Libsyn Directory

Ep 301 | Documentary Films on the Pandemic, Immigration, and Human Rights Issues: Our Talk with Taiwanese American Filmmaker Hsuan Yu Pan

Talking Taiwan

Release Date: 12/31/2024

Ep 315 | Julien Oeuillet The Voice of South Taiwan Shines a Spotlight on Kaohsiung

Talking Taiwan

Julien Oeuillet is an independent journalist, who has produced content for Radio Taiwan International and TaiwanPlus. He is the Founding Editor of IPON the Indo-Pacific Open News. Related Links: Back in November of 2024 we interviewed Julien about a broad number of topics including: How he is very much at home in Kaohsiung How he got his start in broadcasting and media What he thinks makes a good and bad journalist especially in Taiwan How he focuses on putting a spotlight on Kaohsiung and southern Taiwan through his Radio Taiwan International show, The Voice of South Taiwan...

Ep 314 | A Conversation With Wen-Jen Deng Taiwanese Fiber Artist and Curator Ming Turner

Talking Taiwan

We recently sat down with Wen-Jen Deng one of the artists in residence at the Taiwanese American Arts Council’s House 17 on Governors Island and Ming Turner, curator of Wen-Jen’s art exhibit :The Embedded Stitch- Contemporary Fiber Art, which is currently showing at Tenri Cultural Institute until June 28th Related Links: According to Deng’s curator Ming Turner, “Deng is a core member of the influential Taiwanese artist collective, Hantoo Art Group. Her early works were primarily oil paintings which incorporated embroidery and collage using traditional Taiwanese floral fabrics....

Ep 313 | Passport to Taiwan 2025: Ben Hedges A Laowai's View of China, Ambassador Lee of TECO, and TAAC

Talking Taiwan

This past Sunday, May 26th we stopped by the annual Passport to Taiwan that’s held in New York City’s Union Square Park. The first Passport to Taiwan was held in 2002 and it’s become the largest outdoor Taiwanese American event in the entire United States. Related Links: While there I spoke with the Taiwanese American Arts Council’s (TAAC’s) Executive Director Luchia Meihua Lee, Ambassador Tom Lee of TECO-NY, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, and Ben Hedges, host of Lao Wai Kan Zhongguo also known as the A Laowai's View of China & Taiwan YouTube channel....

Ep 312 | Jane W. Wang Navigates a Multicultural Hero's Journey (Classic)

Talking Taiwan

Since May is both Mental Health Awareness Month and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we think it’s fitting to reshare this episode with Jane W. Wang. Related Links: What we really appreciate about this interview with Jane back in 2021 is how she spoke so openly about how she dealt with her bouts of depression. She also shared how getting back in touch with her roots in Taiwan had a part in leading her to start her coaching practice. While she no longer offers the Multicultural Hero’s Journey course that she refers to in this episode, she is still actively coaching clients. It’s...

Ep 311 | Understanding the History of Taiwan through Dr. Jerome Keating (Classic)

Talking Taiwan

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and since 1999, Congressman David Wu (OR) and the co-chairs of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus have supported the celebration of Taiwanese American Heritage Week starting from Mother's Day Weekend, so we thought this would be a good time to reshare one of our most popular episodes, an interview we did with Dr. Jerome Keating in 2020 about the history of Taiwan. Related Links: Few contemporaries are more qualified than Dr. Jerome Keating on understanding the history of Taiwan. He has been living in Taiwan for over 30 years. Initially he came...

Ep 310 | Cathy Erway on The Food of Taiwan

Talking Taiwan

Last year I came across an article in the Gothamist titled, A Taiwanese food crawl in the East Village with NYC writer Cathy Erway. I have of course heard of Cathy Erway and her cookbook and thought to myself, Why haven’t I had her on Talking Taiwan as a guest yet? For those of you who aren’t familiar with Cathy’s work, she is a James Beard Award-winning food writer and author based in New York City. Her cookbooks include The Food of Taiwan: Recipes From the Beautiful Island and Win Son Presents: A Taiwanese American Cookbook. Her cookbook, The Food of Taiwan which was published...

Ep 309 | 228 Memorial Foundation: Executive Director Nâ Sū Phok (藍士博) on his Work and the Historical Significance of 228

Talking Taiwan

It’s about a month after 228, an important date in Taiwan’s history, marking the 228 Massacre. 228 stands for February 28 1947. February 28th is now commemorated as a national holiday in Taiwan known as the 228 Peace Memorial Day. For this year’s 228 episode, we wanted to release my interview with Nâ Sū Phok (藍士博), the Executive Director of the 228 Memorial Foundation in Taiwan. Last July 2024, I sat down with him at the Taiwanese American Conference at West Chester University about his work for the 228 Memorial Foundation. You may be wondering why we are sharing this...

Ep 308 | FAPA: All About Its Essential Advocacy Work for Taiwan

Talking Taiwan

If you’ve been following our social media, you might already know that Talking Taiwan is participating in the Podcasthon which is a global movement calling on as many podcasts as possible to dedicate one episode of their show to a cause of their choice. The idea is to release these episodes simultaneously, from March 15-21, 2025 and by doing so this will create a massive and international wave of inspiring audio content. We are proud to represent Taiwan in the Podcasthon and to dedicate this episode to FAPA, The Formosan Association for Public Affairs. FAPA was established in...

Ep 307 | Taiwan on the Margins of CSW 69: Celebrating Women’s Resilience & Progress at Taiwan Main Stage

Talking Taiwan

If you’ve listened to our most recent episode of Talking Taiwan, you’ll know that the sixty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women or CSW69 is now taking place at United Nations Headquarters in New York. It began on March 10th and runs until March 21st. Related Links: On March 12th the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York (TECO-NY) hosted an event called “Taiwan Main Stage: Celebrating Women’s Resilience & Progress on the margins of CSW 69.” This smartly worded event title is undoubtedly a soft reference the fact that Taiwan is not a...

Ep 306 | Empowering Women Through Education and Community Panel: Meet the Panelists

Talking Taiwan

March is Women’s History Month and in this episode of Talking Taiwan I’ll be speaking with the Angela Feng, the organizer of the Empowering Women Through Education and Community Action panel, a UN CSW69 Parallel Event that’s going to be held here in New York City on Friday, March 14th from 4:30pm-6:00pm. CSW69 stands for the 69th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Also with me in this interview are the other two panelists Cindy Wu who’s been a previous guest on Talking Taiwan and Dr. Remi Duyile. There are quite a few acronyms tossed around in this...

More Episodes

In this episode of Talking Taiwan, I started off speaking with Taiwanese American documentary filmmaker Hsuan Yu Pan about how she got interested in documentary filmmaking. As we talked about her films, we covered a broad range of topics from the COVID-19 pandemic to parallels between the 2017 travel bans that barred people from seven Muslim majority countries from entering the U.S. and internment of Japanese Americans in the1940s. Time and time again entire groups of people have been targeted and blamed groups.

This led us back to the pandemic and recalling the high incidence of Asian hate that happened at that time. Her current film project Hear, Eat, Home touches on many of these topics including the Syrian Revolution and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. After speaking to Hsuan Yu I get the sense that through her documentary filmmaking she wishes to create understanding so that history doesn’t repeat itself and to foster more empathy in the world.

Below in the Related Links section is a link where you can support and watch a work in progress version of Hsuan Yu’s film Hear, Eat, Home.

Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:

Hsuan Yu’s upbringing and how she initially had aspirations to be a visual artist
How Hsuan Yu got interested in documentary filmmaking
How Hsuan Yu’s early experiences editing wedding videos taught her how to use video footage to tell a story
How her work at Bric TV taught her how to find stories
How she came up with the concept for her documentary film Alone Together that was shot during the pandemic
How footage for Alone Together was gathered and planned
How Alone Together featured footage from 11 different countries
What Hsuan Yu learned from making the film Alone Together
Hsuan Yu views her filmmaking as being about telling people’s stories
How she met the Taiwanese puppeteer, Mr. Tsai who is the subject of her documentary film project I, Puppet
How Hsuan Yu was able to encourage Mr. Tsai to do some impromptu puppetry in New York’s Washington Square Park
How Mr. Tsai attended a Puppet Slam event in Coney Island, NY and brought the puppet slam concept back to his puppet museum in Taipei, Taiwan
The relationship between Mr. Tsai and his father who is also a puppeteer
How and why Mr. Tsai’s parents didn’t want him to become a puppeteer
What Hsuan Yu loves about making documentaries
Her documentary film project Hear, Eat, Home
How two of the subjects of the film Hear, Eat, Home, Kinan Azmeh and Kevork Mourad are members of Yo-yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble
How the internment of Japanese Americans and the travel bans of 2017 (aka Muslim bans) are examples of how the U.S. government has labeled certain groups of people as a threat and discriminated against them
How Kinan Azmeh was affected by the travel bans of 2017 (aka Muslim bans)
How different groups have been blamed such as the Japanese Americans, Muslim Americans and Asian American
How as a documentary filmmaker Hsuan Yu feels that sne should document history so that people can learn from history
Kevork Mourad’s background and family story
What the film Hear, Eat, Home is about
Hear Eat Home tells the story of Syrians, Japanese Americans and Ukrainians
What Hsuan Yu believes makes a good documentary
How Hsuan Yu was trying to finish working on Hear, Eat, Home in 2020, but she wasn’t satified with it
When the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened in 2022 Hsuan Yu felt that she should include stories of her Ukrainian friends in to the film Hear, Eat, Home
Hsuan Yu plans to complete Hear, Eat, Home me next year
Hear Eat Home is available for view as a work in progress until January 5th
Anyone wishing to support the completion of Hsuan Yu’s film Hear, Eat, Home can make a donation on the link provided on TalkingTaiwan.com for this episode

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