If a weekend of imbibing alternative films and having a relaxed time quaffing beer with friends sounds intriguing, you need look no further than the Urban Nomad Film Fest (
Coming into its fifth year, the independent showcase presents a content-rich lineup of 40 works featuring surf and skateboard videos, short films, animations and documentaries made by underground talents from home and abroad.
Organized by the expat duo David Frazier and Sean Scanlan, Urban Nomad was set up with the aim of preserving underground creativity and demonstrating that the media is a democratic tool accessible to anyone who has something to say.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF URBAN NOMAD
"When people make films, they want the works to be seen. So we try to be more flexible about the deadline ... and screen as many of the submitted works as possible," co-founder Scanlan said.
As this year's focus is on alternative visions and documentaries, the festival offers an exciting mixture of works addressing political and social issues and subcultures from different regions, especially from the southeastern Asian countries including Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia.
One such film is Singapore Rebel. Banned in Singapore, the documentary is an emotionally-charged account of the political dissenter and opposition leader Chee Soon Juan, who, since 1992, has taken up the valiant mission to challenge the authoritarianism of the People's Action Party (PAP). He subsequently lost his job as a university professor, and was eventually forced into bankrupcy.
The film offers a rare chance for outsiders to see how the PAP uses oppressive methods to silence political opponents like Chee in the name of building a modern Asian society.
As co-founder and organizer Frazier said alternative film scenes in southeastern Asian countries have enjoyed strong growth in recent years. And as a young and growing alternative venue, Urban Nomad has reached out this year to fringe film festivals and curators in Thailand and the Philippines to bring out new underground voices.
"Ideally, we want Urban Nomad to become part of the underground network in Southeast Asia. Kids and young people in different places should understand each other through alternative media as opposed to big film festivals or dominant TV channels," Frazier said.
Representing the promising future of the local film community is Respire (
Highly stylish and poetically shot, the low-budget film is an inspiring example of how a work of art can be produced despite certain limitations. It was shot with old, sometimes even moldy, film rolls collected from commercial production houses in Taipei.
If you missed the opening film Surviving Beijing (
Idealistic and optimistic at first, the group settles down in the now bulldozed "Tree Village" in the suburb of Beijing, a legendary settlement of rock musicians and social drop-outs.
The film follows the failing attempts of the Malaysian rockers to get gigs and mingle with the tough crowds, and gives audiences an insight into the urban tribe of rockers who don't fit in to the fast-changing society and choose to live in poverty and make music as a social protest against China's rapid development toward capitalism.
For those who feel the three-hour-long programs of experimental film is just too much, there is a chill-out space for visitors to walk around, sip beer and enjoy a good chat with friends or strangers. At Urban Nomad, visitors will not find dark, confining theaters, but a film party where people are free to share their thoughts and feelings with other individuals.
Festival notes
What: Urban Nomad Film Fest (城市游牧影展)
Where: Huashan Cultural Center (華山文化園區), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei (臺北市八德路一段1號)
When: Tonight beginning at 7:30pm; tomorrow and Sunday at 7pm.
Tickets: NT$200 for one day; NT$500 for a four-day festival pass.
For more information on films to be screened, visit www.urbannomadfilmfest.blogspot.com
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
The sprawling port city of Kaohsiung seldom wins plaudits for its beauty or architectural history. That said, like any other metropolis of its size, it does have a number of strange or striking buildings. This article describes a few such curiosities, all but one of which I stumbled across by accident. BOMBPROOF HANGARS Just north of Kaohsiung International Airport, hidden among houses and small apartment buildings that look as though they were built between 15 and 30 years ago, are two mysterious bunker-like structures that date from the airport’s establishment as a Japanese base during World War II. Each is just about
Taiwan, once relegated to the backwaters of international news media and viewed as a subset topic of “greater China,” is now a hot topic. Words associated with Taiwan include “invasion,” “contingency” and, on the more cheerful side, “semiconductors” and “tourism.” It is worth noting that while Taiwanese companies play important roles in the semiconductor industry, there is no such thing as a “Taiwan semiconductor” or a “Taiwan chip.” If crucial suppliers are included, the supply chain is in the thousands and spans the globe. Both of the variants of the so-called “silicon shield” are pure fantasy. There are four primary drivers
RSS