The Stag – Films – Visions du Réel

公鹿

Chu An
Taiwan | 2024 | 14 min
European Premiere
Languages : Chinese, Taiwanese
Subtitles : English, French

A father and his two sons breed deer in Changhua County, Taiwan. The Stag masterfully portrays a series of choreographies that walk a line between confrontation and avoidance, both within and between species. The sense of playful complicity connecting the father and his sons gives way to the solemnity of the antler harvesting ritual.

The animal stares down the camera, at the cages that imprison it, in a state of apparent total incomprehension. The Stag is set on a deer farm in Changhua County in Taiwan. Farmer Ho and his two sons are busy preparing the site for the event of the year – the annual antler harvest, a spectacle guaranteed to attract a large crowd. This ritualised performance is established as the film's primary motif, examined on various levels as the scenes unfold. The humans dance between confrontation and avoidance: they douse each other with water, play chase, call each other names and pretend to be animals. And yet, these provocations exist in the form of pure fiction: all know the rules of the game, and everyone holds the same cards. With unrivalled finesse, Chu An masterfully articulates the nuances between play and its denial, the act and its imitation, as well as the confrontation between species and the point at which it is reduced to a question of power and profit.

Dimitri De Preux

The Stag, 2024
Ruei's Deer World, 2023
Tuo Tuo, 2022
Falling Koi, 2021