Ferrying Across: The Tamsui River

The Tamsui, Taiwan's third largest river system, waters the Taipei basin - home to nearly a third of the island's 24 million residents. However, levies and social habits have long separated her, physically and spiritually, from the Taipei metropolis. Without the Tamsui, there would be no Taipei; yet the city has repaid her favors by diverting her upstream waters and filling downstream channels with urban and industrial wastes. While nearly asphyxiated by urban filth, Taipei's "mother river" still glimmers resolutely; hopeful for a better future to come.

This film documents the Tamsui from its origins in three watershed systems; tracing river waters from their first drops beneath cypress-topped mountains. Stories of human interaction with these waters abound, as streams etch their way downward, merging and flowing northward until they finally emerge … to shuttle urban effluents out to sea. Few think of the Tamsui's origins in faraway mountains. Fewer still stop to consider the freshness and purity of its headwaters.