In the 1970s, director Chang Chao-Tang filmed the Burning of the King Boat ritual in Sucuo Village, Tainan. Rather than recording the sound on site, he paired the footage with a progressive folk rock piece Ommadawn by musician Mike Oldfield. The music gives the imagery a profound sense of ritual, sacredness, and mystery, allowing viewers to feel the ecstasy of the worshippers. This method was unprecedented on Taiwanese television and opened up the way for experimental and poetic documentary filmmaking in Taiwan.
Chang Chao-Tang remarked: “This film is not a documentary report on a folk parade. It is a pilgrimage, a constructed journey of entanglement and interaction between local villagers and their beliefs, their deities. Festivals in Taiwan are often noisy and chaotic, and we call that ‘vitality.’ But what if we look at it differently? What if we simplify it, distill its passion and obsession, and transform it into an audiovisual ritual that is at once joyful and tragic? That is this film’s modest aspiration.”