"We have grown a little each year, and this year the momentum has been strong: the festival is double the size of last year's," David Frazier, co-founder and organizer of the Urban Nomad Film Festival (城市游牧影展), said.
Entering its sixth year, Taiwan's only fully independent underground film festival has expanded from its humble origin to a 10-day showcase of 100 short films, experimental and animation works, features and documentaries from home and abroad.
Expats Frazier and Sean Scanlan have, for the last two years, been traveling to neighboring Asian countries such as China, Philippines, Thailand and Singapore reaching out to alternative venues, independent curators, filmmakers and distributors to share information, trade films and initiate a network for the indie spirit and philosophy.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF URBAN NOMAD
"We want Urban Nomad to become both a platform for local underground filmmakers who usually play a subordinate role at big film festivals and part of the emerging underground network in Asian countries through which people in different regions can gain mutual understanding and converse with each other," Frazier said.
This year's Urban Nomad offers an inspiring mix of subversive spirit, raw creativity, alternative vision and works that address political and social issues and subcultures from different regions.
White Rock Island, by Philippine director Khavn de la Cruz, turns a sober gaze at slum life in Manila.
Festival highlights include the first documentaries on North Korea to be made by a western team. The Game of Their Lives tells the story of the 1966 North Korean soccer team and their phenomenal World Cup victory over their Italian powerhouse opponents, while A State of Mind provides an insight into the life of everyday people inside the "hermit kingdom" by following the lives of two teenage gymnasts as they prepare for the annual mass gymnastics event dedicated to the "dear leader" Kim Jong-il.
Nick Bonner, who produced the two films, will attend tonight's screening to share his experience of filming inside the socialist regime.
The murky practices of multi-national corporations often come under the documentary spotlight. Mclibel tells the true story of two poor activists who took on McDonald's in the longest trial in English legal history. Singaporean director Martyn See (施忠明) of last year's Singapore Rebel returns with his new work, Speakers Cornered, which documents the only public demonstration held against the IMF-Word Bank meeting held in the city-state in 2006.
Heavy social messages may be the festival's recurring theme, but the event has a weird and funky, punk and rock 'n' roll side too. Here audiences are encouraged to kick back with a drink and friends.
"We certainly try to bring out social consciousness in the festival but we also screen films that are fun to watch… . The venue provides a social environment where you can quaff beer, mingle with the crowd or shout at the screen," Frazier said.
Apart from its regular wacky line-up of skateboard and surf videos, animation, music videos and low-brow comedy, Urban Nomad will present two programs selected from the self-billed "collection of rare and unseen films" from Wholpin. The Movie Movie (Excerpt) invited Donald Trump, the real-life version of Citizen Kane, to offer his "insightful" views on Citizen Kane.
Artist Eko Nugroho, who was featured at last year's Taipei Biennial, will screen his animation works that deliver social messages through graffiti-like sketches and barrages of noisy rock. Taking a comic approach to the issue of immigrant labor, the animation short Maritess vs. Superfriends tells of a Filipino maid who work for Americans while Woodman 2: BBS Fighting by Taiwanese director Lin Shi-yong (林世勇) is a hilarious 3-D animation depicting an Internet-based bulletin board systems war fought among Web sites in the style of a Hollywood action film.
Half of the screened works were made by local underground talents, and the festival further emphasizes a local perspective through two programs curated by Tony Wu (吳俊輝), one of the leading figures in Taiwan's alternative cinema scene. While the Chasing, Running, Jumping, Colliding (追趕跑跳碰) section is a homage to the style of Hong Kong director Wang Kar-Wei (王家衛), the director in focus is Taiwan-born, New-York educated Wu Tung-wang (吳東旺). The independent filmmaker's outrageous works, such as Hot Throbbing Cock, address the issues of Taiwan's independence through transvestite hookers, lesbians and go-go boys.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would