The Boat-Burning Festival 1979

The film captures the 1979 ritual of Burning the Wang Ye Boat in Sucuo Village, Tainan County. Wang Ye, believed to ward off diseases and evil spirits, is celebrated through building, parading, and burning a wooden boat. Without interviews or dialogue, the visual narrative invokes spirituality and imagination through depictions of people, fire, and the god. ‘This film is not a documentation of folk traditions, but a reconstruction of how the villagers enact their pilgrimage and interact with their gods of spirits. The religious rituals in Taiwan are always noisy and seemingly chaotic, yet with a strong force of life. To make the meaning of the ritual easier to grasp, the film tries to reveal passion and paranoia of the pilgrims and turn it into a spectacle of joy and pathos. This is the only thing I expect to achieve in the film.’ - CHANG Chao-tang