Taiwan Film Festival is back in 2020 with this virtual edition streaming online from July 9 to 30, 2020.
https://www.taiwanfilmfestival.org.au/
Check out the various feature films on offer including three eye-catching documentaries and three brilliant films from the master Hsiao Ya-Chuan.
DOCUMENTARIES
RUN FOR DREAM
It is all about endurance, determination, and patriotism that drive this Taiwanese ultra-marathon runner to compete in varying terrains and extreme weather. This beautifully filmed doco chronicles his life-changing experience.
CLOSING TIME
An observational doco on the city of Taipei after dark. The stark Super 16mm shots are quiet and mundane, its everyday nightlife is tantalisingly poetic, mesmerising you into its mixed visual landscape and hypnotic soundscape.
THE GOOD DAUGHTER
A very obedient Vietnamese daughter is torn between helping her family in Vietnam with her obligations as a Taiwanese wife and mother. This eye-opening doco explores the drama of arranged foreign bride marriages in Taiwan.
FILMMAKER IN FOCUS: HSIAO YA-CHUAN
MIRROR IMAGE
With a frisky jazzy soundtrack, Hsiao Ya-chuan adopts a playful tone in his Cannes film that delves into destiny and chance among three characters connected within the sealed enclosures of a pawnshop. Young, brash, quite hip.
FATHER TO SON
An intergenerational relationship drama by Hsiao Ya-chuan of a man’s acceptance of his mortality. Lavishly filmed in both colour and black-and-white, the man takes his son to Japan as they search for his own existential roots.
TAIPEI EXCHANGES
A light bubbly comedy from Hsiao Ya-chuan that mixes the cafe culture, a barter system, and lounge music to a relaxing quest for stories, singing, travel, sofa guests, a new car, and a fun escape to what you treasure most.
The recent Spanish Film Festival had a hefty 32 films as their offering. From this, I am picking 16 of them as my personal best of the lot. These films got my five-star approval rating so catch them when you can when they get a cinema release.
The following are the films ranked in order of preference.
The Jewish International Film Festival (JIFF) has been ongoing at the Ritz Cinema in Randwick, Sydney, which started from 18 February up to 24 March 2021. It is midway through this annual event, and the Ritz Cinema has been busy accommodating lovers of Jewish cinema.
