https://www.taiwanfilmfestival.org.au/
Check out these three highlights of the film festival.
DETENTION
John Hsu’s video game-based psychological thriller on Taiwan’s 1962 White Terror employs horror elements to relive the trauma and torture of detention during its history of martial law. Bravely subversive in its revealing exposé, the film cries out for justice during the repressive Kuomintang years.
Partly a love story, it centres on two students, Fang Ray-shin and Wei Chong-ting, trapped at their high school, surrounded by ghosts and visions of their dark fate. Both are searching for their teacher Chang Ming-hui, who is the object of Fang’s affection. They belong to a study group for banned books which is endemic of the censorship of that era.
The film was released in 2019 to box office gains in Taiwan and Hong Kong. It won in five categories at the 2019 Golden Horse Awards in Taipei. It was also selected as part of the official selection of the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam.
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.
Tung-ching has lost the lifeline on his hand in a motorcycle accident. When his father suffered a mild stroke, he took over managing the family pawnshop business together with his nurse girlfriend Eiko, an avid palm reader especially of Tung-ching’s fate. There is a varied mix of pawnshop clientele as well, with a commonality of financial desperation and acumen. One of the clientele is a brash mystery lady, Xiao De-le, who pairs up with Tung-ching in selling pawnshop items illegally inside subway trains.
From palm readings of photocopied handprints to eclectic subway chase scenes, the film is young and brash in coverage and approach. Beautifully shot from unconventional angles, the film evokes a loose French New Wave style in contrast to the minimalist style of Hsiao’s predecessor and mentor Hou Hsiao-hsien.
GIRLFRIEND, BOYFRIEND (Gf*Bf)
This 2012 epic story of love and friendship by Yang Ya-che is a political drama of idealist kids growing up through the mid 80s martial law era up to their interconnected lives in the present.
It is a film about an interesting love triangle. Mabel, Liam, and Aaron have been friends since their high school days. Liam is a closeted gay kid and has a secret desire for Aaron. Aaron falls in love with Mabel and ends up with her eventually. All these entangled emotions happen against a turbulent backdrop of political upheaval in Taiwan’s history.
Jumping to college in Taipei, they join the pro-democracy Wild Lily student movement. As they progress from college to adulthood, the film intertwines the social and political changes of Taiwan with the emotional entanglements of their love affairs.
Director Yang stated in an interview that the film is meant to be a political movie that incidentally includes a gay character, and that politics and homosexual liberation both represent the theme of freedom. With its box office success during its release in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2012, this film tackles democratic principles and gay liberation, themes which augur well for Taiwan’s present state of politics and marriage equality movement.
In the enigmatic introspection of Kei Ishikawa’s A MAN, the boundaries of identity blur with the essence of truth, subjecting itself to endless scrutiny. Adapted from Keiichiro Hirano’s novel, Ishikawa artfully delves deep into self-discovery that challenges our perceptions of ourselves and others.
Taiwan Film Festival is back in 2020 with this virtual edition streaming online from July 9 to 30, 2020.
