Harvard Film Archive | First Impressions

The Harvard Film Archive and the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute are currently making available two newly re-discovered films by Tun-Fei Mou. The films may be seen here and are supported by introductory discussions by Dr. Victor Fan from King’s College London an Wood Lin, Program Director of the Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival.

This podcast is on The End of the Track, a film that feels like an undiscovered classic of World Cinema, beautiful to look at, heartfelt and very moving. Two young boys, Hsiao Tung and Yung Shen, enjoy a friendship so close they’re accused of being queer. They themselves don’t know what that means, and just like being with each other better than with someone else, even though they fight quite a bit and are from different social classes.. When Yung Shen (Tu-Yuan Tsai), the working-class boy, dies in a sporting accident, Hsiao Tung (Da-wei Chen) feels guilt over what’s happened, and tries to take responsibility for it, to no avail. A haunting, mysterious film, beautiful to look at and deeply moving. We discuss the hows and whys of all of this in the accompanying podcast.

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

This is the review Richard mentions in the podcast.

And we also recommend this article.

The clip of the death, which we discuss in relation to the editing, may be seen here:

Some images from the film discussed in the podcast in relation to the sparseness of the compositions, their beauty, and their relation to the rest of Taiwanese Cinema (note landscape) may be seen below:

This podcast is a discussion of I Didn’t Dare Tell You, a modernist melodrama about a young boy seeking a way of paying for an education that his father can’t quite provide. We detect influences of Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave, admire its compositions, its look, it’s narrative drive, its melodramatic tone and an extraordinary central performance by the child. We also discuss how the ending seems a bit bewildering but then learn from Wood Lin’s lecture that the ending was tacked on and that someone who worked on the film saw the recovered print and had never seen that bit before. Something we speculate on in the podcast and are happy to have confirmed. Tun-Fei Mou is a filmmaker to discover and I Didn’t Dare Tell You is a film to talk about.

Our podcast may be listened to here: