He Has Become An Island 他已化為一座島
2018 Feature documentary, Post-Prod
Produced by Chia-Hsin Liu, Directed by Pinti Zheng
The story began in 2013. We travelled to Tainan to meet up with a group of our friends. They decided to turn a 80 yrs old Neng Sheng Xing Factory (能盛興工廠) into a commune. However, someone among the group was missing- a young man called 陳炯霖 Ken Chen who was a former environmental activist passed away before the factory started. Who is Ken? We’ve never met, but his name was always around, as if he were one of them.
Later on, we found a diary of Ken. It’s a journey from him walking by feet across Taiwan, which shaped everything he believed in and influenced these friends from the factory. In order to know more of him, we took the camera, following his path to meet Ken’s friends across the island and even further to Japan, where everything began…
It’s the film about the people we met on the road, the conversation we had, the moments we shared, stories we heard and questions we raised to ourselves.
Who are we? Where are we coming from? How do we live?
We see everything through Ken’s eyes as if he were with us. We become him and he has become an island.