By Ho Yi
STAFF REPORTER
TaipeiTimes, Friday, May 12, 2006, Page 17

Emerald Horizon: Shonenko’s Stories (綠的海平線), by documentary filmmaker Kuo Liang-yin (郭亮吟) has began an islandwide schedule of screenings which will run until the end of this month.

A film of great historical value, Emerald Horizon reveals the hitherto untold stories of Taiwanese child laborers, or shonenko, who were sent to Japan to manufacture fighter planes during WWII. Most of the 8,419 Taiwanese child laborers, aged 12 to 14, came from poor families and wished to receive an education and find paid work in Japan as promised in their contracts. But their dreams were never fulfilled as Japan surrendered to the Allied powers. Some of the children stayed on in Japan, while others returned home. Another group moved to China….

It took director Kuo and her crew four years to complete the film. They interviewed more than 40 former child laborers living in Taiwan, Japan and China, and selected eight as lead characters in the film. Through interviews and archive footage, pieces of Taiwan’s lost history have been reconstructed.

“I found out about the child laborers story while working on my previous film Searching for the Zero Fighters (尋找1946消失的日本飛機) eight years ago. There weren’t any records about their fate. So I took up the job myself,” Kuo said.

For complete information on screening times and venues, visit the film’s official Web site at www.shonenko.com.

Kuo said that the film would also be screened with English subtitles at a film festival in Taipei at the end of next month.

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Film entitled:Emerald Horizon (a.k.a SHONENKO) 綠的海平線-台灣少年工的故事
Directed by: Kuo Liang-Yin (郭亮吟)

Screening Venues: Institute of Ilan History (宜蘭縣史館) tomorrow; Taiwan Image Blog (台灣影像部落格) on May 20; Kaohsiung Municipal Film Archive (高雄市電影圖書館) from May 21 to May 26; Cultural Affairs Bureau of Hsinchu County (新竹縣文化局) on May 27; Taipei County Government Administration Building (台北縣政府行政大樓) on May 28

Running time: 65 minutes

Language: Taiwanese, Haka, Japanese and Mandarin with Chinese subtitles