Taipei Film Festival focuses on St Petersburg and Moscow

Taipei hosts so many film festivals, it's not surprising anymore to see art-house films from master directors all over the world. But the Taipei Film Festival (台北電影節), which presents films relating to two chosen cities each year, is the only chance to witness the vicissitudes of a city through cinema. The festival opens June 25 in Taipei Chungshan Hall, the Metropolitan Hall and President Cinema.

"What distinguishes the Taipei Film Festival from other festivals," says the festival programmer, Wen Tien-shian (聞天祥), "is that we select films in regard to the cities that can best represent the cultures and history of their countries. Hence, the films are chosen not only because of their quality but also because of their function as a media through which you can find the history and society of a given country. Cinema is often a mirror of a society that produces it."

After showing films from Paris and Prague (2002), Kyoto and Melbourne (2003), and Madrid and Barcelona (2004), this year's festival will focus on Russia as the event shows films from St Petersburg and Moscow, major cities that nourish a rich Russian cultural heritage that includes cinema among many other arts.

The festival program will include films from some Russian filmmaking greats, such as Sergei Eisenstein (October), Andrei Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublyov, The Sacrifice, The Mirror) and Alexander Sokurov, many of whose cinematic oeuvres will be presented. But let's just say these are the hors-d'oeuvres of a veritable feast.

The festival also will present the new faces of the Russian socio-economic climate who have appeared since the collapse of the USSR. The recent Russian films capture the rise of capitalism, the problem of the ever-rising unemployment and the Chechen War.

Mars (2004) and You I Love (2004) are the two best examples that portray the catastrophes faced by Russians in the painful transition from a socialist-Stalinist society to a capitalist system.

Mars tells the story of a boxer who fails to pursue his career and finds himself in a train that is trapped in a small town named after the communist father, Karl Marx. But because of damage to a neon light, the town's sign Marx becomes Mars.

The ridiculousness of the situation is exacerbated by the fact that all the town's inhabitants are gathered in the train station to sell fur toys -- their livelihood after being laid off. The shabby economic situation has transformed the once Communist paradise into an alien zone.

Sex is usually the best means to observe society in chaos, and You I Love uses the confusion of love and sex to reflect the bewilderment and loss of morality in contemporary Russian society. The story tells of a sexy news anchor who hooks up with a young man working in an American advertising company in Moscow. The sex cures a disease she suffers from, but surprisingly, the very night of the tryst, the young man falls for a beautiful boy and makes love passionately with him, too. He finds himself suddenly confused in a whirlwind of sexual adventure.

If unemployment and loss of morality are a reflection of a society in crisis, then the Chechen War is a crisis itself; and a few of the films selected for the festival address this delicate issue. House of Fool is set entirely in Chechnya, captures the craziness of war. The connection between an insane asylum and the war is made clear when we compare this film with Samuel Fuller's masterpiece Shock Corridor.