This year's Kaohsiung Film Festival, sponsored by the Kaohsiung City Government, is scheduled to open on Oct. 26 for a 10-day run with 52 domestic and foreign films.
The city government's Department of Information said that there would be 97 film screenings at two locations, the Oscar Digital Theaters and the Kaohsiung Municipal Film Archive.
Among the domestic films to be shown will be The Most Distant Course, directed by Lin Jing-jie (林靖傑), which won the International Film Critics' Week Award for best film at the International Venice Film Festival last month.
The film is about how a psychiatrist on the verge of a nervous break down, a sound technician dumped by his girlfriend, and an office girl whose boyfriend takes another lover, manage to change their lives.
Also to be screened will be the newly released Summer's Tail, by Taiwanese director Cheng Wen-tang (鄭文堂), about two high school dropouts, a gifted student and a Japanese exchange student, who savor their freedom and the joy of youth at a secret hideout.
Two acclaimed Japanese films will have their Taiwan premieres at the festival -- Maiko Haaaan!!!, by director Nobuo Mizuta, and Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers, by Satoshi Miki.
The former is a saga about a Japanese salaryman and his single-minded quest to live as an apprentice geisha, while the latter is a comedy about how an ordinary Japanese housewife applies for a job working as spy for a foreign organization.
The organizers said the films to be screened at the festival focus on five main themes: futuristic films, spectacular debuts, documentaries for ordinary people, up-and-coming directors offering new Taiwanese experiences, and new waves and subcultures.
In addition to the film screenings, film directors and actors will attend various seminars open to the public.
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