The Iron Horse Film Festival brings the issues confronting sex workers, dissidents and small businesses to the big screen
Political dissenters in the Philippines have been arrested without cause, interrogated and possibly assassinated by the Philippine government. Taiwan's sex workers protest against being marginalized by the state. These unpleasant truths are set to be exposed at the Iron Horse Film Festival (鐵馬影展). Organized by the Coolloud Collective (苦勞網, www.coolloud.org.tw), the festival strives to give voices to the violated and the oppressed from around the world.
Founded 10 years ago by a group of college students, Coolloud has evolved into the country's foremost online information platform for activists and the socially conscious.
With help from friends and volunteers, the first edition of the festival was held in 2005 as a way to bring further awareness to the issues the group covered online. "The past three years have been arduous," said Wang Yi-hua (王藝樺), Coolloud's executive secretary. "Each year we think of giving it up, but support from friends and audiences keeps us striving to make the festival a permanent event."
Local and foreign groups, such as Hong Kong's Video Artivist, South Korea's independent media center MediACT and Media Cultural Action, an independent anti-globalization media group, have all contributed in some way to this year's festival.
The result is that the festival will screen 28 documentary, feature and experimental works from Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and the US, grouped by the issue each addresses.
Photos: Courtesy of Coolloud Collectiv
The White South section will feature current affairs in the Philippines, including purported political persecution, human rights violations and the suspicious death of labor union leader Ka Fort. These issues are covered in such films as Echo of Bullets, Pangulong Fort and There is Blood in Your Coffee, all made by Philippine labor group South Tagalon Exposure. Free the Sagada 11, which focuses on the plight of backpackers arrested in Sagada, will also be screened.
Social injustices aggravated by the global spread of capitalism will be covered in another section. The award-winning The Corporation is a documentary for which 40 corporate insiders, and critics such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore were interviewed. Grain of Sand follows hundreds of thousands of public schoolteachers who have waged a 25-year struggle against global economic forces.
The treatment of foreign workers and blue-collar workers also comes under the festival's scrutiny while The Path and 16 Takes on Korean Society reveal the broken dreams of foreign workers in South Korea. Two local films, Memoir of Miss Kuan, A Celebrated Sex Worker (一代名妓－官秀琴) and Old Chicks: Bailan and Her Girls (老查某－白蘭和她們) lay bare aged sex workers' struggles for survival after they were forced to work underground following the government ban on prostitution.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF COOLLOUD COLLECTIVE
On a lighter note, US director Nic Nill spent four years documenting the history of San Francisco's graffiti scene in Piece by Piece while Cut is a hilarious underground musical film that ridicules the movie rating system in Singapore.
"The works we screen are those made by people who see films as playing an active role in social movements. We use simple language to reach out to the people ... . We understand that festivals and films can raise good questions, but cannot solve them. The festival is seen as a platform through which collaborations among groups and individuals can be made possible and audiences can be exposed to social and political issues they were hitherto unaware of," Wang said.
To help audiences further engage with the issues raised in the films, question and answer sessions, media forums and panel discussions will be held with participation from local filmmakers, social critics and activists as well as representatives from Mede ACT, Media Culture Action and Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS) (日日春關懷互助協會).
PHOTO: COURTESY OF COOLLOUD COLLECTIVE
PHOTO: COURTESY OF COOLLOUD COLLECTIVE
War in the Taiwan Strait is currently a sexy topic, but it is not the only potential Chinese target. Taking the Russian Far East would alleviate or even solve a lot of China’s problems, including critical dependencies on fuel, key minerals, food, and most crucially, water. In a previous column (“Targeting Russian Asia,” Dec. 28, 2024, page 12) I noted that having following this topic for years, I consistently came to this conclusion: “It would simply be easier to buy what they need from the Russians, who also are nuclear-armed and useful partners in helping destabilize the American-led world order.
Last Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) detected 41 sorties of Chinese aircraft and nine navy vessels around Taiwan over a 24-hour period. “Thirty out of 41 sorties crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern ADIZ (air defense identification zones),” it reported. Local media noted that the exercises coincided with the annual Han Kuang military exercises in Taiwan. During the visit of then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022, the largest number of sorties was on Aug. 5, “involving a total of 47 fighter aircraft and two supporting reconnaissance/patrol aircraft.
July 7 to July 13 Even though the Japanese colonizers declared Taiwan “pacified” on Nov. 18, 1895, unrest was still brewing in Pingtung County. The Japanese had completed their march of conquest down the west coast of Taiwan, stamping out local resistance. But in their haste to conquer the Republic of Formosa’s last stronghold of Tainan, they largely ignored the highly-militarized Liudui (六堆, six garrisons) Hakka living by the foothills in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. They were organized as their name suggested, and commanders such as Chiu Feng-hsiang (邱鳳祥) and Chung Fa-chun (鍾發春) still wanted to fight. Clashes broke out in today’s
Xu Pengcheng looks over his shoulder and, after confirming the coast is clear, helps his crew of urban adventurers climb through the broken window of an abandoned building. Long popular in the West, urban exploration, or “urbex” for short, sees city-dwelling thrill-seekers explore dilapidated, closed-off buildings and areas — often skirting the law in the process. And it is growing in popularity in China, where a years-long property sector crisis has left many cities dotted with empty buildings. Xu, a 29-year-old tech worker from the eastern city of Qingdao, has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers for his photos of rundown schools and
RSS