In the series of wet plate photographs by Scottish photographer John Thomson in his trip to Formosa in 1871, there is an aboriginal hunter photo.

 

Both the elder and young hunters in the photo still look vivid after more than 140 years. Thomson was surprised at figures and landscape of Formosa and even made his photographs into prints. Yet he needed the hunters to stay still in front of the camera so he could capture their images successfully.  

 

Nowadays we see the Siraya tribal Elder Wan singing and playing instruments accompanied by his brave ancestors’ leaping in the forests. He turns into an ancestral hunter hundred years ago in both film and photo; however the hunting ground no longer exists in reality. Those images hundred years ago still seemed unchanged, yet time does change everything. People and places are gone; the tribe lost their mother tongue and even their names. 

 

The director created a pair of characters out of a photo with a boy and a dog squatted at the corner, through their curious stare at the vigorous tribal hunters and their encounter with the “image hunter”, witnessing a duel of old and new world. After a long time, hunters are gone and images in power. The twin-lens reflex camera Thomson carried was used as Stereo Vision and also “manual burst” mode (cover one len at a time for seconds for exposure) to make two-photo test shots and selection.

As a film director, carrying a hundred-year-old twin-lens reflex camera, I imagine what those “mata (eyes)” had seen at that time? How does images form us and Formosa into after that and what exactly are images before that? Is there still an answer in my, our indescribable mata?