Taiwan Film Festival is back in 2021, with this virtual edition streaming online from September 16 to 30, 2021.
https://www.taiwanfilmfestival.org.au/
Check out these three short features, which are the highlights of this film festival.
BUTTERFLIES
This provocative film is a cross between the MATRIX series and MEMENTO with an all-female cast. It is severe and explicit in its brutality and yet enveloped in emotional entanglements, specifically with the romantic tensions between the two female leads. Unflinching in its portrayal of violence, this thriller has its own share of shock and bloody gore.
Written and directed by Albert Ventura, this ill-fated romance is set in a mythical era where Taiwan is controlled by a sinister kingdom. Accused by the powers of being a rebel, Yu flees jail and meets Lien, a dubious lady that will assist her in her escape to Thailand through plastic surgery. However, Yu has attracted too much attention, so Lien hides her at her place, setting the film’s sinister plot.
This encounter has led to an uneasy yet intimate bond between the two ladies. Their affair is signified by the ethereal butterflies tattoo, as it flutters through twists and turns split by their different alliances while climaxing into an unimaginable end.
SWINGIN
Growing up with two gay dads puts a lot of pressure on schoolkid Qiu Qiu, but this does not stop him from living an everyday kid life, even with the bullying and taunting from his classmates. Written and directed by Guo Shang-sing, this queer family dramedy takes a traditional look at an unconventional Taiwanese family dealing with parenthood.
The crux of the film is the family childhood rebellion of Qiu Qiu as he is disciplined by his stepfather Jia-How, a flashy jazz trumpet player who performs at the club of his father, Mr Hu. The reality of same-sex parenting is tackled in a light, bittersweet style by this brave pioneering film that acknowledges Taiwan as the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage.
XXXMOG!
This part environmental and part filmmaking journey of a film is eclectic and experimental in approach. It focuses on down and out film director Mark, who leaves Taipei for his hometown Kaohsiung, an industrial town with a critical pollution problem. Before leaving Taipei, jobless Mark attempts at making porn with his friend Bugsy. However, that sex scene they are shooting on the rooftop gets devoured by the worst smog that hits Taipei.
Director Cho Ting-wu takes an abstract and yet profound look at the consequences of climate change. Mixing this social commentary on the poisoning of the environment with the surreal fantasy of getting entry into the Cannes film festival, the film feels a bit wayward and yet reasonably correlated. It is quite a statement to use the metaphor of art and porn to parallel society’s progress and decline. Bleak is an understatement.
