It's not often that organizers of film festivals ignore the movie-hungry masses of metropolitan Taipei and shift the screenings to some of the islands' less film-festival-frequented areas. This is exactly what organizers of the Her Life (她與她的生活) women's documentary festival have done, however.
Citing the reason behind the omission of the island's capital on the festivals' schedule as simply "we felt there were already too many film festivals in Taipei," organizers are hoping that the mini-festival will attract significant interest. In fact, they are hoping it will prove as popular as last year's Women Make Waves (女性影展) film and video festival, albeit, outside of Taipei.
Unlike Women Make Waves, which saw well-known international documentary-makers screening their works alongside a handful of local talent, the Her Life festival features strictly local fare. Featuring works by 12 Taiwan-born directors -- one of whom is male -- the films all touch on concerns and issues affecting women in Taiwan.
Each of the 13 documentaries set to be screened focuses on one particular topic, such as breast cancer, homosexuality, women in politics, functional and dysfunctional family lives, middle age, pregnancy, childcare and the hardships faced by Aboriginal women.
None of the directors are novices in the field of documentary film making -- two of those invited to submit works, Chen Chun-chih (陳俊志) and Hsiao Chu-chen (蕭菊貞), are quite prominent in the global documentary film making community and have had works screened at international documentary festivals.
Chen, who is known on both sides of the Taiwan Strait for his many works documenting the homosexual communities of Taiwan and Hong Kong, came to the attention of the documentary world in 1998 with his short film, Boys for Beauty (美麗少年), which was part of festivals in San Francisco and Singapore in 1999 and even enjoyed a strong commercial run in Taiwan.
For the Her Life festival, Chen has submitted one of his first documentaries which looks solely at issues affecting women. The film -- titled The War of Roses (玫瑰戰爭) -- looks at sexual harrassment of women and, at 75 minutes, also happens to be one of the director's more lengthy works. Chen took his camera to schools, offices and factories around the island to record testimonies of harassment horror stories and to explore the root causes of the problem and how it can be combatted.
In contrast to Chen, who is a newcomer to documenting female concerns, Hsiao is one of the island's most prolific and certainly the most celebrated documenters of issues affecting women.
Although a well-known figure on the local documentary circuit for many years, Hsiao shot to international prominence in the late 1990s after her documentary Grandma's Hairpin (銀簪子) was screened at documentary festivals in Europe and North America.
Her latest documentary and entry in the HL festival, Character (角色), follows the members of the Kaoshiung County Women's Institute as they visit local communities and discus issues relating to childcare and treatment of women in the home and at work.
While there are only 13 documentary films featured in the inaugural Her Life festival, organizers are confident that the films chosen paint a vivid, moving and genuine picture of how women as individuals and as groups deal with issues such as work, childcare, health and sexuality in today's Taiwan.
Those in Taipei who would like to see the films will have to wait. Organizers are hoping to bring the festival to the capital, but dates and venue have yet to be determined.
What: Her Life women's documentary film festival
When and Where: May 11 to May 13 Kaoshiung Women's Institute (
Tel: (07) 397-9672
Admission at all venues is free.
Films are subtitled in Chinese only.
For more information and screening schedules call (02) 2364-6268.
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