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In “Seediq Bale”, director Wei Te-sheng asks viewers to suspend their preconceptions and get inside the ethics of the Seediq people [of Taiwan], as the entire narrative unfolds “through the prism of Seediq beliefs.”
Wei’s film re-examines the Wushe Incident of 1930, in which a coalition of six Seediq tribes were led by chief Mouna Rudo to rebel against the Japanese.
The Japanese colonization (1895-1945) not only brought modern technology and institutions but also subjugated the Seediq to foreign norms, banning practices of head-hunting and facial tattooing. Seediq men were worked as cheap labor while Seediq women served as housemaids. At a Seediq wedding, a quarrel between Japanese policeman Katsuhiko Yoshimura and Mouna’s son thus planted the fuse that eventually led to the rebellion.
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