Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above

This documentary uses custom composed music with all aerial photography to convey Taiwan's beauty. The sheer scope of scenes from urban, suburban, rural, water, ocean, rivers, gorges, mountaintops (4000m heights, even), grasslands, rice terraces, etc. bring the user through an arc similar in feeling to BBC's "The Earth".

An interview with the director on NTDTV brought this film to my attention. Despite having spent 1.5 years in Taiwan for family, I'd never known my homeland to have had such intense beauty. While the scenery may have been brightened and sharpened, the sheer variety and scale of the beautiful scenes kept me captivated.

Custom composed music is soaring and inspirational in tone with great. Even in passages regarding Taiwan's environmental woes (overbuilding, waste, rising sea, earthquake damage, overwhelmed landfills, many exist), music suggests a hopeful sentiment, a prevailing Taiwanese attitude. Narration finishes the film's spirit that Taiwan is a special and unique land whose beauty is mostly unknown even to Taiwanese & Taiwanese-Americans themselves.

Overall, this Golden Horse award winning documentary was greatly inspiring for both spirit, knowledge & tourism.