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Zhao, a veteran from Chinese Civil War times, living his remaining days in Taiwan. A Dream of Spring is about him taking his old-time friend Feng’s ashes and goes on a journey seeking for some last desires in their “lives”. The story is based on true events, during 1949 when Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China retreated from mainland China to Taiwan, the troops were relocated away from their homes and restarted their roots in Taiwan. During the ruling time, these troops were facing harsh regulations like marriage-ban, and over the days they are struggling with the difficult situation of dying alone. Which raised the researcher’s awareness of this issue, and decided to grasp the two contrasting components of “sexual desire” and “death” to use it as a metaphor for the historical background of this story, furthermore to express the director and the researchers’ anxieties towards the existence debate over of our country Taiwan.
As the producer of this film, the researcher was invited by the director Tsao to co-develop this production. Director Tsao was inspired by a news article “The Last Hope of a Veteran- Taking His ashes back to Mainland China”. Confronting with a large historical topic like this, the researcher realized that only through field works and investigations will they thoroughly understand how things became the way they are today. Xiang-He Veteran Village at Zuoying, Kaohsiung was the main location where the researcher did most of the field researches. By involving oneself in the actual environment will one truly experience and understand the feelings of those veterans’ pain and human nature desires for life. A Dream of Spring hopes to reach the audiences and raise their awareness of simply being a human, there’s always desires for something even until the last breaths of them.
This thesis presents the creative aspects from a producer’s point of view. The researcher was fully involved in the processes of developing script to crew and casting, also to setting the visual tone etc.
Fortunately for the funds from Kaohsiung Shorts 2016 and the Ministry of Culture Shorts Fund 2017, the production of A Dream of Spring went smoothly with these supports. The thesis contains the researcher’s full reflections on producing this film. Hope to imprint the vanishing figures of our times through this film in our minds and present this film as a conclusion of the researcher’s stage of study.
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