Rain in 2020 二〇二〇年的一场雨
2021 – Myanmar / Taiwan – 79 min

Directed by: Lee Yong Chao
Cinematography & Editing: Lee Yong Chao
Music: Tôn Thất An
Sound: Cheng Chou
Colour Grading: C.Y. Chiu
Producer: Yan Zih Mei

Official selection and Premiere at the 2021 FIRST International Film Festival, Xining, China
Nominated for ‘Best Documentary’ at the 2021 Taipei Golden Horse Festival
‘Jury Special Mention’ at the 2022 Taiwan International Documentary Festival
Nominated for ‘Best Documentary – Taiwan Competition’ at the 2022 Taiwan International Documentary Festival

“It was during the Covid pandemic… Lee Yong Chao contacted me to invite me to compose for a new documentary about his family in Myanmar that he had been filming for the past five years or so.
To say no to that project was impossible. I had seen some of Yong Chao’s previous films and marvelled at what he could do with just a phone camera. Blood Amber was simply beautiful. I forgot I was watching a documentary. The sensory way he would film the persons was very sensual, with fluid camera movements. I knew he had a close collaborative partnership with Belgian composer Thomas Foguenne, so I could only hope I would be given the opportunity to work on one of his films.
Rain in 2020 二〇二〇年的一场雨 may have been a documentary, but visually, it offered lots of space for the music. Since Yong Chao is a rather quiet person and could barely speak English, I could only connect with him through the vibe I got from him. The fact that I had watched a few of his previous works did help me to capture that aural glow that would later translate into music. It felt like I was living with Yong Chao’s family for a few months: his parents, his younger brother who works in the jade mines, his two lively and adorable little nephews, in the family house which gets flooded every year during the rainy season…
I don’t even remember how the music came out. I simply was there one day. As I was stuck in Paris, I did some experimental recording on the prepared piano with Vanessa Sanfilippo. Percussion were played either by me on found objects (bottles, table, anything made of metal), then later by on real percussion by Allen Wu, once I managed to fly back to Taiwan. And for the ending, I felt that a more lyrical theme was needed when the brother leaves again for the jade mine and we get to see that extraordinary and poignant distant view of all the workers running to the mine. I wrote it for a solo violin backed by sweeping strings, and we recorded Edric Chang playing it at sound designer Chou Cheng’s studio, as we were doing the final sound mixing.
Yong Chao welcomed all the musical ideas I came up with. The score for his films is usually sparse and minimal, so he was surprised to experience his film with a very different musical approach.”


Listen to the soundtrack (click image to open)