A three-day film festival featuring Taiwanese movies from the last decade concluded on Saturday in Barcelona, with Spanish audiences saying that they could relate to Taiwan’s perspective and traditions.
Co-organized by the cultural division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Spain and two Spanish film festival organizers, Miquel Marti Freixas and Catarina Brites Soares, the “Taiwan, historias desde dentro” (Taiwan, stories from within) film exhibition was held at Barcelona’s Cinemes Girona cinema.
Frexias and Soares selected six Taiwanese productions from the Past decade for the festival that represented diverse genres and tackled issues faced by the people of present-day Taiwan.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Culture
The six movies chosen were the feature-length dramas A Journey in Spring (春行) and Moneyboys (金錢男孩), short films The Pig (豬), The Clock (阿霞的掛鐘), and Temporary (臨時工), and a documentary Terra Nullius or: How to Be a Nationalist (無主之地:一部台灣 電影).
Speaking with the Central News Agency, the festival curators said the main reason the six pictures were selected was to showcase contemporary Taiwanese films, especially ones centered on female characters or made by a female director.
While the “Taiwan New Wave” cinematic movement in the 1980s introduced Taiwanese movies to the world, the two curators said they wanted to show film fans in Barcelona other social issues faced in Taiwan through lesser-known films or ones lost to history.
Codirected by female filmmakers Peng Tzu-hui (彭紫 惠) and Wang Ping-wen (王品文), A Journey in Spring, was the first film featured at the festival on Thursday.
Its Silver Shell award-winning status at the San Sebastian Film Festival this year helped it to nearly sell out the theater at the Barcelona viewing.
Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Spain culture division head Chang Yu-hsuan (張祐瑄) said the audience was interested in the depiction of the emotions of traditional Taiwanese men.
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