The Taiwan International Children's TV and Film Festival (
It is not just an event for children, however, and the films do not look child-like. In fact, the movies presented at the festival offer an opportunity for both adults and children to see the world of film in a way that makes movies more accessible in our daily lives.
The opening film Bibi Blocksberg is a German version of Harry Potter, where 12-year-old witch Bibi inherits magical powers from her mom Babara and saves two boys from a fiery death. She is given a crystal ball by senior witches and becomes an official witch. As she and Babara fly on their brooms to the ceremony, there are people unhappy with Bibi's official title. One is the jealous, evil-hearted witch Rabia and the other is Bibi's dad, Babara's husband, who, as a non-witch, is sick of supernatural powers.
This is a movie where you see witches using the toilet, who love watching TV dramas and being modern housewives, yet still have magic power.
On a similar theme, French animation screens Kirikou and Sorceress, in which Kirikou is a kid from an African village upon which a sorceress called Karaba has cast a terrible spell. Kirikou may be small but he is destined to get rid of the spell and save the water from drying out.
Miss Entebbe is a feature drama from Israel, which centers on children but talks about political conflict in the adult world. Thirteen-year-old Israeli girl Noa believes she can free her friend's mom, who is held hostage, by kidnapping an Arab boy. She and her neighboring kids then follow the adults' patterns of behavior. But while entering the turmoil of political conflict and hatred, they discover that the solution is not to be found in the violent adult arena, but rather within their own hearts.
There are also screenings of films and animations that are made by or with children. Belgium filmmaker Jean-luc Slock presents six of his peculiar projects. Slock and his team from the Camera Enfants Admis in Belgium travels around the world, finding a group of children and choosing a topic to make a film. Water is Life is a cute animation he made with 40 kids from Burkina Faso. In a village without water, electricity and TV, villagers' daily water use depends on one small lake. They fish in it, swim in it, water the flowers and wash their clothes with the lake's waters. But people also dump garbage and toxic waste in it.
Belgium is not the only place where children are allowed to be film directors, Taiwan has something similar. At the film festival, 10 such projects will be screened. Sixty elementary school teachers, together with their students, proposed 10 story ideas and the projects were supervised by 10 Taiwanese filmmakers. There are dramas, doll animations and documentaries.
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