A Letter from the Cape

In the summer of 2008, a domestic film set against the backdrop of Hengchun in Pingtung — Cape No. 7 — opened quietly, yet through word of mouth it ignited a wave of moviegoing that swept across Taiwan, ultimately setting a box-office record for a local film in Taiwanese cinema history and coming to be seen as the pivotal starting point of Taiwan's domestic-film revival.

For more than two decades before this, Taiwanese cinema had languished; though there was no shortage of artistic works acclaimed at international festivals, local commercial productions had almost lost the audience's gaze under the squeeze of Hollywood blockbusters, it was rare to see a story that belonged to Taiwan itself on the screen, and many had grown habitually wary of the very words 'domestic film.'

It was precisely in such a trough that director Wei Te-sheng poured in all his effort, even going into debt, and with a work saturated in the scent of the land, rekindled audiences' passion for walking into theaters to watch domestic films. The story of Cape No. 7 interweaves two threads spanning sixty years: one is the seven love letters a Japanese teacher wrote to his Taiwanese sweetheart but never managed to deliver as the Japanese withdrew from Taiwan after the war, their lines brimming with tender affection amid the upheavals of the age; the other is how Aga, a disheartened young band member who failed in Taipei and returned home to contemporary Hengchun, rediscovers himself and the direction of his life amid the town's human warmth and the preparation for a seaside concert.

Set against the sunlight, sea breeze, and small-town daily life of the Hengchun peninsula, the film weaves together Hokkien, Mandarin, Japanese, and even Indigenous languages into the authentic, pluralistic voice of Taiwanese society.

Its vivid, laughing-through-tears small characters — the hot-tempered yet warm-hearted town representative, the Indigenous policeman selling millet wine, and old Mao, the instrument-repairing postman who plays the moon lute — let audiences see in them the shadows of themselves and the people around them, and feel that most sincere human warmth belonging to Taiwan's countryside.

The line 'Stay, or I will go with you,' and the songs running through the film that were sung everywhere for a time, became the shared memory of an entire generation. The success of Cape No. 7 was no accidental box-office miracle; it proved that as long as a story belonging to this land is told with heart, Taiwanese audiences are willing to support their own cinema with action and with the passion of returning to theaters again and again.

Spurred by it, domestic films regained the confidence of investors and the attention of audiences, and the whole industry seemed to wake from a long slumber; in the years that followed, one work after another themed on Taiwan's history, land, and ordinary life appeared in succession — from Indigenous epics to urban youth, from historical wounds to family routine — and Taiwanese cinema welcomed a long-absent pluralistic flourishing, leading more young creators to believe that filming a moving story on this island was a dream worth striving for.

Wei Te-sheng himself, taking this as his starting point, threw himself into far grander historical works, continuing to excavate through images the forgotten memories of Taiwan's land. Cape No. 7 was like a love letter sixty years overdue, reopened in the sea breeze of Hengchun, and like a gentle yet resolute summons, awakening the long-dormant vitality of Taiwanese cinema and teaching this island once more to tell its own stories on the silver screen, with confidence and with feeling.