When a group of women began screening films made by female artists 13 years ago at a small venue, little did they know they had initiated a project that would grow into an international festival that now attracts hundreds of films from around the world.
As a festival centered solely on the issues of gender and sexuality, Women Make Waves Film and Video Festival (WMW) strives to include a breadth of subject matters related to women.
This year's program has significantly altered the event's future direction by including films made by male directors in two newly established sections titled "From Male Points of View" and "Cool or Not? -- Queer Films," which the organizers hope will expand coverage of gender issues from different perspectives.
Among the works by male and queer directors, Undressing My Mother is an award-winning documentary about a son who makes a candid recording of his mother's aging and wrinkled body. Don't You Worry, It Will Probably Pass is a four-year project that documents the fear, anxiety, courage and desires of a Swedish teenager in the closet, while Tomboy! Feisty Girls and Spirited Women celebrates tomboys of all ages through examining the subversion of gender stereotypes.
Film buffs looking for masterpieces in the "Director Spotlight" section are in for a big treat this year. The festival will present retrospective programs on three heavyweight female
directors: Margarethe von Trotta, Catherine Breillat and Laura Mulvey. Hailed as the most important German New Wave female director, Von Trotta began her film career as an actress working with prominent figures such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Herbert Achternbusch and Volker Schlondorff. The Second Awakening of Christa Klages was her debut as a film director in 1977. Based on a true story, the film focuses on female friendships and self-identity. The
director is famed for employing her unique techniques to depict women's struggles against patriarchal forces and the interactions between individuals and political systems. For example, Rosa Luxemburg (1986) is a biographical film about the revolutionary who devoted herself to democratic socialism and was murdered for her beliefs. Five of Von Trotta's works will be screened at the festival, most of which are premieres in Taiwan.
Catherine Breillat, the French filmmaker/writer notorious for her bold treatment of sex and the human body, made her first film A Real Young Girl in 1976, which was based on her novel Le Soupirail that was published in 1974. Banned in France for 24 years, the film is a violent yet sensual story of a teenage girl discovering her body and sexuality. In her controversial works, Breillat subverts pornographic imagery in an attempt to escape the male gaze. The festival will include five of her works.
The last director under the spotlight is Laura Mulvey, whose 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema has heavily influenced feminist film theory. As a prominent film theorist, Mulvey teamed up with her husband, Peter Wollen, between 1974 and 1982 to produce several film projects centered on feminist discourse, semiotics, leftist politics and psychoanalysis. The festival will present the most influential film of their collaborative projects, Riddles of the Sphinx, an avant-garde mixture of Freudian theory and feminist politics.
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