Chen Chieh-jen is known for his impressive film studies and images of power. Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprises, Inc. is a fictional documentary about the “Western Enterprise” in 1970s Taiwan which examines the writing and reading of Taiwan’s history. Chen intends to dislocate the historical ideologies of collective memory in search of possible truths. In this work, the “Western Enterprise” is a metaphor for American imperialism, and the primary shooting location – an old chemical factory built during the US Aid period in Taiwan – embodies sixty desolate years of postwar Taiwanese history contingent on the American alliance with the Kuomintang. Using tropes from epic poetry, Western Enterprises, Inc. follows victims of the political suppression during the White Terror under martial law as they search for their dossiers and become trapped in the factory wasteland without any hope of salvation. The consolidation of unemployed workers and other phantoms of history provide a narrative for the regeneration of collective strength and the potential to break through the labyrinthine powers of state imperialism.

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