When the Urban Nomad Film Fest (城市游牧影展) started out as a party among friends in 2002, few would expect it to last. Fifteen years after, the annual festival has grown to become an important cultural event, where people come to share, engage and have fun through a series of film screenings, discussions and parties.
As in the past, this year’s festival features some of the most hilarious and thought-provoking indie films, covering topics ranging from art and youth subcultures to activism and social justice.
HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM
Photo courtesy of Urban Nomad Film Festival
US-based Chinese director Wang Nanfu’s (王男?) Hooligan Sparrow exposes government surveillance and corruption in China.
Following the screening on May 21, Wang will discuss the difficulties human rights activists in China face — government interrogation, harassment, imprisonment — as well as her own run-ins with authorities.
Act and activism go hand in hand in Art War, which follows four young Egyptian graffiti artists and musicians as they take part in the peaceful revolution during and after the 2011 Arab Spring.
Photo courtesy of Urban Nomad Film Festival
The documentary makes an engaging exploration of arts as a powerful means of resistance and conveying personal politics.
The film’s director Marco Wilms will attend the festival and discuss his work in post-screening Q&A sessions.
MUSIC FOR THE MASSES
Photos courtesy of Urban Nomad Film Festival
Activism aside, music enthusiasts also have plenty to choose from the festival’s lineup of over 60 feature, documentary, short and music video works from France, Germany, Canada, Cambodia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the US.
Rubble Kings, for example, brings the audience back to the streets of New York under gang control in the late 1960s and early 1970s and tells the long forgotten story of how gang members decided to stop bloodshed by throwing block parties, which gave birth to hip-hop culture.
Fans of Motorhead, Rammstein, Anvil and the likes may want to check out Wacken: the Movie, which delivers an exciting portrait of Wacken Open Air, the biggest heavy-metal festival in the world.
Meanwhile, Mad Tiger zooms in on New York-based Peelander-Z, which describes itself as a “Japanese action comic punk band hailing from the Z area of Planet Peelander.”
On Sunday, several filmmakers and musicians from Germany, Taiwan and the UK will discuss the issue of documenting music.
Taiwan’s overtaking of South Korea in GDP per capita is not a temporary anomaly, but the result of deeper structural problems in the South Korean economy says Chang Young-chul, the former CEO of Korea Asset Management Corp. Chang says that while it reflects Taiwan’s own gains, it also highlights weakening growth momentum in South Korea. As design and foundry capabilities become more important in the AI era, Seoul risks losing competitiveness if it relies too heavily on memory chips. IMF forecasts showing Taiwan widening its lead over South Korea have fueled debate in Seoul over memory chip dependence, industrial policy and
“China wants to unify with Taiwan at the lowest possible cost, and it currently believes that unification will become easier and less costly as time passes,” wrote Amanda Hsiao (蕭嫣然) and Bonnie Glaser in Foreign Affairs (“Why China Waits”) this month, describing how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is playing the long game in its quest to seize Taiwan. This has been a favorite claim of many writers over the years, easy to argue because it is so trite. Very obviously, if the PRC isn’t attacking Taiwan, it is waiting. But for what? Hsiao and Glaser’s main point is trivial,
May 18 to May 24 Gathered on Yangtou Mountain (羊頭山) on Dec. 5, 1972, Taiwan’s hiking enthusiasts formally declared the formation of the “100 Peaks Club” (百岳俱樂部) and unveiled the final list of mountains. Famed mountaineer Lin Wen-an (林文安) led this effort for the Chinese Alpine Association (中華山岳協會). Working with other experienced climbers, he chose 100 peaks above 10,000 feet (3,048m) that featured triangulation points and varied in difficulty and character. The list sparked an alpine hiking craze, inspiring many to take up mountaineering and competing to “conquer” the summits. A common misconception is that the 100 Peaks represent Taiwan’s 100 tallest
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
RSS