Another aspect of ethnographic films is its often-close relationship with activism, which can be seen in the work of both the featured directors. Mayaw Biho is best known in Taiwan for his involvement in efforts to promote the use of tribal names, rather than adopted Han Chinese names, among Taiwan's Aborigines, as a way of affirming cultural identity.
The festival program encompasses a wide range of films. At one end of the spectrum there are strict academic exercises, such as Hu Tai-li and Lee Daw-ming's (李道明) Songs of Pasta'ay (矮人際之歌), a study of the Pasta'ay ceremony of Taiwan's Saisiat people, which will screen in a double feature with Pas-taai: The Saisiat Ceremony in 1936 (巴斯達隘: 1936年的賽夏祭典) by Japanese anthropologist Nobuto Miyamoto, who was a professor at what was then the Taipei Imperial University (now National Taiwan University). At the other end of the spectrum, there are films like Mark Sandiford's Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny, a humorous film inspired by the satirical essays of Inuit writer Zebedee Nungak, which turns the tables on generations of anthropologists, teachers, adventurers and administrators who went North to pursue their Arctic Dreams, and Futuru Tsai's (蔡政良) Amis Hip Hop (阿美嘻哈), which documents how a group of young Amis men have blended influences from contemporary social and cultural life in Taiwan with their traditional practice of ritual dance performance in their village.
With the improvement in cheap recording technology and access to education, Aboriginal peoples have increasingly been able to take control of how they are represented. This has generated new perspectives and many new questions about the distortion created by recording media.
Lin said that the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and modern media might be perceived by some as a Faustian pact in which the very efforts by which Aboriginal peoples seek to save their culture becomes a tool that will ultimately destroy it; this need not necessarily be the case. With a lineup of 43 films over five days, with each screening followed by a question-and-answer session, often with the director, there will be plenty of opportunities for audience members to ponder the many issues raised by the festival.
RSS