Taoyuan City’s New Immigrants’ United Service Center held "New Immigrants, New Second Generations, Migrant Workers Image Workshops" (新住民、新二代、移工 影像工作坊) to teach new immigrants skills related to photography and video editing techniques, and also provide a platform for new immigrant sisters to get together, share their stories, and use the video skills they have learned to record memories that can be recalled and shared.
The film "Grandma's House" shot by Li Li. (Photo/Provided by Taoyuan New Immigrants Cultural Center)
The trainees of the "New Immigrants, New Second Generation, Migrant Workers Video Workshop" produced a total of four videos. The course just met the third level alert of the COVID-19 epidemic, so the trainees stayed at home and made videos with "home" as their theme, and one of these is "Grandma's House" (阿嬤的厝) filmed by Li Li. Li Li told the editor of "New Immigrants’ Global News Network" that she has been married in Taiwan for about 20 years. Before coming to Taiwan, she worked as a kindergarten teacher in mainland China. After she got married in Taiwan, she ran a snack shop with her husband. In the beginning, she was not good at taking photos and videos with mobile phones, and the photos she took were not clear, so she signed up for the video workshop course and she wanted to learn the basic shooting skills with a teacher's step-by-step guidance.
In every class, the teacher will always give homework to the students for practice, and they can shoot short videos on any subject, to train the students' sense of stability, and to let their hands get used to holding the mobile phone without shaking. In the end, Li Li filmed the video "Grandma's House", which was shown at the achievement exhibition. This film documented her mother-in-law’s house that was about to be demolished. Li Li captured her mother-in-law's feelings for the house and the land in images. Li Li told the editor of "New Immigrants’ Global News Network", that at the beginning of the filming, her mother-in-law would be awkward and unnatural when facing the camera. She asked what Li Li was filming, and when she heard that Li Li was doing her homework, she let her randomly shoot, which resulted in very natural pictures.
Li Li (1st from left) and her mother-in-law participated in the achievement exhibition. (Photo/Provided by Li Li)
Affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, the physical classes have been changed to online classes. Li Li said that although they cannot ask the teacher face-to-face, they can still ask the teacher using their mobile phones when they have any questions. When Li Li finished uploading the video, she had some difficulty because she was unfamiliar with the cloud system on the Internet. The teacher explained the uploading steps patiently, and Li Li smiled and told the editor of "New Immigrants’ Global News Network" that she learned a new computer application function.
The song of the soundtrack for the film "Grandma's House" is “Wang Chun Feng” (望春風) and was played by Li Li’s daughter on a recorder. Li Li said that her mother-in-law returned home and asked her daughter to play the song twice and her mother-in-law even sang along, which reminded her of her childhood. At the end of the course, the students learned to be creative. An amateur who knows nothing about shooting becomes a film creator and director who can shoot a complete film and even broadcast it at the achievement exhibition. Li Li expressed her pride, and she felt a sense of accomplishment, and said that her mother-in-law is happy, which makes all the hard work of filming worth it.
