"A vibrant and accomplished tourism film that celebrates place, culture, and atmosphere with confidence and clarity."
-------- Review from Future Art & Design Award
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Project description
The project is an international image film initiative launched by the Hualien County Government. Aiming to move beyond conventional tourism promotion and avoid a self-referential local perspective, the project deliberately invited Japanese director Naoki Miyashita to lead the production. Through a poetic, life-oriented cinematic language, the film captures the everyday rhythms and states of life unfolding between Hualien’s mountains and sea.
By adopting the gaze of an external creator, Hualien is reinterpreted through a fresh lens, one that paradoxically reveals the land’s enduring abundance and quiet hope more truthfully. Rather than presenting a curated spectacle, the film allows Hualien to step onto the international stage with an authentic and emotionally resonant presence, communicating a sense of place that is lived rather than narrated.
The most distinctive aspect of the project lies in the fact that the creative process itself became part of the work. Under highly constrained conditions, the director chose to abandon conventional script-driven storytelling and instead began with the principle of “allowing the body to first merge with the land.” Through walking, observing, breathing, and real-time interaction, the team captured the visual cues that Hualien naturally offered in the moment.
The production journey led the team through Taroko Gorge, Qixingtan Beach, Sixty Stone Mountain, as well as local shops and art studios. Human gestures, the warmth of handcrafted work, the humidity of the air, and the tempo of daily life were all treated as foundational narrative materials.
Against the backdrop of Hualien still experiencing the aftereffects of earthquakes and a tourism industry yet to fully recover, the project consciously avoided dramatized narratives of “recovery after trauma.” Through direct experience on site, the director observed that Hualien was not fragile or awaiting rescue, but instead possessed a resilient and fertile vitality. As a result, the conceptual focus shifted from the initially proposed theme of “rebirth” to one of “hope,” which ultimately became the film’s central axis. The camera records farmers bending to harvest, fishermen moving in rhythm with the waves, and the ever-changing light between mountains and sea, each moment quietly expressing a land that continues to bloom.