ThoughtGallery.org > Homecoming Myanmar: A Midi Z Retrospective (Film Series)

Homecoming Myanmar: A Midi Z Retrospective (Film Series)

A rising talent in international cinema, Myanmar-born and Taiwan-based Midi Z has developed a signature style for his intimate and authentic portraits of people struggling with displacement and poverty on the margins of Myanmar society. Hailing from an ethnic Chinese family in Lashio, a small town in the eastern Shan state, Z draws inspiration from the people he is familiar with in this remote region with a porous border next door to China, Laos and Thailand. Driven by social and economic hardship, they make ends meet drifting between worlds where smuggling and human and drug trafficking are rampant. Compassion and a documentary impulse guide Z’s camera as it quietly observes his characters’ actions and choices in a nonjudgmental manner. Mostly shot guerrilla-style in Myanmar, without official permission, the films also demonstrate formal rigor through meticulously crafted narrative structure and camerawork. This first U.S. survey of Z’s work includes all of the director’s fiction features plus a short.

Return to Burma
Midi Z. 2011. Taiwan/Myanmar. 84 min. DCP. English subtitled.
Cast: Wang Shin-Hong, Lu Jiun

Myanmar holds its first parliamentary election in two decades. Many Myanmar natives living overseas return home in anticipation of peace and prosperity. Xing-hong, who has worked as a construction worker in Taiwan, arrives home to find his brother getting ready to go to work as a laborer in Malaysia. As he looks without much luck for business opportunities in his hometown, a sense of disillusionment and alienation pervades. It seems as though nothing much, after all, has changed. Midi Z’s directorial debut feature, Return to Burma, symbolizes the filmmaker’s personal homecoming in 2008, ten years after he moved to Taiwan to pursue an education and career.

Preceded by short film
The Palace on the Sea
Midi Z. 2014. Taiwan/Myanmar. 15 min. DCP. English subtitled.
Cast: Wu Ke-Xi, Wang Shin-Hong

“The Palace on the Sea” was once a luxurious floating restaurant in Kaohsiung, a city in southern Taiwan. Now it’s an abandoned vessel sadly chained to the dock without a purpose. A woman in a Myanmar traditional dress makes a ghostly entrance and dances with the past. This experimental short makes an interesting counterpart to director Midi Z’s feature films, which adhere strictly to reality.

Post-screening Q&A with director Midi Z and actress Wu Ke-Xi.











When: Sat., Mar. 7, 2015 at 5:00 pm
Where: Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Ave.
212-288-6400
Price: $8 members, $10 students/seniors, $12 non-members
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A rising talent in international cinema, Myanmar-born and Taiwan-based Midi Z has developed a signature style for his intimate and authentic portraits of people struggling with displacement and poverty on the margins of Myanmar society. Hailing from an ethnic Chinese family in Lashio, a small town in the eastern Shan state, Z draws inspiration from the people he is familiar with in this remote region with a porous border next door to China, Laos and Thailand. Driven by social and economic hardship, they make ends meet drifting between worlds where smuggling and human and drug trafficking are rampant. Compassion and a documentary impulse guide Z’s camera as it quietly observes his characters’ actions and choices in a nonjudgmental manner. Mostly shot guerrilla-style in Myanmar, without official permission, the films also demonstrate formal rigor through meticulously crafted narrative structure and camerawork. This first U.S. survey of Z’s work includes all of the director’s fiction features plus a short.

Return to Burma
Midi Z. 2011. Taiwan/Myanmar. 84 min. DCP. English subtitled.
Cast: Wang Shin-Hong, Lu Jiun

Myanmar holds its first parliamentary election in two decades. Many Myanmar natives living overseas return home in anticipation of peace and prosperity. Xing-hong, who has worked as a construction worker in Taiwan, arrives home to find his brother getting ready to go to work as a laborer in Malaysia. As he looks without much luck for business opportunities in his hometown, a sense of disillusionment and alienation pervades. It seems as though nothing much, after all, has changed. Midi Z’s directorial debut feature, Return to Burma, symbolizes the filmmaker’s personal homecoming in 2008, ten years after he moved to Taiwan to pursue an education and career.

Preceded by short film
The Palace on the Sea
Midi Z. 2014. Taiwan/Myanmar. 15 min. DCP. English subtitled.
Cast: Wu Ke-Xi, Wang Shin-Hong

“The Palace on the Sea” was once a luxurious floating restaurant in Kaohsiung, a city in southern Taiwan. Now it’s an abandoned vessel sadly chained to the dock without a purpose. A woman in a Myanmar traditional dress makes a ghostly entrance and dances with the past. This experimental short makes an interesting counterpart to director Midi Z’s feature films, which adhere strictly to reality.

Post-screening Q&A with director Midi Z and actress Wu Ke-Xi.

Buy tickets/get more info now