River of Art

Description

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LIU Yu was born in the northeast of China in 1919. Today he lives in Taiwan with his daughter and they are both passionate about drawing and painting. After his wife’s death, LIU decides to undertake with his daughter a journey in space and time, through places which marked his life as a young artist. After finishing his studies, he starts to work for the Internal Revenue Service but he misses art too much, so he decides to devote his whole life to it. He takes the opportunity to go to study art in Japan.

After finishing his studies, he leaves the country, which is ravaged by the Second World War. However, he cannot go back to his hometown because the northeast of China is still occupied by the Japanese. With his classmates he undertakes a difficult trip towards another province, Chungking, where he attends a local fine arts academy. After graduating, he still cannot go back home because his region is going through the turmoil of civil war. A professor helps him to get a job a teacher in a university in Taiwan, where he starts his career and meets the woman of his life. However, it’s also the period of the White Terror, during which he is captured and tortured by Nationalists from Guomindang. He will never forget this life-changing experience which deeply marks his character as a man and as an artist.

In this documentary LIU’s drawings and paintings come to life and accompany us in the journey of the artist towards his hometown, but also in the journey of his memories of a tormented past. This film is a moving portrait, intimate and enlightening at the same time, told by LIU himself, his relatives and his colleagues. It shows us the life of a humble artist which became a milestone in the history of Taiwanese art.