text by Chen Chieh-Jen
In the 1960s, Taiwan became an important world industrial center due to Cold War politics and its low-cost labor market. In the 1990s, Taiwan's labor-intensive industries started migrating abroad to regions with even lower labor costs due to advancing globalization. The ensuing reduction in jobs and factory closings in Taiwan forced many workers into a state of long-term unemployment.
In 2003, I invited several acquaintances who had worked at the Lien Fu Garment Factory for more than twenty years to perform in this film at their former workplace. When the factory was abandoned seven years before, these women workers were denied pensions and severance pay. Although the workers staged a fierce protest attracting a great deal of media attention, their case still remains unresolved today due to weak laws and the fact that the company transferred the funds before closing the factory. After media attention subsided, the factory building was never reoccupied and these women had no choice but to seek work elsewhere.
Many workers around the world have suffered from similar experiences due to th is callous twofold situation of relocation and having no where to go. While investors continually relocate their factories seeking lower labor costs, unemployed workers can only linger in the disused industrial zones that are left behind.
Items left in the abandoned factory, such as newspapers, calendars and a timeclock reflecting the closing day; worktables, chairs, equipment and fans; banners, bullhorns and loudspeakers left behind after the protest; as well as the accumulated dust and stale air, all possessed the significance of the seven years that had elapsed. Only renting the same brand of sewing machines that were sold off when the factory closed and a car like those at the worker protest, I did my best to make use of what had been left in the factory for the film. These discarded items implied a dual sense of suspended and flowing time, which is what I referred to when thinking about how to present the concept of time in the film.
Since the women wanted to limit their participation to non-speaking roles, I just invited them back to the abandoned factory and asked them to simulate working. They all had enigmatic expressions when interacting with the sewing machines and material which had been their constant companions for more than twenty years, perhaps because of their seven-year hiatus from this activity. Based on what I observed while they were pretending to work and the atmosphere of dual time that permeated the old factory, I created this film.
In addition to filming the women simulating work, I also chose to portray imagery and body movements the women used during their protest. For the camera work, my intention was to create a feeling of objective disinterest with panning and a stationary camera. Also, this is a silent film to comply with the women's request.
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[1] Since the factory property was still owned by the original employer when I made this film in 2003, we had to sneak in to make this film.
[2] The stock indexes on the securities company screen at the beginning of the film are mostly green. In Taiwan, green numbers indicate that a stock price is falling.
[3] The black and white documentary inserted in the film was propaganda produced by the government during the industrial heyday of the 1960s.
[4] After the factory was sold at a government auction in December of 2008, it was quickly demolished by new owner.
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