Passing Through My Mother-in-law's Village with After Passing

The East-West Highway was soon to be built in central Taiwan. It would pass through the village of Liu Ts'o, and many homes and rice paddies would be destroyed. The filmmaker, Hu Tai-Li, went back to her mother-in-law's village Liu Ts'o, where she did anthropological research from 1976-78, to preserve some images of life at that moment - forever. 

This film was shot in a natural and intimate climate. During the annual two harvests, various activities in daily life and festivals were presented in the film that reflected the villagers' attitudes towards gods, ghosts, ancestors, women, farmlands, urbanization, industrialization, reclamation and resettlement. Through these shorts, the filmmaker attempted to reveal the Taiwanese way of facing drastic social changes. 

In this unusual film—the first Taiwanese documentary to achieve commercial success—we are treated to a series of affectionate vignettes of life in filmmaker Hu Tai-Li’s mother-in-law’s village before large portions of it are destroyed to make way for the new East-West highway. 

In After Passing (11 min, 2006), a follow-up (included on the DVD) of the previous documentary, Hu Tai-li returns to Liu Ts'o Village to screen Passing Through My Mother-in-law's Village for the village residents, and reports to her deceased mother-in-law the changes caused by the newly built expressway. In the wake of its construction, the Liu Ts'o villagers have created a new lifestyle under an overpass, exhibiting human beings' great ability to adapt to the changing environment. 

This DVD contains both films and a 20-page essay, "The Emergence of Small-Scale Industry in a Taiwanese Rural Community", by the filmmaker, providing background ethnography of this project.