Metropolis Kino: Filmprogramm zu »Untranquil now«

Notes on the Twelve Karmas, 1999-2000/Re-edited 2018
Single-Channel video, b/w, silent, part one: 5:10 minutes

Worn Away, 2022-2023
Single-Channel video, color and b/w, sound, Mandarin, Hakka, Southern Min, Subtitles: CH/ENGLISH, 69:30 minutes

Notes on the Twelve Karmas is a short film that Chen shot and edited between 1999 and 2000 while making a series of photographs titled The Twelve Karmas. “On that night when the 20th century and the 21st century transitioned, I shot this short film in the form of a pseudo-sci-fi film. It is about a world where human beings are likely to enter some kind of dystopia in the future.”

Worn Away is the prologue of a long-term project titled Her and Her Children that focuses on mutual and self-rescue under the new colonial order and caste system. “Worn Away is inspired by my elder brother’s life experience who suffered from depression after losing his job, and later from schizophrenia, and fell into a state of hallucinations. The film talks about abandoned and marginalized people becoming consumables for biological experiments, as well as corporatocracy, and unpaid bank loans.”

Through his films, photographs, performances and installations, Chen Chieh-jen (*1960 Taoyuan, TW) engages with Taiwan's history of martial law and the effects of globalisation on the lives of marginalised people.

Ort: Metropolis Kino
Tickets: https://www.metropoliskino.de/home