The human condition through film

The global undercurrents of angst and collective fear are the motifs of two film events set to open tomorrow. The 2015 Taipei Documentary Film Festival (2015國際華人紀錄片影展) responds to challenges and problems relevant to our daily lives with 38 works addressing a broad range of environmental and social issues. On the Road Film Festival (在路上影展) takes its cue from Jack Kerouac’s defining novel of the Beat Generation, On the Road, to look at the human condition with a more existential and literary approach through a daring, compact lineup of 21 feature, documentary, experimental and short films.

TAIPEI DOCUMENTARY FILM FEST

Restless Mind of Turbulent Years (忐忑流年) is the theme for the documentary film fest and emphasizes marginalized people in cities. The festival is organized by Chinese Next, or CNEXT, a nonprofit that disperses money to aspiring documentary filmmakers in Chinese-speaking regions.

A Tale of Waste City (廢城記) transports audiences to a makeshift community built from waste by urban scavengers in Beijing. The city is located three kilometers from the National Stadium and is home to over 30,000 workers and their families who hail from China’s Henan Province. Life is tough but carries on — until, that is, the residents are told that the community is soon to be demolished.

Polish director Hanna Polak’s Something Better to Come follows a Russian girl named Yula for 14 years as she grows up on a gigantic landfill with her mother, friends and many others living off people’s waste outside Moscow. The documentary discovers humanity in the most dehumanizing situation, and sees Yula, now a young adult, holding her head up high and daring to dream.

Other highlights include up-and-coming Chinese documentary director Du Haibin’s (杜海濱) A Young Patriot (少年小趙), an intimate documentary that chronicles five years in the life of Zhao, a Chinese millennial who is brought up to believe in Maoism, but, as he stumbles into adulthood and goes to college, starts to question his country’s turn toward rampant state capitalism.

Another portrait of the millennials from the US, The Internet’s Own Boy: the Story of Aaron Swartz celebrates the life of Aaron Swartz, a hacktivist devoted to advocating freedom of information in the digital age. The 26-year-old Swartz committed suicide in his Brooklyn apartment in 2013 after being threatened with a 35-year jail term.

ON THE ROAD FILM FEST

Across town, film enthusiasts are given a change to revisit familiar masterpieces and explore experimental works at the On the Road Film Festival, which, according to curator Yang Yuan-ling (楊元鈴), treats film as a voyage through time and space, across cultural borders and into the psyche.

Serbian director Emir Kusturica’s Time of the Gypsies (1988), for example, tells the surreal and absorbing tale about the life of a family of gypsies in former Yugoslavia. Die-hard cinephiles will be delighted to know that this Cannes-winning masterpiece was shot in 35mm film. Another classic shown in 35mm is Leningrad Cowboys Go America, Aki Kaurismaki’s 1989 road movie which attracted worldwide attention to the Finnish auteur known for his singular blend of bleak comedy with warm humanism.

On the avant-garde end, American experimental filmmaker, artist and scholar James Benning’s Easy Rider (2012) is a feature-length remake of Dennis Hopper’s 1969 classic of the same title. As the original work is thought to be a landmark film that captures the US counterculture of the 1960s, Benning’s version searches for the counter-culture in today’ America.