Private Project

Sea Spray

Taiwan’s people and society have increasingly estranged themselves from the sea that surrounds them. This documentary follows a group of young creative performers as they reconnect with and experience Taiwan’s ocean shorelines with their entire being. They then interpret their individual, deeply personal experiences of ocean life, evolution, and environmental change into their performance art.

  • Chin-Yuan Ke
    Director
  • Li-ping Yu
    Producer
  • Chin-Yuan Ke
    Producer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    海之岸
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Feature, Television
  • Genres:
    Art, Environment, Nature
  • Runtime:
    58 minutes 54 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    December 1, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    33,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Taiwan
  • Country of Filming:
    Taiwan
  • Language:
    Mandarin Chinese
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • 2023 GREEN SCREEN International Wildlife Film Festival
    Schleswig-Holstein
    Germany
    September 9, 2023
    International Premiere
    Official Selection
  • 2023 ECOCINE International Environmental and Human Rights Film Festival
    São Paulo
    Brazil
    November 3, 2023
    South American Premiere
    Official Selection
  • 2023 Asian Academy Creative Awards (AAA)
    Singapore
    Singapore
    December 7, 2023
    SEA Premiere
    National Winner for the Best Direction (Non-Fiction) and the Best Documentary Programme (one-off)
Director Biography - Chin-Yuan Ke

During the 1990s, while environmental awareness in Taiwan was still in its infancy, Chin-yuan Ke launched a one-man mission to survey the current state of Taiwan’s environment. With just a camera and his pen, Ke ultimately produced reams of notes and countless photographs documenting his findings. Ke joined Public Television Service (PTS) in 1998 as Taiwan’s first investigative filmmaker focused on the environment. Over the past 3 decades, his largely solitary battle against environmental degradation has not only pushed social justice forward but also helped further realize the spirit and values that define PTS’ mission. This year, the Taiwan International Documentary Festival is proud to recognize Chin-yuan Ke with the Festival’s Outstanding Contribution Award. This award both affirms the value of Ke’s contributions throughout his career and reaffirms the true value and mission of the documentary film medium.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Concept
Images and performance art combined in environmental exploration.
Can environmental imagery be conveyed through other expressive outlets?
What latent possibilities await in transdisciplinary art projects?
Sea Spray documents the creation of a groundbreaking, transdisciplinary art project.

Wind and water combine to animate undulating shoreline waves and shifting shoreline sands. When we walk these shorelines, we create not only footprints but emotive impressions and memories. This work examines how performance art inspired by the sounds of waves and coastal imagery combines with visual art media to exposit upon the issue of environmental change. Might this approach offer the potential to better convey key messages, foster communication, and stimulate positive action for change?

Good and bad, beauty and ugliness … both opposites along a shared continuum. Do we truly understand the space in between these extremes – the world in which we live? Can deconstructed visual experiences and symbolic imagery reveal insightful meaning when reconstructed on the shoreline? Is the result mere prattle or perhaps something we could all accept as a clarion call to return to the loving embrace of Mother Sea?

A Word from the Director
In my youth, I ventured out regularly on my motorcycle, camera in hand, to explore Taiwan’s islands and islets. I wanted to capture this country’s unvarnished beauty from my subjective aesthetic perspective. As I grew both personally and professionally, my efforts turned toward investigating and recording the worrisome changes already underway in Taiwan’s environment. Now, I am attempting something different. Taking this multidisciplinary, interventionist, and reconstructionist approach to interpret the process of evolution and the environment is an idea that has been percolating in my mind since the 1980s.

Sea Spray documents conversations between humanity and nature. The metaphors and criticism raised in this work’s juxtaposed images and soundscape convey the joys and sorrows of our coasts and the sea. This effort has taken me back to the motivations and creative impulses of my youth – watching, understanding, cherishing, and embracing the sea … the mother of us all!