In the exhilarating momentum of Taiwanese self-determination, and the increasing instability of American democracy, the filmmaker navigates cultural, geographical and linguistic distances in search of wisdom and hope from her 100 year-old Taiwanese activist grandmother (Ama).
The film explores the filmmaker’s discovery about her grandmother’s political sensibility just prior to entering a full-care facility; the personal and intimate details remembered by those closely associated with her; her award-winning autobiographical essay which was published in 1994 by the Taipei Women’s Rights Organization; and the filmmaker’s own memories. As the film progresses, we hear history being told from various perspectives. Eventually, twists and turns develop along the way: the expectation that the camera is a reliable witness, or that the translation is accurate, the many facts that Ama left out of her biography, or that the biography was even written by Ama. In the end, viewers come away with some insight into Taiwan’s colonial past and now as a new democracy, Taiwan relationship to the neocolonial powers of U.S. and transnational corporations, the post-colonial diasporic experience, and at the same time witness the incredible challenges of making a history.