For the Mobile Film Festival 2020 edition theme ‘Women’s Empowerment’, Limuy Asien decided to give a voice to young indigenous women in her native Taiwan.
Her film Not your tropical girl follows young actress Kuyu Tuyaw as she walks through Asien’s village of Naro, rapping a protest song along the way. Behind what appears to be a light-hearted portrait is a deeper commentary on how indigenous people are seen and treated in society and their desire to speak for themselves.
RFI got in touch with Limuy Asien, a Taiwanese filmmaker of Atayal descent, to find out how she went about fitting such a strong message into the one minute limit set by the competition and what she plans to do next.
RFI: What made you want to enter this competition?
LA: I have been thinking about the tensions between Indigenous peoples and cinematic framings during my time as an undergraduate student and currently as a master’s student writing a thesis on Laha Mebow, the first female Indigenous director in Taiwan. At the same time, I am also in the process of applying to film schools to gain hands-on experience, hoping that one day I can tell stories of Indigenous peoples from my own point of view.
When I saw the promotion of MFF’s call for films on the official Facebook page of Women Make Waves Film Festival in Taiwan, I thought that given the relatively low barrier to produce a one-minute film on a mobile phone, I should give it a shot despite having no budget and being a one-person crew.
In addition, microaggression on Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial Taiwan is still very much a thing despite the discourse of us living in a multicultural and inclusive society. And such microaggression is often demonstrated through visual practice such as social media, films, and advertisements. For example, just a couple of months ago, at the Golden Bell Awards ceremony, a prestigious award for television production in Taiwan, a Han-settler presenter jokingly imitated the sound of monkeys as she announced the Indigenous nominees, saying "Isn’t this how you speak ?". Not to mention a plethora of cultural texts out there that depict Indigenous peoples as lazy, barbaric, exotic, vulnerable, and on top of it all, disappearing.
So I thought I could reclaim this medium, using a one-minute film to talk back to those toxic images in a concise and expressive manner.
RFI: Why were you drawn to the topic of Women’s Empowerment? Is there a personal connection?
LA: I am drawn to this topic because I have been reflecting on the intersectionality of being Indigenous and being a woman. I want to take this chance to show that, rather than being treated as an exoticized, orientalized or sexualized object, Kuyu is a subject who speaks and cannot be easily captured or contained by the frame.
More importantly, I chose to have a young Indigenous girl speak those lines because, in patrilineal Indigenous nations, female voice is oftentimes buried. So I am trying to tackle settler colonialism in Taiwan while also highlighting daily female resistance from within the community. By doing so, I wish to emphasize her powerful presence and agency.
I hope that through these fragments of an Indigenous girl’s protest, people can see that many Indigenous peoples, like Kuyu, are just trying their best to feel at home in this world despite bearing colonial wounds and facing daily discrimination.
RFI: Was trying to fit your message into one minute difficult? Why?
LA: I originally planned to make a short in which an unseen director follows Kuyu, with her back facing us and with various kinds of stereotypes of Indigenous peoples being spoken and remixed in TV- and radio-like format in the background. Kuyu would walk in silence until the last minute, when she turns around and asks the unseen director indignantly "What are you filming me for ?" before covering the lens and destroying the camera.
But since it is a one minute film, I decided that my first approach would be slow-burning while not hitting home the message in a pithy way. At the same time, I wondered if it makes sense to reproduce those stereotypes in a short when I can simply let Kuyu speak. We have more than enough stereotypes of Indigenous peoples, but not enough Indigenous girls speaking out. So I abandoned the first script, sat down, and wrote those protest-like lines in five minutes.
RFI: What were the technical (or logistical) challenges you faced in this project?
LA: My village Naro was happening as we were shooting the film. Since I didn’t have advanced sound recording equipment, it was rather difficult to completely filter out the traffic and wind sound. Other than that, this is a no budget film that was shot on a friend’s iPhone in the span of one afternoon.
RFI: What do you have in mind for a future project?
LA: I am currently in the process of applying to several MFA programs in filmmaking / documentary filmmaking in Europe and in the US. I am producing a 15-minute docufiction short entitled Queer & Atayal for my application portfolio. It revolves around a queer Indigenous boy’s walk home with his cousin, starring Kuyu Tuyaw again!
This short film deals with more diverse topics related to Indigeneity in a lighthearted conversational style à la Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy (or at least strives to). Another dream of mine is to one day produce an Indigenous musical by gathering young Indigenous talents in Taiwan and using vibrant beats combining Atayal musical tradition and electronic music to tell empowering stories.
