The Secret in the Satchel

For 10 years, director and university professor Tay-jou Lin read thousands of papers, reports and journals written by his students. Apart from the usual subject matter, they often contained drawings, notes, photographs, love letters, or other personal outpourings. This unintentionally gave him insight into their turbulent private lives. Lin asks three of his students if they want to record their stories on tape in order to turn them into a film. Dramatisations, animation and interviews with the anonymous students were then interwoven, resulting in Long ago the director made a feature film about a purse snatcher who was shocked to find a gun in the purse she had just stolen. The secrets his three protagonists now divulge are equally surprising to him. Accompanied by the director's contemplative voice-over, their stories unfold as complex memories of lives filled with confusion, abuse, cruelty and sexual awakening. Slowly but surely, it becomes clear that more students share similar experiences in their coming of age than originally anticipated. Due to the mutual trust between professor and student, the documentary presents a candid but disconcerting image of adolescence in contemporary Taiwan.