As the second largest film festival in Taiwan, the Taipei Film Festival (TFF) has, from last year, set to position itself as a specialized film festival aiming for a focused selection and quality films -- a film festival about cities and the relations between cities and the type of cinema these cities can inspire. Now in its fifth year, the result is a solid treat of film screenings, with 70 films, most of them from Japan and Australia.
Starting Sunday, the two-week event will showcase the cinematic glamor of two cities -- Kyoto and Melbourne -- which have been selected as the focus cities for this year. The former has long been the capital of Japan's film industry. And the latter is the birthplace of many Australians who have made their mark on the film industry.
The best news for the film festival is the massive support given to it by Taipei's movie fans. On the day ticket sales opened two weeks ago now, the special "movie passport" (which allows viewers to enjoy any film screenings for just NT$2,000) sold out within an hour. Individual tickets for a number of high-profile screenings, such as Edward Yang's (楊德昌) A One and a Two (一一), chosen as the closing film of the festival, sold out almost as quickly.
Other highly anticipated films include those by Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, Equinox Flowers, and two classic Australian films by Peter Weir, The Cars That Ate Paris and Picnic at Hanging Rock.
More contemporary works include young Australian director Tony Ayres' Walking on Water and the controversial 11'09"01 ? September 11, a critical reflection on the Sept. 11 incident through nine-minute shorts by 11 major directors.
"The Golden Horse Film Festival is a festival with a general theme, presenting around 100 films each year. But the TFF is about cities, with around 60 to 70 films. This may not be that special but it's probably the only festival in the world that focuses on cities," said Wen Tien-hsiang (聞天祥), the festival's programmer.
Kyoto versus Melbourne, East versus West and old generation versus young generation filmmakers are the main themes of the fifth TFF. The program will screen films in seven sections, the first two contrasting the works of old and young Japanese filmmakers. The third and fourth sections contrast old and new Australian films.
"Kyoto is a city very much like Paris, very cinematic, and its city culture has been the basis of many film stories. Hundreds of films are set in the city," said Wen.
In the section entitled Kyoto: Capital of Japanese Cinema, movie lovers can embrace the classical elegance of Japanese film from the 1930s through to the 1960s. Masters like Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi all began their careers in Kyoto. The section brings together four classic films by Mizuguchi, who was known for his excellent depictions of women. His 1952 film Saikaku: Life of a Woman, won a Silver Lion at the 1952 Venice Film Festival. In this section, you can also see a different kind of Kurosawa film, No Regrets for My Youth, which was made before Rashomon. There is also the classic cinematic version of Yukio Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Kon Ichikawa.
Compared with their predecessors, the works in the Japanese New Current section can be seen as young rebels fighting against the tranquil and elegant sytle of moviemaking used by the older generation. All 11 films in the section are independent films.
The stories mostly focus on extreme behavior or obsessive emotions, often with violence and fast editing. These films, which might shock older people, but which are seen as cool by the younger generation, include The Color of Life by Yoshima Ishibashi and Blue Spring by Toyoda Toshiaki.
The section entitled The Australian New Wave Retrospective looks back on the earlier works of acclaimed Australian directors who now make quality Hollywood films. They are Peter Weir (The Truman Show), Gillian Armstrong (Little Women) Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) and Philip Noyce (Patriot Games, The Quiet American). This will be a chance to review the films which have become representative of Australian filmmaking, going back to Bruce Beresford's Don's Party, Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career, which established Australia as a major force in contemporary cinema.
These films can be contrasted with work by emerging directors such as Tony Ayres and David Caesar, although the Australian New Currents section is considerably weaker than the retrospective, which is something of a pity.
While much of the appeal for local audiences undoubtedly comes from the chance to see great works by Japanese and Australian directors, the city focus is particularly emphasized by a section of the film festival dedicated to Taipei titled the Citizen/City Vision Program. This incorporates a competition section with a purse of NT$1 million for the winner of the Taipei Grand Award (台北電影獎), which is aimed at encouraging young filmmakers to put Taipei on the map of cinematic references. Twenty-eight works have been selected for this category out of 119 entries and will be screening from March 15.
For your information:
Tickets for the Taipei Film Festival are available through Acer ticketing outlets. More information about the program,
venues and screening times can be obtained at the festival Web site http://www.ch5.tv/TIFF/.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would