FILM REVIEW: Not your average chick flicks

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This year’s Women Make Waves Film Festival (女性影展) focuses on contemporary migrants’ search for home and identity and encompasses a wide range of fictional and non-fictional works, as well as a mini retrospective on African-American female director Julie Dash.

The festival has come a long way from its humble origins 16 years ago, but the recent economic downturn posed a challenge for this edition. Sponsorship decreased by NT$1 million from last year, according to festival director Azed Yu (游婷敬).

Unlike the government-funded Taipei Film Festival (台北電影節) and Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (台北金馬國際影展), this annual showcase organized by the Taiwan Women’s Film Association (台灣女性影像學會) faces financial uncertainty.

Money aside, the now well-established Women Make Waves Film Festival may need to delve deep within itself for new ideas if it wishes to draw interest from younger generations of festivalgoers and distinguish itself from the smorgasbord of Taiwanese film festivals.

“The establishment of Women Make Waves Film Festival is closely related to the rise of feminism and gender study in Taiwan. But what used to be influential social thought now seems to hardly be an issue. The times have changed,” Yu said.

With a lineup of 60 films screened over 10 days, the event includes movies that examine various social issues. Among the most gripping is Begging Naked, an arresting documentary that took director Karen Gehres nine years to complete. The film, set primarily in Central Park, New York City, follows her friend Elise Hill’s startling journey through heroin addiction, stripping, prostitution, self-made artistry and homeless paranoia.

In the festival’s Women in Diaspora: Journeys Before Home section, Katia’s Sister tells a poignant tale about 13-year-old Lucia and her all-female family of Russian immigrants in Amsterdam. With deliberate pacing, the hand-held camera follows the lonely teenager as she retreats more deeply into emotional isolation, helplessly watching the lives of her prostitute mother and stripper sister spiral inevitably downwards. Instead of preaching or indulging in its misery, the film imbues its bleak social portrait with warmth and compassion, encouraging viewers to understand rather than pass judgment.

Half-Life centers on a dysfunctional Asian-American family coping with life in a California suburban. Living with their mother and her much younger boyfriend, eight-year-old Timothy and older sister Pam deal with the anguish of growing up by escaping into fantasies.

The first feature-length film by an African-American woman director to receive a general theatrical release in the US, Dash’s 1991 masterpiece, Daughters of the Dust tells the story of a Gullah family, composed of former African slaves and their descendants, who migrate from the Sea Islands to mainland US at the turn of the 20th century. Narrated through an unborn child, the film is imbued with a mythical aura, weaving together dreamlike imagery and songs to accentuate ancient African beliefs and traditions. Director Dash will attend the festival and hold lectures as well as question-and-answer sessions after screenings.

On the documentary side, director Sophie Bredier’s Looking for Asian Women explore popular images of Asian women that have fascinated Western male audiences. In addressing this controversial issue, Bredier conducts interviews with French artists such as fetish photographer Romain Slocombe and graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude.