The Way He Sings

Official selection

In spring 2021 the legendary group Blacklist Studio, which shook the Taiwanese music scene with "Songs of Madness", returned after thirty years of silence. It gathered four veteran musicians and invited Lin Guang-cai, then 63, a Paiwan tribal chief and singer, to sing lead. Under the shadow and confusion of the pandemic they tried to join Indigenous ancient songs with Western blues and record a radical album of "future ancient tunes". The camera records Lin Guang-cai's hoarse, deep, weathered voice and gradually goes into cultural clashes, personal struggles and helplessness before fate. It is a gentle journey, at the end of speechlessness, that uses music and images to sort through the voices of an era and to look for identity and a way home.

Translated from English by IFFDAY, not yet reviewed.