Searching For Orchids

Some people speak of landscape as the earliest expression in shaping culture. Here preserving plants becomes about preserving cultural identity. In the forests of Taiwan, a botanist searches for endangered orchids, as a filmmaker searches for belonging. After the death of her grandmother, her last living link to Taiwan, she returns to an island which like the orchids is undergoing threats on multiple levels.


Her family name “Lan”, meaning orchid in Mandarin, turns this parallel search into an exploration of disappearance and preservation, where the landscape becomes a site for personal memory, cultural identity and political tension coexisting on disputed land.