On its 10th anniversary, Women Make Waves -- a film and video festival, which takes place from Sept. 19 to Sept. 28 -- should have a carnival-like atmosphere.
The festival's highlights include five well-known filmmakers coming to Taipei as guests, including British filmmaker Sally Potter and Helma Sanders-Brahms from Germany.
Gaining a name for herself with the historical drama Orlando (1992), Sally Potter is one of the few woman filmmakers widely known to Taiwanese movie fans. Her films The Tango Lesson (1997) and The Man Who Cried, starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci (2000), together with Orlando, have all been major releases in Taiwan.
The "director focus" on Sally Potter will mean there will be a showing not only of her three box office movies but also three other solid dramas from a woman's perspectives: The Gold Diggers (1983), short films Thriller (1979) and London Story (1987).
Helma Sanders-Brahms is another heavy-weight guest visiting the festival. Her film Germany, Pale Mother has been selected as one of the two opening films of the festival. Sanders-Brahms was once nicknamed "West Germany's most beautiful TV anchoress" but later devoted herself to filmmaking.
Sanders-Brahms is a prolific filmmaker, with 20 feature films to her credit, and she was also an active member of the German New Cinema movement in the 1970s, sharing the stage with Wim Winders, Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Germany, Pale Mother is a historical piece about a family tragedy during war-time Berlin, rewritten from a woman's perspective. The festival is also showing her four other films.
Another opening film is Ardor by South Korean filmmaker Byun Young-joo, a sensual drama which balances the tragic seriousness of the film Germany, Pale Mother. The story of Ardor is about a cuckolded wife who begins affairs in retaliation to her husband's trysting, but later engages in a passionate love affair with a country doctor.
The closing film Try to Remember is another intriguing love story made by first-timer director, veteran French actress Zabou Breitman. The film is about a man, who loses his memory in a car accident and meets a woman suffering from amnesia. Their lack of memory is both a blessing and a curse to their romance. They forget words, keys, mother tongues and birthdays, but remember their first kiss and their talks under the moon.
Many of the non-English films have English subtitles. Festival venue: Majestic Cinema, 116, Hanzhong St, Taipei Assembly Hall of Taipei County Government, 161, Zhongshan Rd, Sec 1, Panchiao City, Taipei County. Tel: 886-2-2771-9785. Tickets available at Acer Ticketing outlets. For further information: http://www.wmw.com.tw
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