For Japanese filmmaker Isao Yukisada, Taiwan is a place with good food, all the kawayi (cute) girls you could want and where young people are honest and like to learn about foreign cultures. For him, it's an ideal place like Japan 10 years ago.
He obviously likes it a lot, since he has made 10 visits to Taiwan, including one this week. His last appearance here was just four months ago, when he brought his feature film Go to Taipei and was also invited to be on the jury of the Golden Horse Awards.
On this visit, apart from going around Taipei, he especially asked to visit Chiufen, the hillside town in Taipei County where he plans to set his new film.
On this visit, Yukisada is also bringing his latest short film, Justice, to the Taipei Film Festival. It is another film about Japanese youth. In a high school classroom, when the American teacher reads the Potsdam Declaration about Japan's status after war, one male student's attention is drawn to the playground, where girls wear tight shorts for PE classes. Watching them pull down on their shorts after making a jump, he feels that it is through this than he can understand the true meaning of justice.
"This is a true reflection of my boring high school life, especially in English class. As for the Potsdam Declaration, it is my sarcastic response to the question `what kind of country is Japan?'" Yukisada said.
Justice is one of seven film shorts that comprise Jam Films, which runs a total of 109 minutes. The shorts include works by the best of Japan's young filmmakers, including Rokuro Mochizuki, Shunji Iwai and Yukihiko Tsutsumi.
Jam Films has proved wildly popular at the Taipei Film Festival. Its success in Japan has led the production company finishing Jam 2 and Jam 3, with a fourth already being planned.
Producer Shinya Kawai (also producer of Edward Yang's A One and a Two) especially came to Taiwan with director Yukisada to check out the Chiufen location. They are hoping to have Hou Hsiao-hsien joining the project and want to cast Taiwanese actors.
"For a Japanese, Chiufen is very nostalgic, for it is a town mixing the natural landscape and street scenes, something that is very difficult to find in Japan," said Yukisada.
Latest information on TFF:
As part of the Kyoto theme of the Taipei Film Festival, the abbot and seven masters from Kyoto's Kodai Temple will perform a Japanese tea ceremony for the festival audience. The ceremony will take place today from 10am to 3:30pm, with eight time slots of 30 minutes each.
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