Absent without leave: Taiwan movie night

Link to the program recording here.

This event is part of the “Taiwan Documentary Film Festival in Thailand 2024,” sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Culture Office in Thailand. There will be a Q&A session with the director after the film screening.

Absent without Leave' director, Lau Kek Huat, is from Perak, Malaysia and received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from Taiwan’s NTUA Department of Motion Picture. Lau is a Taiwanese citizen now.

The film begins with a picture that has been on the wall for more than 30 years in the director’s family home in Perak, Malaysia. The people in it sacrificed their lives fighting for independence, but their stories have remained untold for 60 years.

It is a long-standing taboo in the director’s family not to talk about one of the men in the picture -- to the extent that even bringing up his name and his past creates disdain among the director’s older relatives.

Eventually, the director finds out that his grandfather died fighting for Malaysia’s independence, but his comrades’ stories are excluded from Malaysian history. This documentary set out to unveil these mysteries.