Premieres today.
Friday the 13th, if that’s not enticing to Chinese bomb threat terrorists haha.
Not sure if in English or not, our tickets are for tonight. Will confirm after. Their website is fully English though.
Blah
Not good?
I’ll be interested to hear your opinion after you see it. It’s not aimed at audiences who know Taiwan. It’s trying to tell Taiwan story to audience who who know nothing about Taiwan. It’s hard for me to judge how successful it is in accomplishing that.
For forumosans who are curious, a trailer is posted on youtube here:
Guy
Back home. Watched it. Wasn’t half bad. It was clearly talking about taiwans side, and Tsai heavy. But they were not straight lieing. Rhey were pointing out the CKMT side as well. So I can’t say this documentary was bad at all.
We need to be honest, no documentary is aimed at people that are really entrenched in the topic. They are TV shows, meant to introduce the ignorant to a person’s perspective. As a person that has deep knowledge and decades of experience with various biological tuings, David Attenborough isn’t great either. Hut it’s fun, education etc. Not everyone reads journals all day and nit picks legal words like some of us do in our respective industries. But this document tary was fair, unbiased and stated the side of the taiwnaese that don’t want to be oppressed. I would call this a decent documentary to show people that are not fluent in the intricacies of taiwanese politics. It’s far less brain wash style than most others, that’s for sure. But their core sure does seem to be basic freedom for Taiwan. Which isn’t wrong.
Does it have spoken English or subtitles? Google movie time listings only says “Chinese subtitles”.
It had both English and mandarin subtitles. A lot of the documentary is also spoken in English. A solid mix via audio, and fully translated via subtitles 
I asked the manager at the theater and he said only a 1 week run time. Depends on how many tickets sold if they extend. Way more people than other similar human rights related documentaries I have seen in a theater, but still inly maybe 30 people. Meanwhile I was flooding by school kids leaving rhe mission impossible love, easily 1 or 2 hundred. So, ya.
With just about any film screened in theatres in Taiwan, the general rule is: if you want to see it, see it pronto as it may be gone before you know it!
Guy
If only the marvel universe shit only had a 1 week run time 
I saw this with my wife last weekend, and I agree it was a good, basic overview of the current situation.
The theater was packed and lots of clapping and crying at the end ha.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing audience reaction.
Apparently plenty of theaters will be showing it next week.
It’s doing well for a documentary in Taiwan–about NT$10 million in Week 1 according to FB page.
Theaters and times here.
Sometimes documentaries here will take off, often through word of mouth. Think for example of Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above. I doubt that Invisible Nation will hit those heights but I suppose we’ll see . . .
Guy
Beyond beauty is one of the few I not only fully agree with and support, but feel was done right and bought a few of the DVD sets as gifts to support the work. That one was a special gem of a local documentary as far as quality goes!
Finally got to see this. Quite good in my opinion. China, I’m sure, absolutely hates it, which is a good barometer.
A broad overview of modern Taiwan (political) history that is informative for those not that familiar with the historical markers it touches on, yet still interesting for old Taiwan hands. It never drags, but held my attention the whole time which, at an hour and a half, seemed a bit longer but in a good way, well-paced.
A lot of stories get told and many people get their say. Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is the star and gets the most screen time of all the politicians. Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) gets his say (though probably not as he would have edited it). I’ve heard Tsai interviewed in English but never Ma and even Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) gets a turn in English with clips from his speech at Cornell, all better at English than I would have thought, though Ma did study law in the states. One interesting aspect is that Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) seems to have been completely ignored. Unless it was addressed in Chinese (though I never heard his name and no image of him that I noticed) his presidency is not even mentioned, interesting for a documentary of such a relatively brief political period. Guess he is still persona non grata. Even current president William Lai (賴清德) gets rather glossed over (and not interviewed) but the credits said 2024 so maybe too early to include much.
Other guest stars: Nancy Pelosi, current VP and rising political star Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), Chen Chu (陳菊) interviewed in her old prison cell, some top level academics, journalists and analysts such as Bonnie Glaser.
Overall a solid doc and I recommend catching it in the theater before it rolls off the theaters here. Google movie listings has showings for tomorrow and Thursday for now but not sure beyond that.
Agreed.
I think it may be better avoiding Chen, to be honest. Even though he literally paved the way for Tsao to get so much done, he also paved the way for the extremist Chinese KMT to gain their followers and we got Ma selling Taiwan to China for 8 years. I think it was a good call as it would totally distract from the main point, which is easy watching and not deep dives.
On the Ma man, he is pretty fluent in English. Also foreign born in Hong oong, aside from his US status.
He has a very great interview with DW in English. This specific interview is what got the Chinese KMT to push him away this past presidential election. precisely because he is so pro China and anti Taiwan. Even Guo, Huo and P couldn’t stand the moron, and that says a lot! But the fact they welcomed him to speak and look confused at all given his previous speeches and actions also says they are very happy for pro PRC propaganda. He was always involved and buddy buddy up until this interview pointing out how he wishes Taiwan to be sold out to China. There should be an unbias documentary only on him, with special regard to how he sold out Taiwan to China during his terms.
Unlike Lee, Tsai, and Ma, Chen does not speak English.
He’s an important part of Taiwan’s recent history. Had he not won in 2004, Lien Chan would have been president and maybe Ma after that. He did way more than people give him credit for. Just skipping him dumbed things down and gave me the impression that the documentary hewed to close to the Tsai administration’s take on history.
But narratively the documentary wanted to get to the Tsai administration and explain it. It makes sense to give context by covering the previous Ma administration. The Chen administration is not essential to that story. LTH is too important to leave out. Choices had to be made, so I can see why Chen got left out.
That’s true. But getting into the Chen issue will polarize the documentary. As it stands now, it is fairly watchable from both sides of the political spectrum. I can’t speak for the producers, but it seems that was the goal. If so, well done.
I am fully with you Chen allowed what we have afterwards. Be it good or bad. But thats a real deep rabbit hole that couldn’t of fit into any single documentary. Would need to be a boxed set, just on him. Then follow up on why we had to suffer Ma and how Tsai became a thing etc. Followed by the precursors to Chen which are also deeply important.
This doc is supposed to be simple, I think it did better than most in this sense. To be fair, I don’t feel any documentaries are even possible to deep dive into all the intricacies without being a hundred hour type deal. But, sure. He should have been mentioned a little more at least. Thin line, the Chinese KMT crowds would just outright shit on the doc and the theaters would have even shorter showing dates.
It’s still in some theaters for a third week and had grossed NT$18 million by the end of last weekend. Already one of the top ten docs in Taiwan by box office receipts.
Most Chinese KMTers hate it even without Chen
I’m still pretty surprised that it is doing so well. I wonder if it’s popularity has something to do with the mass recalls and the growing unease about Taiwan’s security. Or perhaps its just the need to be recognized, to be seen–something I’ve never entirely understood.