Originally published in Taipei Documentary Filmmakers’ Union Newsletters (紀工報), Issue 56 (2022.05.19)
BY Mr. GeckoBiHu
(This English version of the article you're now reading is translated by myself, on July 13, 2025)
The Islands: Secretly A Comedy
Following The Right Thing (2010) (廣場), which documented the Wild Strawberry Movement (野草莓運動), and The Edge of Night (2018) (街頭), a close-up on key members of the Sunflower Movement (太陽花學運), Chiang Wei-Hua’s new documentary The Islands (2022) (島．國) accompanies young political activist Chen Ting-Hao, one of the Sunflower Student Movement’s core members, as he begins his post-movement political work in the Matsu Islands, probing deeper and more directly toward the core of the imagined community that is Taiwan/Republic of China, while also indirectly observing the pondering ripple effect (or the lack there of) of the movement.
Having served his conscription military service in Matsu Islands, Chen decided to see “conducting political work on the Islands” as the imaginary goal of his social practice. And so the “Taiwan as an independent country” identified Chen and the Matsu Islands’ symbolically charged landscape full of “Republic of China-identified symbolism” forms an exquisite chemical reaction, as everywhere we go, we see all sorts of materialisation of the Symbolic Order “flaking off” from the edge of it. This is why filming Chen doing even the most whatever mundane task is not the least bit boring, because no matter it’s just him picking up trash on Matsu’s beachfront, finding cellphone single (which constantly switches between Taiwanese and Chinese companies due to the proximity of geography), sawing the tip of the R.O.C flagpole, introducing abandoned bunkers to tourists, knocking down layers of thick paint off defunct military buildings or chatting with local children, the threefold boundaries of Symbolic Order lying on top of each other (the boundaries of R.O.C./ Chen’s “Republic of Taiwan,” Matsu as a dominantly “blue-leaning over green” island (pro-KMT over DPP), and the islands as literal border against People’s Republic of China across the strait) continuously “flake off” from the symbolic “country/nation” into the material world — like the flaking off paint.
