Synopsis

In 1959, poet Lo Fu jotted down the first lines of his famous surrealist long poem Death of a Stone Cell on the small war-torn island of Kinmen, where he served in the military. The poem henceforth inspired generations of Taiwan’s creative writers throughout the 60 years after the publishing of the poem. In 2000, Lo Fu introduced his three-thousand-lined Driftwood, once again defining a new chapter for Chinese poetry. In his near seven decades of career as a poet, Lo Fu has continued to push the boundaries in his constant search of possibilities of writing through imagery.

River Without Banks takes poetry and war as its main theme. As homage to Death of a Stone Cell, the film is structured into ten segments; each led by the first lines of the first ten stanza of the poem. Correspondences between the poet and his friends are incorporated throughout, taking the audience back and forth between Lo Fu’s youth and middle age, only to eventually depict a full picture of the protagonist. The camera follows Lo Fu on his trips back to the bomb shelter and tunnel in Kinmen and his hometown Hengyang in Hunan Province of China, while also capturing his daily life in his adopted country of Canada. Acclaimed as the Wizard of Poetry, Lo Fu shares through the film some of the most insightful reflections on and honest realizations about his life, in both his most productive and quieter years.