Tea time with A Dream of Spring

An interview with Shih Han Tsao, director of A Dream of Spring

 Why were you interested in the situation of these old Chinese veterans stuck in Taiwan?
I grew up and fulfilled mandatory military service both in Kaohsiung Zuoying. Zuoying is the largest naval base in Taiwan, so there are a lot of veterans who live around there. Because of political and historical factors, many Taiwanese people have misunderstandings and prejudices against veterans. However, because my youth time is spent in the Zuoying, there is a lot of time to get along with veterans, so I have the opportunity to know more about them. Many veterans are lonely deep inside because they were forced to leave their hometowns as teenagers, and many people never had the chance to come back and to see their families. What is even more cruel is that as time goes by, these veterans who have participated in the history of China and Taiwan are dying out and being forgotten by the times. As a contemporary filmmaker, I want to tell a contemporary story that should not be forgotten.

 How much are you interested in the question of loneliness and do you plan further projects dealing with this subject?
Since I was a child, I have been a person who was easy to alienate from the group. Buddhism has a saying: first learn to die, then learn anything of life. It means people should know death is around us everywhere, and then face the problems of life like the end is coming. And this makes me understand that everyone only has to solve their own problems. Therefore, each soul is lonely. I am currently preparing a short film project Cat and Flies,about the guard of shipping harbor and the story of a mentally handicapped woman who makes a living from sex. This is also about an encounter with a lonely soul.

 Why did you want your character to be grieving after his old friend’s death?
Because the person who died is his comrade-in-arms, people will have a close connection if they have experienced something together. When the main character Zhao saw the dead friend’s lifetime like himself, they participated in the civil war, stayed away from home, and finally died in a foreign land. It would have been thought that this might be his own ending. So this sadness is for the grief of the dead friend, but also for his own sorrow.

 What is the song we are hearing from the tape player?
There is an old song called “A Dream of Spring”, which was very famous in 1950 and the song of my film. It is about people who have been separated for a long time, and one day they are reunited, only to find that it is just a dream. I used this song because, on the one hand, it is in line with the background setting of the story, and on the other hand, I think it holds the multiple metaphors in this movie.

 Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?
For me, the limitations of the short film are different from the feature films, so I won’t say that the short film format is more freely created. But because the format of the short film does not require such a complete narrative, you can convey a small but very interesting concept in a short film, or even just a poem, so I think short film can help the artist create diversification.

A Dream of Spring was shown in International Competition I12.