Help from higher up
For ten years after arriving in Taiwan, Midi Z had not returned to his hometown. In 2008, driven by his desire to tell the stories of his home, he picked up his camera and headed back to Myanmar to start shooting. The next year he was selected for the Golden Horse Film Academy, shooting the short film Huashin Incident with renowned director Hou Hsiao-hsien as producer. He went on to become one of Hou’s apprentices.
“Mr. Hou told me then that even without resources you can still make films, and that was how he started out himself. He taught me a lot, and his encouragement gave me the courage to shoot a film entirely solo,” says Midi Z. In fact, he says, the elder statesmen of Taiwanese cinema have all been more than happy to help out the new generation.
For example, in 2014 Ang Lee braved the cold, wet New York winter to make a special appearance at the premiere of the only Chinese-language film to show at that year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Midi Z’s Ice Poison. After the screening, Lee was effusive in his praise for Midi Z’s ability to produce a robust, expressive film dealing with an unusual topic despite a lack of resources and equipment. Lee went on to share his own experiences with him, talking about the different problems a filmmaker faces making a film solo versus making one with a crew of 200. Midi Z also still remembers Lee’s assistant telling him that the director had been up all the previous night dealing with meetings, but still insisted on making it to the screening and getting up on stage. He even made time beforehand to share a meal with Midi Z and give him personal encouragement. To this day, Midi Z remains touched and grateful for Lee’s support.
In 2010, Midi Z again picked up his camera to shoot his first feature-length film, Return to Burma, working alongside a producer and a sound mixer. The film, depicting the realities of life in Myanmar, was nominated for the New Currents Award at the Busan International Film Festival and won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Just before heading to the latter festival, Midi Z formally became a citizen of the Republic of China.
His second feature, 2012’s Poor Folk, even received sponsorship from the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund. In late 2013, Midi Z and a team of seven spent ten days in the China-Myanmar border region shooting his third feature film, Ice Poison. In 2014 the film was screened in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival, won Best International Feature Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and won Best Director at both the Peace & Love Film Festival in Sweden and Taiwan’s Taipei Film Festival. It was also selected to represent Taiwan in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2015 Academy Awards. While it wasn’t nominated for an Oscar in the end, all of this is a powerful sign that Midi Z has become a force to be reckoned with.
While making Ice Poison on a budget of only US$10,000 and serving as writer, director, cameraman, and producer, Midi Z also completed two documentaries, Jade Miners and City of Jade, which tell the stories of Burmese jade miners, and in particular of his own elder brother, who had left the family some 20 years earlier to work in the mines. “Personally, I feel that if I hadn’t made these first, I wouldn’t have been able to make anything else. Even The Road to Mandalay is the story of my sister, who’s 12 years older than me, her generation, and the ‘Taiwan dream’ of so many ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia.”
The 2016 Cinema South Film Festival in Sderot, Israel, used Midi Z’s documentary City of Jade as its visual motif. The town was practically full of billboards for the film.