Kai Chun Chiang

Film

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“De Dagregisters van het Kasteel Zeelandia” (The Journal of the Zeelandia Fort) is a document about colonisation in the 17th century, a set of manuscripts bound in four volumes and kept at the Dutch national archives in The Hague. In the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company established a base, Fort Zeelandia, in Formosa, as Taiwan was then known. Its location, the bay of “Tayouan,” later gave the island the name we know today. In the official history, the island was seen as a wild, distant place, but the settlement became a trading hub. Workers came from the mountains, while pirates, as well as Europeans (mainly Spaniards as well as the Dutch) began to settle there. The film explores the layering of past and present, from a perspective somewhere between Asia and Europe. The traces of this colonial process can help us better understand our identity.

Kai Chun Chiang

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Production

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Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing

Acknowledgments

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Fondation d'entreprise Hermès, Paris, France. Direction des Affaires culturelles, Mairie de Tai-nan, Taiwan.