Huang Hui-zhen
Huang Hui-zhen is a Taiwanese documentary filmmaker.
Early life
At the age of 6, Huang began participating in traditional funeral ceremonies known as Qian Wang Ge Zhen with her mother. Due to her father's long-term domestic violence, her mother took kids away from home. Huang dropped out of school in the third grade and joined her mother in performing funeral rituals across Taiwan to make a living.Career
In 1998, Taiwanese filmmaker Yang Li-zhou made a documentary about young girls involved in funeral processions, with the 20-year-old Huang as one of the subjects. During the filming, she learned what a documentary was. Huang bought a small home video camera to document her own life. She took a documentary filmmaking course at the New Taipei City Luzhou Community University and became actively involved in social movements.During her involvement in social activism, Huang created two short documentaries about foreign laborers, Hospital Wing 8 East and Uchan Is Going Home. At the same time, she kept filming her family, sharing her mother and her story. The Priestess Walks Alone and Small Talk are short and feature-length documentary about their story.