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Dear Sis: Hair Cuts Season of the Boys Beijing Cotton-Fluffer Jiang Hu: Life on the Road Living Elsewhere Old Men I Am 17 Years Old in 1997 Magcojaodkal 98 Notes Before the Revolution An Autumn Fable For Maya How Do I Survive, My Friend! I Sing the Body Electric Kumar Talkies A Season Outside Jakarta Stock Shots: No. 7 Kamas Dolls Silk Tehran, the 25th Hour Trap After School Bicycles Annyong-Kimchi The New God Princess Plum P-udding The Children of North Korea Escaped to China Talbuk Sonyeondul Chungguk e Kada Making Sundried Red Peppers Gochoo Maligi The Three-Legged Crow Empty House Bin Chip Jaiyk Child of Mermaid Between Us Two... Beirut The Spirit Doesn't Come Anymore Tension Title Deed from Moses Made In the Philippines ... To Fukuoka with Love Return to the Tribes Boys for Beauty Funny Competition Between Labor and Management: You Have Me in You I Love (080) The Red Leaf Legend Swimming on the Highway Two Guys Go Hunting Exotic 101 thirdworld The Hearts That Can't See the Sun Between Two Banks		Swimming on the Highway TAIWAN / 1998 / Chinese / Color / Video / 49 min Director: Wu Yao-tung Producer, Source: Wu Yao-tung 2F, No. 14, Lane 80, ShingAn Street, Taipei 104 Taiwan Phone: 886-2-2502-2584 Fax: 886-2-2503-4704 E-mail: bm7071@ms5.hinet.net 　 Wu Yao-tung Born in Taipei in 1972. Now a student at the Graduate Institute of Sound and Image Studies, Tainan National College of Arts, majoring in documentary. Started making documentaries in 1996. Has directed 『四點零六』(1996), 『瑞明楽隊』(1997) which won the Taipei Special Prize at Taipei Film Awards, and 『地界滑翔一劉紹爐与光環舞集』(1998). Swimming on the Highway (1998) won the Grand Prix in the Documentary Section of Golden Grain Awards, and was screened at Hong Kong International Film Festival 1999. A 30-year-old man, self-destructive and anxious. A 26-year-old friend with a video camera. This is a very personal film about their relationship in the last years of a life - battling the HIV virus. The flamboyant man flirts with the camera, playing with being the subject and object of a film. The filmmaker is tormented, forcing himself to go on with the filming. The sincerity of both in the face of undefeatable facts is moving. Director's Statement On Taiwan's National Anniversary Day in 1997, under the fireworks in Shi Men Ting, I started filming this documentary about the "love and hatred" between Kuo-tang and me. On that day, I saw his lonely silhouette walking in the crowd, sitting emotionlessly on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes and drinking Taiwanese beer, throwing up in the dark streets. Holding a camera, I thought to myself, "This is dramatic enough. It would be fantastic as a film!" The bus was speeding down the highway, day was about to break. In the bizarre blue light of the dawn, his face, weary of the party the night before, reflected clearly in the windowpane. His face was lean because of the illness, but his eyes were still lively. "It's as if I spent all my life on the road," he said, as if proudly announcing his wandering life to me. In June of 1998, in the No. 14 Park next to Regent Hotel, I was keen to end the filming. He sat in front of the camera, relaxed and calm. I shouted at him, "Why are you like this? Aren't you afraid?" He said, "I'm acting! I'm playing the person I used to be." I said depressed to myself, "Finish as soon as possible!" The filming lasted a whole year. What existed all the time between us was the fight. The fight between the one who filmed and the one who was filmed, the fight to control the camera, the fight of honesty and trust between friends. But inside of him, it was probably the fight of life and death. Of course I don't understand, how life can be so bitter, desperate, anxious and indifferent. It is not a matter of the essence of documentary or of interference. Nor is it a matter of academic theories or practice. It is just me and him, the questions between us, that's all. 　 beforenext COPYRIGHT:Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Organizing Committee