Women Make Waves Film Festival director Pecha Lo (羅珮嘉) and programmer Wang Chun-chi (王君琦) give the Taipei Times their top recommendations from this year’s program.
‘ON HER SHOULDERS’
This year’s opening film is a documentary about Nadia Murad, the Iraqi Yazidi activist who last year won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to end sexual violence as a weapon of war. The documentary focuses not on Murad’s traumatic experiences as a prisoner-of-war of the Islamic State, but on her work to cast an international spotlight on sexual violence after her ordeal. Wang says that the documentary addresses the complications and limitations that arise when people in developing countries turn to the Western, developed world for support.
Photo courtesy of Women Make Waves Film Festival
‘UNA PRIMAVERA’
This German-Italian-Austrian production, screening under the “Gray Dynamics of Love and Hope” section, follows a middle-aged wife and mother who wants out of an unfulfilling marriage. Lo says it was one of the most controversial films seen by the festival’s selection committee, which had long discussions about whether the film’s conclusion sent the right messages about feminism.
‘VAI’
Photo courtesy of Women Make Waves Film Festival
This film is a rare work by a group of eight indigenous female Pacific Island filmmakers. In a series of vignettes set in different Pacific nations, each filmmaker explores the relationship of the titular Vai — which means “water” — to her ancestral homeland and traditions. Wang highlights the intersectionality of indigenous and female experiences achieved in the film. Vai screens under the “Original Shouts” section, which presents films by and about indigenous women in Taiwan and around the world.
‘IRINA’
Infidelity, pregnancy, familial ties and an unfortunate twist of fate inform the tough life choices that Irina has to make. Lo says that this Bulgarian film, also screening under the “Gray Dynamics of Love and Hope” section, questions the neat conclusions we have about a woman’s right to choose.
Photo courtesy of Women Make Waves Film Festival
Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 508 meters, Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. Tomorrow morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a
Lines between cop and criminal get murky in Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, a crime thriller set across one foggy Miami night, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Affleck, of course, are so closely associated with Boston — most recently they produced the 2024 heist movie The Instigators there — that a detour to South Florida puts them, a little awkwardly, in an entirely different movie landscape. This is Miami Vice territory or Elmore Leonard Land, not Southie or The Town. In The Rip, they play Miami narcotics officers who come upon a cartel stash house that Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon)
Francis William White, an Englishman who late in the 1860s served as Commissioner of the Imperial Customs Service in Tainan, published the tale of a jaunt he took one winter in 1868: A visit to the interior of south Formosa (1870). White’s journey took him into the mountains, where he mused on the difficult terrain and the ease with which his little group could be ambushed in the crags and dense vegetation. At one point he stays at the house of a local near a stream on the border of indigenous territory: “Their matchlocks, which were kept in excellent order,
Today Taiwanese accept as legitimate government control of many aspects of land use. That legitimacy hides in plain sight the way the system of authoritarian land grabs that favored big firms in the developmentalist era has given way to a government land grab system that favors big developers in the modern democratic era. Articles 142 and 143 of the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution form the basis of that control. They incorporate the thinking of Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) in considering the problems of land in China. Article 143 states: “All land within the territory of the Republic of China shall
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