Despite the plethora of film festivals in Taiwan, Tony Chun-hui Wu (吳俊輝) says that something important is missing. The experimental filmmaker and academic looked at the country’s film showcases and found they pay limited (if any) attention to experimental cinema. Its practitioners are banished from the competition sections in all of the country’s film festivals except for the Golden Harvest Awards (金穗獎), and many people think experimental filmmaking is virtually nonexistent in Taiwan.
“By saying Taiwan doesn’t have experimental cinema, they are denying the fact that there are plenty of courses taught by people like Lee Dao-ming (李道明), Wu Hsiu-ching (吳秀菁), Liu Yung-hao (劉永皓) and Kao Chung-li (高重黎) at universities ... Only four to five experimental films are nominated at each Golden Harvest, but I see more than 100 works every year that are created by young artists worth encouraging,” said Wu, an assistant professor in Shih Hsin University’s Department of Radio, Television and Film.
Wu hopes to fill the gap with the four-day EX!T 2010 — Experimental Media Art Festival in Taiwan (台灣國際實驗媒體藝術展), which comprises film screenings and forums joined by artists from South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Macau.
Photo courtesy of EX!T
The idea of setting up an experimental film festival came to Wu last year when he attended the first edition of an Asian forum organized by the annual EXiS — Experimental Film and Video Art Festival in Seoul. Participating artists and curators explored the possibility of forming a network to enable artists in Asia to exchange ideas, share resources and collaborate on projects such as EX!T 2010, currently being held in Taipei.
“Taiwan has a relatively long history of experimental cinema that dates back to the 1930s,” Wu said. “In many Asian countries, the practice of experimental filmmaking didn’t appear until the early 1990s. So many people were surprised to find out about our history at last year’s Asian forum.”
The event is also envisioned as a “bridge” to connect experimental cinema and contemporary art. The boundaries between the two have long been blurred and disrupted in the West, but are still guarded by Taiwan’s governmental and academic institutions, according to Wu, whose cinematic creations and curatorial projects explore mutations of different formats, media and disciplines.
Photo courtesy of EX!T
“Here we quickly classify people and give them clearly defined labels ... It has to do with protecting resources and strengthening one’s status in well-defined fields, which excludes others,” Wu said. “But all definitions are meant to be broken ... How does one tell cinema from video art, new media art or digital art nowadays? It is virtually impossible.”
South Korean artist and curator Lee Hang-jun from EXiS introduces the development of experimental cinema in his country at the Taipei Contemporary Art Center (TCAC, 台北當代藝術中心) at 1pm today through a group of eight works that include Meaning of 1/24 sec made by South Korean avant-garde painter Kim Ku-rim in 1969.
Video artist Cao Kai (曹凱) from China Independent Film Festival (中國獨立影像年度展) has selected eight films by artists from Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou — often regarded as the breeding grounds for Chinese contemporary arts — and a program of works created by four generations of Chinese artists that range from guerilla video art to experimental documentaries. The films begin at 7pm tomorrow at TCAC.
Photo courtesy of EX!T
Indonesian film writer Jaka Suryan aims to bring into focus the development of film and video art over the 10 years since the collapse of Indonesia’s military regime. Meanwhile, political turbulence in Thailand is captured, meditated on and reinterpreted through a collection of experimental shorts put together by film critic and scholar Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn. The forum begins at 1pm on Sunday at TCAC.
On the domestic front, Wu and other curators look into experimental cinema in Taiwan through programs that show young artists experimenting with different forms of filmmaking ranging from home movies and found-footage film to animation and travelogues, and a variety of formats including Super 8 film, digital video cameras, still photography and cellphone cameras. Veteran animation filmmaker and educator Jay Shih (石昌杰) and documentary maker Huang Ting-fu (黃庭輔) are each given a solo showing: Shih’s is at 7pm today at TCAC and Huang’s at Guling Street Avant-Garde Theatre (牯嶺街小劇場) at 5pm tomorrow.
Photo courtesy of EX!T
Photo courtesy of EX!T
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