The Boat-Burning Festival

The Boat-Burning Festival (1979)

王船祭典

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.

Date of release
1979-08-15
Runtime
20m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Chang Chao-Tang

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