Le Moulin (2015)

2015 | Taiwan | Huang Ya-li | ★★★

Huang Ya-li's Golden Horse Award-winning Le Moulin is an impeccably crafted though overlong and only mildly engaging documentary about poetry in 1930s Taiwan, comprised of sporadically stimulating old photos, paintings, film clips, and literary extracts.

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"It was when Taiwan was in a stable period of cultural assimilation during the past forty years of Japanese colonial rule that the country’s first modern art group – Le Moulin Poetry Society – arose in the 1930s, with their poetic protest against the colonial power’s cultural superiority. The name reflected the group’s orientation towards the West while especially strongly influenced by France. Regarding the Surrealists as their absolute role models, Le Moulin poets composed poetry in an uncompromising and aesthetically sophisticated style to confront the turbulent era they lived in." Ablaze Image