Mata – The Island’s Gaze is one of those films where it’s helpful to know some background before entering the theatre. Director Cheng Li-Ming’s 2017 experimental documentary depicts Scottish photographer John Thomson visiting Siraya Indigenous territory in Taiwan in 1871.
In the Siraya language, mata means eye or eyes. The film opens with a Siraya boy (Chiang Ya-Chieh) gazing through a pipe at Thomson (Jeremie Nicoli) as Thomson prepares to take a photo with his 19th-century twin-lens camera. It’s a rather bizarre sight watching this well-dressed Scottish photographer coaching two Siraya hunters how to pose with their matchlock muskets.
At times, Mata – The Island’s Gaze is like a film poem. Without any dialogue over extended periods, it builds an emotional arc by blending visual rhythms and soundscapes from Thomson’s trip to a Siraya village and hunting grounds. The director juxtaposes these scenes with inverted film negatives, creating a jarring and unsettling feeling.
On other occasions, a modern-day Siraya Elder, Cheng-hiong Talavan, plucks his yueqin (moon lute) and sings about his people’s experiences. Talavan also speaks knowledgeably about his people’s history.
After a while, it becomes mesmerizing. Audience members vicariously experience what the white gaze must have felt like in Taiwan as a 19th-century Indigenous person.
Conversely, Mata – The Island’s Gaze conveys what it may have felt like for Thomson to venture into Indigenous territory to take and process photographs in a faraway land.
This duality is arresting.
Siraya hunters stood near the boy
Toronto TAIWANfest will screen Mata – The Island’s Gaze for free at 5 p.m. on August 29 in the Studio Theatre at Harbourfront Centre. This avant-garde film was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2017 Taipei Film Festival.
“I created a pair of characters out of a photo with a boy and a dog squatted at the corner, through their curious stare at the vigorous tribal hunters and their encounter with the ‘image hunter’, witnessing a duel of old and new world,” director Cheng wrote in a post on Medium.
In addition to Mata – The Island’s Gaze, Cheng is a writer and film critic who has directed three short films. The first, “Looking for Siraya” (2013), won Golden Harvest Awards for Best Experimental Short and Best Director.
Cheng’s second short film, “Phantom Cinema” (2017), was nominated for an Ouchy Film Award for Best Director and a South Taiwan Film Festival Award for Best Experimental Film.
TAIWANfest programs dialogue with Scotland
The August 29 screening of Mata – The Island’s Gaze is part of Toronto TAIWANfest’s dialogue with Scotland at Harbourfront Centre from August 28 to 30.
Thomson visited Taiwan with Dr. James Maxwell, a University of Edinburgh-trained physician. Maxwell was the first Presbyterian missionary to the island then known as Formosa. His story is part of an exhibition at the festival on how Scottish missionaries with the British Presbyterian Church brought modern medicine to Taiwan.
Another exhibition will trace ties between red brick buildings in northern Taiwan and Scottish-Canadian Presbyterian missionary George Mackay and his contemporaries. And on August 29, there will be a free evening concert called Islands in the Wind, with the TAIWANfest Toronto Orchestra performing music linked to Scotland.
Toronto TAIWANfest’s chief organizer, Charlie Wu, has been presenting annual dialogues with different countries since 2016. This reflects his vision of forging meaningful, reciprocal, connections between different communities and culture.
Siraya gain official tribal status
The festival has chosen an exquisite time to present Mata – The Island’s Gaze. On July 30, Taiwan’s Executive Yuan officially recognized the Siraya people as the country’s 17th Indigenous tribe, and it came after a lengthy struggle.
Cheng’s film includes images of the Sinkang Manuscripts, which include legal documents between 17th century Dutch colonists and the Siraya people. The Dutch also translated parts of the New Testament into Sinkang, which the Siraya spoke at the time.
But the existence of these documents did not prevent Han Chinese settlers from converting Siraya hunting grounds into farmland over the next two centuries. That led to assimilation of the Siraya into the broader culture and a loss of language. By the time Thomson arrived in 1871, the Siraya were mostly speaking Taiwanese (a form of Hokkien), even though many were still maintaining their traditional way of life.
But now, the Siraya are making great efforts to revive their Sinkang language and several words are highlighted in Cheng’s film. One of the leaders in this language-reclamation project has been Tainan Pepo Siraya Culture Association founder Cheng-hiong Talavan, who is such a pivotal figure in Mata – The Island’s Gaze.
Meanwhile, his daughter Uma and her husband, Edgar Macapili, “have managed to recover 4,000 Sinkang vocabulary words and used the language to write children’s books and educational songs”, according to an August 12 article by Oiwan Lam in Global Voices. It’s a truly remarkable comeback and reflects what’s been possible since Taiwan transitioned from dictatorship to democracy in the 1990s.
Watch these Siraya children sing in their traditional Sinkang language.
Festival details
Toronto TAIWANfest will present a free screening of Mata – The Island’s Gaze at 5 p.m. on August 29 in the Studio Theatre at Harbourfront Centre. For more information, visit the festival website.
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