The weird, wonderful and sometimes subversive world of animation

Celebrating its fourth edition this year, Taiwan International Animation Festival (TIAF,台灣國際動畫影展) has quickly evolved from a relatively obscure event into a large animation showcase presenting 332 animation films selected from 32 countries at Warner Village Cinema in Xinyi District (信義區) starting today. Apart from the mandatory lineup of selected international animated works made over the past year, several specially curated programs are designed to wow audiences by revealing the amazing diversity of the animated world, commercial and artistic alike.

“Lots of my students came to me and said the previous festivals were a little bit too academic, so this year I want to … make the event appealing to viewers of all ages by broadening the view on what animation should be,” said festival director Kristy Cha Ray Chu (曲家瑞), who is also the director of Shih Chien University’s (實踐大學) Institute of Fashion and Communications Design.

Fresh Power is one of the convention-breaking programs. As well as choice animated commercials from around the world, the section includes a surprising assemblage of hip and sassy animated flicks by renowned designers and companies such as Pete Fowler and Tokyo Plastic.

Having worked on a wide variety of projects such as short films, promos, television graphics and commercials, London-based animation director Run Wrake’s kaleidoscopic works feature in this year’s lineup.

For viewers who favor works that are subversive or revolting to prudish minds, the festival’s Midnight Program section offers a troupe of underground films selected from the notorious Sick and Twisted Festival founded in 1990 by Craig “Spike” Decker and Mike Gribble, otherwise known as Spike & Mike.

The program also features three sexually-explicit shorts by Suzan Pitt from the US. A versatile artist who has garnered admiration and awards from international art festivals, Pitt spends years mastering different animation techniques to create her visually stunning, lush-colored sensual poems in which surreal characters set out on odysseys into erotic and hallucinatory realms.

For fans of cel, or hand-drawn animation, works by the late Japanese legend Tezuka Osamu to be shown in the Directors in Focus section offer a chance to sample the artistry and craftsmanship of the famous animator’s rarely seen experimental shorts and feature pieces made for adult art-house audiences.

Also featured in this festival segment is the Finnish puppet animation director Katarina Lillqvist, a relative unknown to local audiences. Having studied at the acclaimed Jiri Trnka animation unit at the Prague film studio in the Czech Republic, the award-winning director gained international recognition for her Kafka Trilogy and works adapted from Romany folklore. Her puppet-animated films are said to be unlike any others as the puppets use meticulously arranged movements to tell the narrative.

If the above-mentioned programs still fail to convince you that there is a vast animation land beyond Disney, check out the contemporary Finnish animated films grouped in the Variety Catch section. Mostly silent films, these shorts stand in contrast to action-oriented mainstream flicks with their tasteful visual styles and refined delivery of human emotions.

The festival’s closing film, director Richard Linlater’s A Scanner Darkly, is based on the experiences of sci-fi master Philip Dick, and employs the rare technique of interpolated rotoscoping whereby animators trace the actions of actors one frame at a time. Linklater uses live-action photography with advanced animation processes to address the US’ futile war on drugs through a storyline which sees an undercover policeman, played by Keanu Reeves, drawn into a world of absurdity and paranoia.