Our lives are made up of continuous juxtaposition, and in crafting Chiayi Symphony, Stefano Giannotti uses the fact to great effect, painting himself along the way truly a new voice in the field of experimental film. Capturing everyday life in Chiayi County, Taiwan, Giannotti's visuals move from rural country to busy city life, show live animals in contrast to those that have been slaughtered for the market. Pigs and poultry grunt and honk in harmonic and dissonant audio tracks while images show people enjoying a family meal. The events and scenes we experience on a daily basis and then ignore are brought to the forefront for examination in this careful presentation and startling commentary on the universality of the human condition.

Despite its name, Chiayi Symphony does not follow the traditional pattern of symphonic movements. Through the 18th and 19th century, symphonies generally consisted of four movements of varying tempos each separated by a short pause. But Giannotti's modification not only eschews most traditional instruments and chord structures, it lacks narrative structure entirely.

The single semi-narrative thread throughout the film depends on strings of many voices. During the opening Adagio, consisting of ambient natural sounds, some soft harmony and dissonance as the camera slowly pans over rice paddies and mountain vistas, a native mountain dweller introduces the legend of Hamu, a Taiwanese God who encouraged humans to live in the shadow of his mountain, and speaks of how humans coexisted with nature in the "footsteps" of the god. Giannotti creates an almost meditative air with his pacing and draws the viewer quietly into a different mode of understanding the events and sensations of everyday life. After this introduction, the man's voice disappears, not to reappear again. The last movement, however, mirrors this first when one fisherman explains how much the world has changed since the legend of Hamu was born.

The film continues with the first of five Interludes, all of which are very short scenes of a man who seems to be performing a show of sorts with traditional Taiwanese dolls or puppets. While there is no translation for what the man says, the rhythm of the film renders that largely irrelevant. It is rather the organic nature of the human voice and the presentation of culture and art that is important.

In the Concertato movement, numerous tracks of different groups performing music overlap and blend with each other in a curious kind of mélange while the images on screen float ostensibly from one performing group to another. Sounds of nature blend into gentle harmonies and dissonance created by Giannotti's instruments, as well as his recordings from the city noises.

At the beginning and the end of this section, Giannotti allows a single voice to break through the cacophony, echoing the voice of the mountain dweller from the first movement and continuing the bridge of human voices throughout the film. Here the sounds human beings make are just as organic and musical as anything else in the world, and the continuity of the human voice throughout is what ties the film together so well. Providing that bridge, even just through untranslated sounds-- the interludes, children playing, adults singing--allows one section to follow another.

The film's purpose, as I see it, is primarily to show how everyday life in any city, whether in Taiwan, America, or any other country, is universally similar. By taking small clips, visually and aurally from common occurrences--garbage trucks, ducks quacking, TV programming--and putting them together in such quick snippets, Giannotti pinpoints just how much visual and aural stimuli is ignored on a daily basis. The sounds and images of our daily lives are in fact, the symphony he conducts throughout the film.

Chiayi Symphony begins with nature, and the human observation of nature, a little human interaction but not much. Gradually humanity and cities and civilization become more prevalent through each movement, until we reach the finale, where we meet the fisherman. We see his interaction with nature, hear his voice, and see what he is describing. We see the disappearance of the old fisherman and his ways. The influence of humanity is present in the pollution of the water, and the technology in the fish markets. We see dead fish quietly floating in water filled with trash, a bitter irony for a man who makes his living selling healthy, edible fish to the markets.

As he finishes his narration, the film returns to nature, mirroring its audio track, and the life cycle it has so artfully shown us. Raindrops fall, and native Taiwanese flutes play simple melodies as live koi swim gracefully for the camera; a final juxtaposition of life and death.