To See is to Act: What the Death of a Migrant Worker Can Tell Us About Humanity - The Film Screening of 'And Miles to Go Before I Sleep' (九槍) with Director Tsai Tsung-lung
Oxford Taiwan Studies Seminar
Introduction
Nguyen Quoc Phi was nobody before he died, but now he tells his own story as a young migrant from Nghệ An, Vietnam, to Taiwan in this documentary. Phi was an undocumented migrant worker, or a ‘runaway’, in northern Taiwan before he was shot nine times by the police and left unattended by the paramedics on 31 August 2017. What made him ‘run away’ from his factory work? How did he find jobs in various construction sites? Why did he start taking drugs? Was he an imperfect victim? These are straightforward questions leading to complicated answers. And Miles to Go before I Sleep (九槍, 'Nine Shots') brings to the fore the nakedness of discrimination and the challenges to humanity if we choose to be bystanders indifferent to inequality and injustice . Please join us for the screening of this award-winning documentary and find out how each of us can take actions to stop discrimination and inequality.
In November 2022, the film won the Best Documentary Feature of the Golden Horse Film Festival, one of the most important film festivals in the Sinophone cinema. This film has been regularly screened at non-commercial settings in Taiwan for public education, and, after launching a successful crowdfunding campaign by Tsai, the film will be screened at fee-charging, commercial cinemas. Co-funded by Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the film was intensively screened in the UK in March 2023 at the University of Portsmouth, School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, Nottingham Trent University, University of Nottingham and University of Central Lancashire. On 9th October, the film was screened at Busan Film Festival and at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, on 10th October. On 4th November, the film was screened at the Burrell Collection of the Glasgow Museum, supported by Spotlight Taiwan and coordinated by the University of Edinburgh. Co-funded by the National Art Council of Taiwan, the film will be screened at the University of Oxford on 4th December (supported by the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme) and at the University of Lincoln on 6th December. Screenings have also been hosted in the Czech Republic and at universities in Vietnam and Malaysia.
Content Warnings
The content of the film includes violent scenes, and the topics under discussion may be stressful for some viewers.
About the Speaker
Graduated with a law degree in Bachelor from the National Chengchi University and a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, Tsai Tsung-Lung (蔡崇隆) also holds a Master’s Degree in Film Studies from the University of East Anglia in the UK. He is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Communications of the National Chung Cheng University and works as an independent documentary producer and director. He takes a humanist approach to his works concerning human rights, environmental crisis, and culture diversities. Tsai endeavoured to promote the visibility and understanding of documentaries and, as a lecturer, has dedicated to training filmmaking amongst students and amateurs. Some of his recent works were collaborated with his Vietnamese spouse, Nguyen Kim Hong, concentrating on migrant spouses and workers in Taiwan, such as See You, Lovable Strangers that recorded the hardships of Vietnamese farmworkers. His film My Imported Wife was archived in the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. Sunflower Occupation, the latest film produced by Tsai, was selected in the New Asian Currents item in the 2015 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.
About the Coordinator
Dr Isabelle Cockel is Senior Lecturer in East Asian and International Development Studies at the University of Portsmouth. Her research focuses on labour and marriage migration in East Asia. She is particularly interested in how the state instrumentalises immigration for political economic interests. Her publications focus on sovereignty, citizenship, gender, activism, and irregular work in the informal labour market. Enacting upon her commitment to academic activism, she utilises academic blogs to raise public awareness of inequality and injustice embedded in labour migration. She is currently the Secretary-General of the European Association of Taiwan Studies, Research Associate of Centre of Taiwan Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and a Member on the European Advisory Board of European Research Centre on Contemporary Taiwan at the University of Tübingen. She is an Associate Editor of Asia Pacific Viewpoint and on the editorial board of International Journal of Taiwan Studies and International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies.
