【About the Book】

 

A poetic and personal collection of love letters to 99 film directors. Combining poetry, diary, and film criticism, Yu-Hsuan Wu reflects on her intimate encounters with cinema and the lives behind the lens.

 

​【Author’s Note】

 

After graduating from university, I stayed in the city I loved. During the day, I ran a street stall, selling my own poems and drawings. At night, I worked at a bar—mixing drinks and scrubbing toilets. Whenever I saved up a little extra money, I went to Taipei to attend film festivals. In October 2006, I watched all seven films ever made by Maya Deren at the Women Make Waves Film Festival. I felt the light of the world pulsing against my chest. I longed to speak to her, to immerse myself in the poetic imagery of her films. I applied for graduate school in film studies immediately.

 

I moved to Taipei and rented a tiny room inside the Zhúwéi market. I did nothing but watch films, day and night, one after another. I was too reluctant to sleep—so I would stay up and keep staring at the small computer screen, continuing my journey into another world. When watching a film, I felt like Siddhartha in Siddhartha, slipping out of myself in a thousand different ways—becoming an animal, a corpse, a stone... When an egret flew over the bamboo forest, I absorbed the egret into my heart, became that egret, endured its hunger, spoke in its tongue, and died as it.

 

In September 2007, my mother came to visit me from Taitung. As she rummaged through her bag, she asked, “Do you know about the Fellini Film Festival?” She pulled out a newspaper clipping she’d brought from Taitung, a small announcement about the “Complete Fellini” retrospective. I told her it was too expensive. She said, “These films were flown in from overseas—this is a rare chance. You should go see them! Maybe I’ll go with you.” That was always how she was—becoming the road beneath my feet, even if she didn’t understand where I was heading.

 

During my student days in Taipei, aside from watching films, I often went to comic shops or wandered around. One day I stumbled upon Bamboo Curtain Studio. Drawn to its humble and unruly presence, I immediately told the director: “I don’t have any money, but I have good poems and films. I want to host a free event here called ‘Poetry in Cinema’—I won’t charge the audience. Would you lend me the space for free?” The director, Hsiao Li-hung, said yes, and so my film screenings began. I remember June 6, 2008. After screening Takeshi Kitano’s Dolls, I—as usual—was covered in tears and too choked up to speak. That day marked six months since I had begun the “Poetry in Cinema” series. No matter how clumsy I was at first, I’ve now entered the eighth year of reading poetry and screening films wherever I go, continuing to respond to the works that have shaken my artistic soul.

 

Rather than studying the reality I inhabit, I’ve always been more drawn to exploring the inner realities of artists. I often immerse myself in the complete body of work of a single creator, letting my life trace their creative arc, seeking to understand the worldview that unfolds over time. I want the eyes of a painter—to create even as I watch. I wish, like Rilke said, “to become a solitary, dimly-lit dwelling, with others’ noise passing only at a distance; to practice, like a primitive being, speaking of what I have seen, loved, suffered, or lost.” To name what I have witnessed—this, and that—and hope that they may remain forever, even if I were to die and decay wherever.

 

【Selected Letter】

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“Wim Wenders’s Monster”

 

Dear Wim Wenders,

 

You depict the confusion, emptiness, and fragmentation of existence. Has anything ever left you unable to go on? The German title of Kings of the Road, Im Lauf der Zeit, means “In the Course of Time.” When speaking about The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, you once said: “A film must respect the continuity of action. Anything that disrupts or interrupts this temporal flow makes me angry.” Do you still believe in the importance of being faithful to the passage of time? The man in The American Friend always stares silently out the window. At the beginning of Wrong Move, a man gazes out through the glass and then punches it. The people in your films seem to long for something unnamable, and so they stand before windows for long stretches of time. Do you do that too?

 

If you were here before me, perhaps I wouldn’t ask anything—I would simply read you the tale of The Nameless Monster from Naoki Urasawa’s manga Monster.

 

This dark fable lies within the manga like a black outline on the edge of a black figure. The nameless monster sets off in search of a name. It enters the bodies of others in pursuit of one, but each time it devours its host, it loses the name again. Even when it finally finds a name it truly loves, no one is left to call it. Like the young reporter in Alice in the Cities, the two men in Kings of the Road, the drifting souls in Until the End of the World, the angels in Wings of Desire, the sound engineer in Lisbon Story, and the washed-up actor in Don't Come Knocking—they too are on a journey to find a name. Their entire journey is the shadow extended as they flee.

 

Urasawa’s monster erases others' existence but leaves no trace behind. In contrast, the travelers in your films encounter others without origin stories. They begin to see their own reflections in each other—like two fractured monsters finally meeting. They part before the journey ends, having understood the weight of what must be endured. And in that moment, they find a name and can return to life, face the mirror, and say it aloud.

 

I remember a photo in your book Once, where you captured a plane crash. In the blank space, I wrote in pencil:

 

Thank goodness the plane lost its wings
Only then did the dog dare to approach
And hide within its shadow.

 

I scribbled fragments of poetry beneath many of your other photos as well. When you visited Taiwan in 2008, I gave you my copy of Once, full of my notes. You asked repeatedly, “You really want to give me my book?” I nodded timidly, unsure what to say.

 

I believe: to lose one's wings, to lose one's name—only then can a story find its way back. The broken parts might yet shelter the solitude of another life. Even if many things must be completed intimately, in isolation, within ourselves—just as Rilke once said: “Our destiny becomes increasingly present within us, yet ever more invisible.”

 

I often go running alone in the forests of my hometown. One day, the sky darkened suddenly. I thought of turning back, but kept moving deeper into the forest's heart. The path grew narrower and more winding. I slowed down, placing each step carefully. At a fork in the trail, I suddenly heard Bono's voice through my earphones, singing The Ground Beneath Her Feet:

 

Let me love you, let me rescue you
Let me bring you where two roads meet

 

And I instantly thought of your film The Million Dollar Hotel. A boy runs, and then falls. He runs, and then—there is no “then.” He has reached a place even more marginal than brokenness. Like the forest at night, like Bono’s voice. I no longer feared the vast darkness. I just kept running—my pace, my whole body becoming as hallucinatory and fearless as your cinema. I ran with my monster. And we were no longer afraid of the dark.

 

 

【Reviews & Reflections】

 

“Through cinematic exploration, Yu-Hsuan Wu delves into the evasion and pursuit of every human emotion—their haziness and intoxication—tracing each missed connection and chance encounter, each moment of possession and loss, within the flow of life.”

— Guo Zi-li, “Freeze-frame, explore, and the poetry in every image: On Yu-Hsuan Wu’s Decaying Wherever”

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“A blend of the poet’s sensibility, the filmmaker’s sharpness, and the cinephile’s restrained passion. Yu-Hsuan Wu made it clear she wasn’t treating letters as a literary device—she was truly writing to directors. Once that decision was made, she was no longer bound by the conventions of film criticism. She didn’t need to be accountable to readers, didn’t need to explain a film’s plot, year, or technical details—only to honestly record her most immediate emotional responses. Flipping through the 99 love letters in Decaying Wherever feels like browsing a museum’s collection of handwritten letters from famous figures: deeply personal, yet full of the author’s distinct voice.”
 

—Gladys, “Cinema is the air that keeps me alive — An Interview with Yu-Hsuan Wu on Decaying Wherever”

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