The Story of a Small Town

The work revisits Li Hsing’s 1979 film of the same name through the everyday life of its female protagonist, A-Xiu, and the Hakka opera featured in the film. Shot in Sanyi, Miaoli, the original film is closely connected to the place where Ciou grew up. The absence of his mother tongue from everyday dialogue, together with a female character who cannot speak, leads him to reconsider life under martial law and his own family memories. He transforms conversations with his mother into a Hakka monologue, giving A-Xiu’s perspective another form of expression.

Re-edited footage from the original film is presented alongside a remake filmed in a single continuous take. Interior sets built from timber and corrugated cardboard leave their structural frames exposed, and the performers act within spaces that are recognisably constructed. Similar gestures and settings establish correspondences between the two channels, directing attention beyond the camera frame towards everyday experiences left unspoken in the existing narrative, and reconnecting language, place, and history.