Lalan（Path/Way）

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Human beings all over the world have experienced the once-in-a-century pandemic that began in 2020. Under the dark epidemic that lasted for more than two years, we have gone through this journey together with great difficulty, and finally, this moment of slight dawn has begun to appear. 2022 MATA TIFF on this occasion will invite domestic and international excellent films, as well as new-vision videos of the new generation of Taiwanese indigenous people who creates various forms of the film based on indigenous viewpoints and perspectives, will present indigenous time-space interlaced various paths or ways, just like the textures woven in elders’ hands. Through the platform of a film festival, it shows the various time-space paths/ways of the indigenous people in the face of world changes.

 

The path/way is also one of the deep conceptual structures in the Austronesian language system, including the Taiwanese indigenous people, connotes the path or way in the world and rituals, and reproduces the unique time, space and cosmology of the Austronesian people. MATA TIFF uses lalan (path/way) in the Amis language, to interpret and construct the temporal and spatial reality and deep concepts in the film. Taking the Amis Dulan community as an example, lalan is not only the road that people walk through, but also the path that the soul walks. It is also a way the priest goes between the real and the spiritual world by constantly asking “icowa ko lalan” (where is the road?) in the ritual. Therefore, lalan is not only a spiritual power going through time and space but also a trace that the indigenous people have walked through and hoped for.

 

At the moment when the dark epidemic has been closing to the light of day, but it has not yet ended, 2022 MATA TIFF assembles various forms of films, as a lalan(to guide the path/way), interweaves how the indigenous people continue to looking back on the past as time goes by, or staring at the present, or looking forward the future; how to move to a foreign land, but constantly return to the original one. On the other hand, these films, the various time, space and paths/ways experienced by the indigenous people are reproduced, intertwined into a network, which not only accumulates into the path of the physical and mental practice of each generation, but also as a gift dedicating to the mass still in the epidemic to look back on the past, gaze at the present, and look forward to various possible paths in the future.

 

Therefore, 2022 MATA TIFF is a path/way of icowa ko lalan.