Clapping, shouting out and singing along are usually frowned upon at art-house film festivals — but not at the Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival (金馬奇幻影展). Celebrating its second edition this year, the extension of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (台北金馬影展) embraces B movies, cult films and genre flicks in an attempt to “change the way people watch movies” and “emancipate audiences from the orthodox festival experience,” according to festival director Wen Tien-hsiang (聞天祥).
Highlights include early, low-budget flicks by several Hollywood directors. For horror fans, Sam Raimi’s hilarious and gory Evil Dead trilogy achieved an exalted cult status long before his Spider-Man blockbusters. Legend has it that Robert Rodriguez, the Hollywood player behind Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Sin City, raised US$7,000 by participating in clinical drug trials for his directorial debut, El Mariachi (1992). The action film follows a traveling mariachi who is mistaken for a cold-blooded killer. Then only 23 years old, Rodriguez used an amateur cast and scripted, shot, directed, edited and produced the movie himself.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is all about audience participation, and the classic returns with two sold-out screenings after last year’s ruckus, which saw a full-house audience encouraged to perform, dance and use props such as rice, newspaper and leather gloves. Those inspired to sing along during the screenings of The Wizard of Oz are also welcome to do so, Wen says.
Photo Courtesy of Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival
Stephen Chow’s (周星馳) diptych, A Chinese Odyssey (齊天大聖西遊記/東遊記), demonstrates the organizer’s willingness to seek out cult movies rooted in Asian culture rather those transplanted from the West. With a large fan base and frequent broadcasting on television, Chow’s comedies have “great potential to become cult classics,” Wen said.
Japanese gonzo gore cinema addicts can get their fix with Helldriver. Drenched in blood and boasting bizarre artificial body devices, the zombie epic by Yoshihiro Nishimura, a master of the splatter genre, tells of teenager Kika’s crusade to destroy her evil mother, who rules over the undead in a zombie-ridden Japan.
Unable to completely shake off the more artistic temperament it inherited from the Golden Horse, the young spin-off’s lineup is dotted with art-house items. Among them, If the See Doesn’t Die is a sober allegory on the modern history of the Balkan states told through a tale of fatherly devotion.
Photo Courtesy of Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival
Wen said the fledgling festival has successfully landed a permanent spot in Golden Horse’s stable of events thanks to its instant popularity and strong ticket sales. Wen’s small team has already begun working on the next edition which, if everything goes to plan, will include a retrospective on American director and cult figure John Waters, known for his early campy Trash Trilogy and cult films such as Hairspray and Cry-Baby.
“No doubt we can do a lot of even crazier things with [Waters’] films. For example, we can let cross-dressers who weigh over 100kg watch the movies for free,” said Wen, referring to Divine, a full-figured, flamboyant drag queen who was made into an underground star by the director’s cult classics.
Photo Courtesy of Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival
Photo Courtesy of Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival
Photo Courtesy of Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated