9443 Telstar Avenue El Monte
CA
About this Event
Taiwanese American Professionals and co-sponsors TAFF, FF Fraternity, OCA-LA, and CACA-LA are proud to present a feature screening of the long praised documentary LOVE BOAT: TAIWAN. The film held its world premier earlier this year at the Los Angeles Asian American Film Festival 2019 with a bravo showcase at San Francisco’s prestigious CAAMFest 2019.
Join us for a special Q&A after the screening with filmmaker and producer Valerie Soe (SFSU Asian studies professor) and special guests who starred in the movie (Pierre Wuu and others). Share stories about Love Boat with the very individuals who were filmed in the documentary.
About the film:
Bay Area-based experimental video artist/filmmaker and Asian American Studies professor Valerie Soe returns with a provocative and illuminating documentary feature about the “Taiwan Love Boat”- one of the world’s longest running summer programs sponsored by the Taiwanese government to educate overseas Taiwanese and various Chinese diasporas across the globe – about the cultural greatness of the island nation. No actual boat is involved.
Known officially as the Expatriate Formosa Youth Study Tour to Taiwan, the Overseas Chinese Youth Language Training and Study Tour to the Republic of China, and the Expatriate Youth Taiwan Study Tour, among others, the much more marketable nickname helped to attract a diverse breadth of youthful participants, who “in the days before Tinder” to quote Angry Asian Man, bought the promise of romance and unsupervised shenanigans abroad.
Filmed over more than three years and funded by a Fulbright Fellowship, Soe, a Love Boat alumna, retraces her initial engagement with her cultural heritage here and her “return” to Asia as an American-born and raised citizen. Contemplating how overseas Chinese experience this homecoming as a spectrum of comfort and culture shock, she contrasts this with information presented by those who ran the proverbial “ship.” Towing the official line of cultural diplomacy and education, a cadre of Taiwanese government officials and representatives through its more than half century existence give testimonials to the program’s history and impact while Love Boat alumni including comedian/artist Kristina Wong and politician Judy Chu gleefully account the real skinny.
—Lindy Leong
CREDITS
Director, Writer, Producer: Valerie Soe
Executive Producer: Soumyaa Kapil Behrens, Christopher Yeung, Helen Yeung, William Yao
Editor: Corey Ohama
Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=egM0wUsArnU