Film Forum

Taiwan, 1987
Directed by Wang Tung
Starring Chung Chun-fang, Ko Chun-hsiung, Yang Kuei-mei
Approx. 94 min. DCP Courtesy Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute.

STRAWMAN is the first entry in Wang Tung’s celebrated “nativist” trilogy focused on the complexly tumultuous period of Taiwanese history spanning the last years of the Japanese occupation (1895-1945) and the start of the KMT rule. Tung’s black comedy pointedly chronicles the everyday absurdities of colonized life in a small village, culminating in the chaos that results when two brothers discover an unexploded US bomb only to dutifully deliver it to the Japanese authorities.