screenplay, Photography

Producers

Midi Z
,
Patrick Mao Huang

Editors

Lin Sheng-wen
,
Midi Z

With

Wang Shin-hong
,
Lu Jiun
,
Yang Shu-lan
,
Chou Jung-kuo

Festivals

Vancouver, Busan 2011
,
Rotterdam 2012

Elsewhere

Shot (beautifully) under the censors’ radar, this semi-autobiographical, semi-documentary provides a uniquely close encounter with life in an ethnic Chinese community in beleaguered Myanmar/Burma.

Shin-hong is a Burmese labourer who, like many of his compatriots, has worked in construction in Taipei for ten years. He returns home to deliver the ashes of his friend. As he encounters friends and family he sounds out the prospects of earning a livelihood and observes, with the dry humour of the resigned, just how meagre the options in Burma are. The burgeoning black market in goods smuggled from China offers his brightest hope.

While sanctioned pop songs fill the air with jubilant assertions of government enlightenment, first-time director Midi Z adapts a classical style to tell the opposite story. His arrestingly framed long takes reveal the decrepit infrastructure and distil the stifled, restive energies bestirring a society in stagnation. — BG

PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY TAIPEI ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL OFFICE