The first Taiwan International Indigenous Film Festival (IIFF) — a screening tour around the country of 22 Taiwanese films and eight foreign movies that touch on indigenous topics — opened yesterday.
The festival, organized by the Council of Indigenous Peoples, seeks “to enhance the general public’s understanding of Aboriginal cultures and allow Aborigines to know more about the cultures of other indigenous peoples in the country and abroad,” the council said in a press release.
Taiwanese films shown in the festival include Ketagalan (凱達格蘭), Country to Country (獨立之前) and Once Upon a Time (泰雅千年).
Ketagalan documents the struggle of Ketagalan Aborigines — who once inhabited the Greater Taipei area, as well as parts of Taoyuan and Yilan Counties before the arrival of Han immigrants from China — against the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Taipei County’s Gongliao Township (貢寮) and to gain recognition of their tribal identity in the 1990s.
Another documentary, Country to Country, follows attempts by a group of Aborigines in 2004 to establish their own independent state in Daliao Township (大寮), Kaohsiung, after then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) defined the relationship between Aboriginal communities and the Republic of China as “states within a state.” Buildings in the short-lived State of Gaosha (高砂國) were declared illegal and were flattened by the county government.
Released in 2007, Once Upon a Time is a short drama that tells the story of Atayal migration. It is the first movie to be fully produced by Atayal.
The foreign movies are from New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Micronesia, the Philippines and Brazil.
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