The renowned French filmmaker Agnes Varda is in Taipei as the star guest at this year's Taiwan International Documentary Festival and will have her new film Cinevardaphoto -- When Photos Trigger Films close the festival Friday.
Varda's films have screened many times in film festivals in Taipei. Four years ago there was a retrospective on her films at the Women Make Waves -- Women's Film Festival, showing her films dating back to the 1960s. Two years ago, when The Gleaners and I (2000) was shown at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, tickets to the film sold out long before the screening dates.
AGNES VARDA IS IN TAIPEI FOR THE SCREENING OF HER NEW DOCUMENTAR
The 76-year-old filmmaker's latest film is composed of three segments: the first is a documentary about a collection and exhibition of teddy bears; the second is a dialogue between the real and the imaginary starting from a photograph of a naked man and a dead goat by the beach; and the third is a salute to Cubans.
Varda has a tight schedule during her visit in Taipei. Today at 2pm at Shih-ming Hall of Taiwan Cement Building, Varda will offer a lecture and join panel talks about her filmmaking career. Tomorrow at 7:30pm, Cinevadaphoto will have an outdoor screening at Huashan Cultural Center.
Varda will also participate and perform tomorrow in her installation work titled Potato Utopia, which is on display at Taipei Fine Arts Museum as part of the Taipei Biennial. She has prepared a potato costume for the performance at 2:30pm. Announcing her performance yesterday, she said: "I am glad to be a Madame of Potatoes."
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Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s