Park (Taman-taman)

Director So Yo–hen in person!

Dir. So Yo–hen. 2024, 101 min. Taiwan. Digital projection. In Indonesian (Bahasa), Javanese, and Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles. This intricately improvised whatsit from director So returns to the anticolonial roots of docufiction, as first pioneered by Jean Rouch, with its surrealist blurring of fact and fiction and the agency between filmmaker and subject. Every day at twilight hour, Indonesian immigrants Asri and Hasan convene at a bench in Tainan Park, in the heart of Taiwan’s oldest city, to share the day’s news and experiences, spinning second-hand tales of migrant struggle into rhapsodically spontaneous verse. So’s film traces an aleatory path through the documentary form, achieving a fabulous mode simultaneously predicated on the prosaic and transfigured by the poetic. Grand Prize at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Asian Vision Competition and Outstanding Artistic Contribution Award at the 2024 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Envision Competition. New York premiere 

Tickets: $17.50 / $12 senior and students / $10 youth (ages 3–17) / free for MoMI members at the Senior/Student level and above. There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. 

About the filmmaker:

So Yo-Hen, an art enthusiast, attended the Graduate Institute of Arts at Tainan National University of the Arts and is currently a member of Your Bro’s Filmmaking Group. His creative work spans various mediums, and he approaches it without preconceived notions about what he’s doing.