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Ethnographic film festival in Taipei to screen `Pas-taai'

The 2007 Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival will be held from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 at the Majestic cinema in Taipei and will feature the premiere screening of Pas-taai -- The Saisiyat Ceremony in 1936 on Sept. 30, event organizers said yesterday.

The festival, which carries the theme "Indigenous Voices" this year, is aimed at presenting cultural and ethnographic documentary films that show indigenous people from the different viewpoints of indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers on a variety of subjects to create the possibility of a more subtle and multi-layered dialogue between different ethnic groups, the organizers said.

images

The organizers noted that the premiere film, featuring a large-scale Saisiyat ceremony honoring dwarf spirits on Wuchih Mountain (五指山) in Hsinchu County held 70 years ago, was produced by National Taiwan University, adding that it contains a lot of precious images being shown to the public for the first time.

The film is mainly based on the collective works of Mabuch Utzukawa, who was a professor at the Imperial University of Taipei, which is now National Taiwan University, and his assistant Nobuto Miyamoto. The pair filmed the Pas-taai ceremony, also known as the Ceremony of the Dwarfs, between November and December in 1936.

religious rite

Through the documented images, audiences will get to see the whole process of the religious rite performed by the Aboriginal tribesmen with the aim of appeasing the legendary race of dwarfs who are said to have taught the Saisiyat people farming, organizers said.

They also said that the film was made under the sponsorship of the National Science Council through its National Digital Archives Program.
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