Collection Online
Search the Collection 搜索M+藏品
M+, Hong Kong, © Midi Z
On View
Mediatheque
Midi Z 趙德胤
Silent Asylum 沉默庇護
2013
Centring on a group of refugees living in an abandoned apartment building in Taipei, Silent Asylum attempts to capture Burmese Chinese experiences of political oppression and poverty. It depicts a French documentary director working with the refugees, filming them as they recount stories of life under Myanmar’s military government. These painful narratives of trauma and loss are told plainly, forgoing dramatic gestures in favour of quiet realism. The film cuts between lingering shots of the refugees’ precarious environment and the hand-held point-of-view of the director’s camera. In a sudden turn near the end, the documentary director addresses the camera directly, questioning how atrocities are remembered and retold in an allusion to Alain Resnais’s 1959 film Hiroshima mon amour.
Silent Asylum is a collaboration between Midi Z, a Myanmar-born artist based in Taiwan, and French filmmaker Joana Preiss. Before moving away at sixteen, Midi Z had seen and experienced various hardships, which inform his films. In the case of Silent Asylum, he has stated that the work will serve as a record of Myanmar’s major political and cultural upheavals over the past several decades.
Silent Asylum is a collaboration between Midi Z, a Myanmar-born artist based in Taiwan, and French filmmaker Joana Preiss. Before moving away at sixteen, Midi Z had seen and experienced various hardships, which inform his films. In the case of Silent Asylum, he has stated that the work will serve as a record of Myanmar’s major political and cultural upheavals over the past several decades.
Loading