Salute is a feature length-film that combines fiction, experimental and documentary elements and breaks the frame of film genres that most people think of. Four particular periods in the dance career of world-famous Taiwanese monde dancer, SHEU Fang-yi, are highlighted to depict her dance journey. In some way, this film can be considered an autobiography, yet it is definitely not a documentary since the whole production is produced in a fictional manner. What’s different from other film productions, the main idea of production for this film is the parallel creation that is formed by the director and the dancer. The script and the extended production details were developed and executed after the director started shooting.
The film was finally presented with two storylines. The timeline jumps between fiction and non-fiction, illusion and mundane, leading the audience to wander through reality and poetic dreams, calmness, and restlessness. One documents the dancer’s banality and the process of choreographing, and how she uses modern dance to tell stories and traces her dance career, so as to track the origin of her thoughts. Followed by the dancer’s choreography, the other presents the transformed dance dramas that are filmed with poetic cinema language.
