For Taiwan’s serious film buffs, the past two months have been a frenzy of film, with at least six major festivals being shown. The cinematic gorging will reach a peak next week with the opening of the Golden Horse Film Festival (台北金馬影展), outfitted with a lineup of nearly 200 features, documentary, animation and short films divided into 20 different categories. Reading like a who’s who of world cinema, the lineup shows that it has certainly been a prolific year for both masters and auteurs from around the world.
Old Masters
The Master Class section features work by David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Ken Loach, Kim Ki-duk and Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮). Goodbye to Language is octogenarian French director Jean-Luc Godard’s ravishing experiment in 3D filmmaking that dwells upon everything from the state of the world to the possibilities of cinema through.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival
The final film by the late Alain Resnais entitled Life a Riley is filled with stagy sets, absurdist gestures and abundant incongruities, the film eschews a traditional narrative structure and cinematic realism, giving an eloquent expression of the director’s aesthetic effort to break down the barrier between film, theater and illustration.
In Winter Sleep, which was awarded the Golden Palm at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan probes deeply into human frailty through a poignant character study of a middle-age man trapped in his own pride and complacency.
A world apart from Ceylan’s refined cinema, raucous American director Abel Ferrara stirs up controversy with Welcome to New York — a scandalous, fictional account of the downfall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and French presidential hopeful who was arrested in 2011 for the alleged sexual assault of a maid in a Manhattan hotel. Brilliantly played by Gerard Depardieu, the real-life Strauss-Kahn reportedly threatened to sue the filmmakers for defamation.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival
To observe the 30th anniversary death of French auteur Francois Truffaut, the festival will show eight of Truffaut’s films, including his debut The 400 Blows (1959), the Oscar-winning Day for Night (1973) and The Last Metro (1980), starring Catherine Deneuve and the young Depardieu.
New Talents
Photo courtesy of Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival
The festival also pays special attention to emerging auteurs. Party Girl, for example, is the collaborative debut from three former film school friends at France’s prestigious La Femis film school that spins a family drama revolving around an aging nightclub hostess finding love.
For his feature debut, The Tribe, Ukrainian writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy adopts a cast composed entirely of deaf, sign-language users to weave together a compelling, violent and sexually explicit story that takes place at a boarding school for deaf teenagers and involves a newcomer struggling to survive the school’s violent gangs. Lacking spoken dialogue and subtitles, the film was hailed as an original work of filmmaking when it was shown at Cannes earlier this year. Picking up the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, The Wonders is Italian director Alice Rohrwacher’s second feature film. It centers on a family of beekeepers who cling to the fast disappearing rural lifestyle set in Italy’s picturesque Tuscan countryside.
Queer Legend
Photo courtesy of Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival
In memory of the 20th anniversary passing of British queer director Derek Jarman, the festival will show seven works from his visionary oeuvre, including Sebastiane (1976), his debut that depicts the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, an early Christian who is revered as a gay icon. It features an all-nude male cast speaking in Latin.
Never before shown in Taiwan, Jubilee (1978) takes viewers back to late 1970s Britain, where a time-travelling Queen Elizabeth I wanders through a post-apocalyptic urban landscape overrun by punks, criminals and riotous girl gangs. A number of pop cultural icons of the era appear in the film, including Adam Ant, punk anti-heroine Jordan and transgender star Jayne County.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival
Noted for using historical stories to reflect on modern homophobia, Jarman’s preference for anachronism helps to create a fiery, imaginative ode to doomed gay love in Edward II (1991), which revolves around the 14th English King and his male lover. The young Tilda Swinton, Jarman’s regular, was named Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her portrayal of Queen Isabella in the film.
In 1993, a year before Jarman’s death from AIDS, the treatment for the virus had destroyed his eyesight. Blind and close to death, Jarman still managed to create what is arguably his most unique work: Blue. In this particular film, Jarman stands against a luminous blue screen, contemplating his life, passion and art.
Apart from film screenings, movie stars Aaron Kwok (郭富城), Gwei Lun-mei (桂綸鎂) and Lee Kang-sheng (李康生) will also hold lectures. Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai (王家衛) will also talk about his art in person after the screening of The Grandmaster (一代宗師), shown in 35mm, on Nov. 20. For more information, visit the event’s Web site at www.goldenhorse.org.tw.
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