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Taiwanese Puppet Master Documentary FATHER Kicking off US East Coast Shows in New York

  • Date:2019-04-10

The award-winning documentarian Yang Li-chou returns to the U.S. with his new work FATHER to be presented at the first edition of CineCina Film Festival in New York and Taiwan Film Festival in Boston on April 14 and May 26 respectively. Making its international premiere at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, this film also won the award in the features category of the Chinese Documentary Festival 2018.


A decade in the making, FATHER focuses on the life of Taiwanese puppet master Chen Hsi-huang and his strained relationship with his father Li Tian-lu, legendary puppeteer-actor who starred in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s THE PUPPETMASTER. Exhibiting both candor and vulnerability, this revealing documentary not only shows how Chen wrests his identity from his father but also reflects the history of Puppet Theater in Taiwan.


Yang Li-chou graduated from the Graduate Institute of Sound and Image Studies in Documentary of Tainan National University of the Arts. He has been an active documentary filmmaker and won countless awards ever since. He will be in attendance for a Q&A following the N.Y. screening of FATHER, the latest work which took him most time shooting in his career.


Screening Schedule and Film Description
Father
Taiwan | 2017 | 99 Minutes | In Taiwanese and Mandarin w/ Chinese & English subtitles


Chen Hsi-huang is the eldest son of Li Tien-lu, the renowned Taiwanese glove puppeteer, but the father-son relationship had always been strained. In 2009, at the age of 79, Chen left the Li family and set up his own puppeteer troupe, which soon earned recognition all over the world. Nevertheless, as this traditional art declined rapidly, Chen found no one to pass on his great skills...


[New York—CineCina Film Festival] *Q&A with director Yang Li-chou
Sunday, April 14, 6:30 PM
SVA Theater (333 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011)


[Boston—Taiwan Film Festival 2019]
Sunday, May 26, 7:00 PM
Lecture Theatre, Building 26 - Room 100, MIT (60 Vassar St., Cambridge, MA 02139)