Daisy Lin (林鈺娟), a US-based Taiwanese filmmaker, reflected recently on her movie that won the award for Best Animated Film at this year’s Marbella International Film Festival in Spain, saying it was inspired by a difficult childhood.
The five-minute film, titled Out on a Limb (單飛), portrays a young bird isolated from other birds that do not share its interest in searching for dandelions.
The bird is too clumsy to keep up with the migrating flock and ends up being discriminated against and attacked. In the end, the creature, craving freedom from the struggle, decides to leave the flock and embarks on a solitary journey to pursue its own dream.
Born and raised in Taichung City and now living in Los Angeles, Lin said she spent six years producing the film, which was also her master’s degree graduate project at the University of California, Los Angeles.
FIRST EVER
She was the first Taiwanese to ever receive the award at the Spanish film festival.
This year’s event, which took place from Oct. 15 to Oct. 17, featured more than 500 entries from over 50 countries vying for top awards in five categories — Best Animated Film, Best Short Film, Best Long Short Film, Best Documentary Film and Best Feature Film.
SCREENINGS
The organizers are arranging for Out on a Limb, which blends Lin’s insightful understanding of both Chinese and Western cultures, to be screened in London, Miami, Cannes, Los Angeles and Russia.
The 33-year-old filmmaker drew traditional Chinese brush paintings to create the short film. In the process, Lin said she threw away hundreds of hand-drawn ink paintings simply because her graduate adviser had different views of her theme.
“After a nearly one-year break, I gradually regained my self-confidence and picked up brush painting last year and finally finished the work in June this year,” Lin recalled.
THERAPY
“The film could serve as a footnote to my teenage school life. I often endured corporal punishment during junior and senior high school because of my poor academic performance,” Lin said. “The bitter memory still haunts me, which led me to make the film.”
She added that “the film has helped heel my psychological wounds.”
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