Through the vision of the fly’s compound eye, the folktale becomes a container, filled with

symbolic metaphors like the mirror and shadows, reflecting the flow of cultural identity, ethnicity

and the transitional nature of local and global contexts. The film’s stop-motion animation

puppets are made using Taiwan’s unique papermaking technique rooted in traditional funeral

ceremonies. At the beginning of the film, a shadow puppet mirror transforms into a shaman-like

animal dancer. The film uses the perspective of a fly to create a montage film language using

the metaphor of the compound eye. Through the use of choreography in the style of the

Taiwanese‘Yi zhen’folk dance, the film portrays the Southeast Asian folktale ‘The Mouse Deer

Crossing the River’ through multiple perspectives, reinterpreting the story’s multiple facets

across cultures.

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Director’s Bibliography:

ZHANG XU Zhan was born into a centurial ancestral paper-crafting family. The "Hsin Hsin

Paper Offering Store" specializes in making paper sculptures for rituals or funerals. His works

are full of bizarre, grotesque image expansion, and all intent to discuss society and

contemporary survival experience with expanded cinema experience and contemporary art.

Recently, he won Deutsche Bank’s Artists of the Year award in 2021 and the work has been

collected by the institution.

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Festivals / Awards:

-The Best Animated Short Film, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2022

-The grand award of Golden Harvest, Taipei Golden Harvest Awards 2023

-Special Award, Animafest Zagreb World Festival of Animated Film 2023

-DOK International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film 2023

-Bucheon International Animation Festival 2023