As a critical observer of Taiwan‘s society and politics, most of Lee’s work focuses on actual problems and issues. Eye on the Left (睜開左眼), the festival’s opener, and Taste of Apple (蘋果的滋味), shown on Saturday morning, both threw the spotlight on the problematic developments in the world of Taiwan’s mass media, an area which is for biographical reasons of particular concern to Lee Hui-Jen.
Self-Censorship 幷控制, screened on Friday afternoon, was a two hour tour de force through the issue of the Chinese Communist government’s control and oppression of dissent, and how that reaches beyond the borders of mainland China also into Hongkong and Taiwan. In The Incredible Disappearing School 上學去then, the director took up the issue of the private sector in Taiwan’s tertiary education, which is bearing the pressure of Taiwan’s demographic crises and insufficiently regulated by the law on private universities.
A bit of an outlier in the realm of Lee Hui-Jen’s work but no less intriguing was No. 37 Huafushan 寄居蟹的諾亞方舟 about the life of the inhabitants of a disabled persons’ care facility (at 37 Huafushan Rd. in New Taipei City’s Bali district), portraying their hopes, dreams, pleasures and friendships as well as their frustrations and experiences of discrimination.