Although its a party/arts event at Huashan organized by lao-wai, this is a far cry from the "foreigner head-shaking party" that tabloids enjoy getting steamed up about. It is, in fact, the Urban Nomad Film Festival (城市游牧影展), now back at Huashan for the second year.
This time round, a more complete selection of films will be shown, and these will be more focused on a single theme. In total, there will be 25 films (experimental, shorts, documentaries and mockumentaries) screening over two days.
PHOTO COURTESY OF URBAN NOMAD
The Friday event begins with three experimental shorts. Tony Wu (吳俊輝), from Taiwan, a frequent participant in international short film or experimental film festivals, will present his latest work Making Maps (製造地圖). Wu's experimental style makes use of found footage, animated images and optical printing.
In Making Maps, he uses these methods to talk about pornography, specifically blood and semen. For Wu, the pornographic images he weaves through this 21-minutes is a way of creating a physical and psychological map of human beings.
Another Taiwan entry is Lin Hongjohnn's (林宏璋) film about Taiwan's UFO cult. Lin, as the nephew of UFO cult leader, Chen Heng-ming, has unique access to the true believers.
The main event on Saturday is the Taiwan premiere of an underground film Redneck Vampire, a mockumentary by Mike Anderson. In the film, Anderson tracks down a man in central Alabama, who claims to be a redneck vampire, and explores his life of drugs, sex and immortality. The film proved a big hit on the Internet with its hilarious play on racial and class stereotypes. Even Ann Rice, the author of Interview with the Vampire, has signed on at the film's Web site.
The mockumentary is followed by the rockumentary session of three film. Dark Funeral, a film documenting the Taiwan performance of a Swedish black metal band. It explores their views on satanic cults and church burning. The film was previously selected for the 2002 New York Underground Film Festival.
For film-loving people, Urban Nomad will be an event to spot some innovative or odd creations of independent filmmaking. And for those who just want to chill out, there will be live music today and tomorrow nights, accompanied by film footage of surfing, punk rock concerts and a remix of Hitchcock's classic film Psycho.
The Urban Nomad Film Festival will run tonight and tomorrow at the Huashan Arts District (華山藝文特區) starting at 8pm. Huashan is located at 1 Pateh Rd., Sec. 1,Taipei (台北市八德路一段1號). Tickets are NT$200 for one day or NT$300 for both days. Tickets available at the door.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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