Focusing on the everyday life and daily toil of four elderly rice farmers in the heart of southern Taiwan's rice-producing countryside, Let It Be (“Bo Bi Lok” in Taiwanese) explores our relationship with the land. Essuing narration, the film shares the farmers’ own reflections and hardships, full of rustic humour and pathos. In this small, dwindling rural village near Tainan, the farmers have lived through successive political regimes, and rapid technological and urban change, weathering the vagaries of the market. Even though World Trade Organisation policies have affected the farmers' livelihood, their fortitude and humanity against hardship remains. Widely acclaimed in Taiwan, the film contributed to debates about the adverse effects of global WTO policies on local agriculture, and the cultures it sustains.The screening will be followed by a short discussion.
 
This film is part of the Season Three Asia and the Pacific Screens: Survival Politics, sponsored by the Australian Centre on China in the World. Film courtesy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia.
 

Directed by Yen Lan-chuan 顏蘭權 & Juang Yi-tseng 莊益增
2004, 110 mins
In Taiwanese, with English subtitles