Synopsis
Against the backdrop of Taiwan’s turbulent presidential elections in 2004, TIGERWOMEN GROW WINGS portrays three women of different generations.
Noted opera singer Hsieh Yueh-hsia, internationally renowned writer Li Ang, and 23-year-old film director Chen Yin-jung are featured in this documentary, which focuses on the changes taking place in the lives of women in Taiwan’s youthful democracy.

Cast
Hsieh Yueh Hsia
Li Ang
Chen Yin-jung
and:
Peng Ya-ling, Josephine Ho, Wang Rong-yu, Wang Pin-kuo, Michelle Yeh, Aileen Li, Tony Yang, Kuo Ya-ching,, Yeh Yeh, Yeh Lee-shin, Li Ci, Justine Chen, Lu Mei-chiao, Shih Li Yu, Shih Shu .

Crew
Camera: Elfi Mikesch
AD: Wen Cheng
Camera-Assistant: Wang Zhi-tian
2nd Camera: Tonike Traum
Sound: Yang Chia-hao
Drivers: Hsiung Fu-jung, Huang Wei-pang, Tan Hsiao-hu
Editor: Angela Christlieb
Production Manager: Madeleine Dewald
Titles: Oliver Lammert
Translations: Martina Hasse, Colin Richardson
Text Advisor: Christian Weller
Transfers: Thomas Bronner, Liao Ta-hsien
Avid-Support: Christian Mattern
Music: Pau Dull Panai; Difang; Zhao Xi
Sound Mix: Roland Musolff
On-Line Editor: Matthias Behrens
Written, directed and produced by Monika Treut

A Co-Production of Hyena Films and PTS-Taiwan
Commissioning editor: Jessie Shih
with support by Filmfoerderung Hamburg GmbH

World Sales- except Taiwan: Hyenafilms Hamburg, Germany This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Rights for Taiwan: PTS TV www.pts.org.tw

Festivals
Bangkok IFF, Berlin IFF, Thessaloniki IDF, San Francisco Input, Warsaw IDF,
Cracow IFF, Taipei IFF, Cambridge IFF, Jerusalem IFF, Cornell University, New York,
QFF Djakarta, Indonesia, Berlin Asia-Pacific FF, IFF Rio de Janeiro, Budapest HFF, Singapore GFF and others.

Reviews

Die Welt
Taiwan has become the second home for Hamburg-based director Monika Treut. In her fascinating documentary TIGERWOMEN GROW WINGS she portrays three strong women who reflect the zeitgeist of the fast foreward moving island and its young democracy. Her sensitive and entertaining portrait of three women from three generations draws the picture of a changing society and, at the same time, the political identity crisis of a country who tries to free itself from overpowering China.

mharrison.wordpress.com
The film's premise is a well-established trajectory of modernization. Hsieh Yueh-hsia represents tradition, Li Ang transformation and Chen Ying-jung modernity. Recalling Farewell My Concubine, Hsieh Yueh-hsia was sold to a Taiwanese opera company as a child in the 1930s, and endured a brutalizing upbringing, while Chen Ying-jung is an archetypal Taiwanese urbanite, and her hugely successful film Formula 17 - a glossy gay fantasy set in Taipei - is as far from the conservative social mores of Hsieh's youth as would be possible. One could also suggest that the use of “three generations” is a standard theme for representations of Chinese modern history, referencing Wild Swans and The Joy Luck Club.
But the film explicitly undermines these standard narratives, creating a rich counter-history of women’s lives as radical, even transgressive, and showing the blurred boundaries of personal identities in Taiwan regardless of the historical period. Hsieh Yueh-hsia spent her illustrious career in Taiwanese opera playing only male characters, and the film intimates at her sexual life with female partners, and sometimes violent relationships with men. The film is also attentive to her Taoist religious beliefs as a worshipper of the god Matsu. The sexual life of the writer Li Ang is well-enough known in her own novels, and in the film she focusses on her politics as a supporter of the democracy movement in the 1970s. Li Ang does not pass up opportunities to play the celebrity, self-consciously "showing" Taiwan to the German director. Chen Ying-jung is the most insouciant, constructing her identity as Taipei urban "cool", but offering glimpses of a focussed and ambitious artist.
Western reportage on Taiwan is almost uniformly abysmal, falling back onto lazy cliches and sensationalisms over the prospect of a cross-straits war. Tigerwomen Grow Wings is a rare intervention in Western media imaginings of Taiwan, attentive to the complexities of personal stories without being intrusive, and locating them against the backdrop of political social movements over many decades.

Bangkok International Filmfestival:
This insightful triple portrait looks at Taiwan society through the eyes of 3 women who have worked within, and broken with the prevailing culture.

Notes from hollywood.com
With more than twenty-three million people, the island of Taiwan is a major participant in global communication. Yet, according to the documentary, Tigerwomen Grow Wings, this small island country is in danger of losing its freedom to the super power of China, a fact of which too few people in the world are aware. (..) Noted writer/director Monika Treut has produced a fascinating study of three Taiwanese women from three different generations, who share their varied life experiences as opera singer, author, and filmmaker. Treut grants each protagonist time to tell her story while the changing dynamics of the political climate unfold with subtlety.

Cambridge International Filmfestival, UK
Monika Treut’s absorbing and revealing documentary, TIGERWOMEN GROW WINGS, paints in vivid detail the individual life stories of the women while also drawing a picture of Taiwan as it steers a course between the conflicting values of East and West, of Confucianism and globalisation, and, at the same time, facing military threats from the People’s Republic of China.

Goethe Institute, London
In Tigerwomen Grow Wings Monika Treut shows a unique sensitivity to the complexities of Taiwanese social life, viewing it as an outsider, but finding universal human experiences within the lives of the three subjects.

filmfestivals.com:
In the realm of discovery was a fascinating documentary on Taiwan entitled "TIGERWOMEN GROW WINGS" made by German documentarian, Monika Treut, who specializes in films dealing with femininity, gender and sexuality. (..) Seeing contemporary Taiwan through the eyes of three highly accomplished women we get a comprehensive picture of the island. (..) The setting is largely the neon jungle of the capital, Taipei, a city and a country that continues to remain largely unknown in the West. Since Taiwan is the best friend we have in South-east Asia, it behooves us to know more about her, and Monika Treut's exceptional film goes a long way toward filling the information gap.

Central News Agency, Taiwan:
Monika Treut has achieved a precise understanding of Taiwanese and Chinese history and the complicated relationship of the Taiwanese-Chinese relations. (...) The film elegantly paints an accurate picture of the island and its multi-faceted everyday life.

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