MCLC: 15th Taipei Film Fest

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: 15th Taipei Film Fest
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Source: Taipei Times (6/21/13):
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2013/06/21/2003565285

15th Taipei Film Festival
This year’s festival, which begins on June 28, strives to bring more focus
on its international new director competition
By Ho Yi / Staff Reporter

From Paris, Berlin, London to Moscow, Jerusalem and Kyoto, films from
cities around the world have formed the backbone of the Taipei Film
Festival (TFF, 台北電影節), which is consequently known for its focus on
international cinema. But fewer people know that TFF is also Taiwan’s
first truly international film competition aiming to discover and support
new talents.

To the festival organizers, the competition is what distinguishes TFF from
others and reflects its spirit.

“We are looking for works that, despite their flaws and immaturity, show
creativity and potential. They can have strong images, great narrative
rhythm or make the best of whatever resources at hand,” program director
Steve Tu (塗翔文) told the Taipei Times.

NEW TALENTS

Now in its ninth edition, the competition is open to filmmakers’ first or
second features and hands out a top prize of NT$600,000 for its New Talent
Award and NT$300,000 for a special jury prize. This year, 12 films out of
the nearly 400 entries made it through to the competition.

Many of the selected works by new talents tell stories of youth and
explore youthful aspirations and predicaments. Baby Blues from Poland, for
example, focuses on a 17-year-old single mother’s struggle to rear her
baby while dealing with her drug and alcohol use. Youth by Israeli
director Tom Shoval spins an absorbing yarn about two teenage brothers’
amateur plan to save their family from ruin by kidnapping a rich
schoolgirl that inevitably goes wrong.

In spite of the amount of effort invested in building the program, the
international competition has yet to gain popularity among local audiences
who favor “established directors and big-name actors,” Tu says. To improve
the situation, festival organizers have tried to bring attention to the
program through various mediums ranging from festival guides and press
communications to forums. Filmmakers for each selected film are invited to
attend the festival, meet audiences and hold question-and-answer sessions;
their films are shown at the festival’s main venue, Taipei Zhongshan Hall,
and given prime-time slots.

===============================================
Festival notes
What: 15th Taipei Film Festival (2013台北電影節)
When: June 28 to July 20
Where: Taipei Zhongshan Hall (台北市中山堂), 98 Yanping S Rd, Taipei City (台
北市延平南
路98號); Shin Kong Cineplex (新光影城), 4F, 36 Xining S Rd, Taipei City (台北
市西寧南路
36號4樓); Spot — Huashan Cinema (光點華山電影館), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei
City (台北市
八德路一段1號)
Admission: Festival package of 10 tickets costs NT$1,699, weekday matinee
screenings (before 6pm) cost NT$150 and weeknight and weekend screenings
are NT$200, NT$180 for students and NT$100 for senior citizens aged 65 and
up and people with disabilities. Tickets are available through 7-Eleven
ibon kiosks
On The Net:www.taipeiff.org.tw
==============================================

BOX OFFICE MADNESS

Another difficulty faced by the festival this year is the lack of quality
Taiwanese productions that can compete with the select films from around
the world in the international competition. For Tu, it reflects the
direction the Taiwanese cinema has been heading in recent years.

“The number of productions increases; audiences come back, and more money
and investment go in. They are all positive changes. But there are also
worries that now we care only about the box-office. People make similar
things and copy movies that sell,” he says. “When you place Taiwanese film
among international work, the gap is immediately obvious.”

The only able local contender in the competition is Tomorrow Comes Today (你
的今天和我的明天) by up-and-coming director Chen Ming-lang (陳敏郎). Through
two 
parallel storylines about a young Taiwanese man searching for his mother
in New York City with a photograph of Marlene Dietrich and his white
neighbor, the film probes into the realm of existential solitude that
recalls Tsai Ming-liang’s (蔡明亮) cinematic oeuvre.

Similarly, the program on Wang Bing’s (王兵) work provides an antidote to
Taiwanese documentary films that are all too often audience-flattering,
narrative-driven and have “much more dramatic power than fictional films.”
A leading figure of the Chinese independent cinema, Wang received
international recognition with his 2003 nine-hour epic documentary West of
the Tracks (鐵西區), which chronicles the slow death of the factory towns in
China’s northeast as the communist nation made its transition from a
state-run economy to a free market. Three Sisters (三姊妹), the director’s
latest, continues his profound observation on contemporary Chinese society
by following the poverty-stricken lives of a peasant and his three little
daughters.

TURKISH DELIGHT

This year’s national spotlight is on Turkey, with a special focus on the
new wave Turkish cinema, which emerged in the mid-1990s. The selected
works by key figures of the new wave movement include Dervis Zaim’s 1996
Somersault in a Coffin, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s debut feature The Small Town
in 1997 and Zeki Demirkubuz’s Fate (2001).

Festival organizers have also put together a mini-retrospective on female
director Yesim Ustaoglu, noted for her sober and sometimes poetic
meditation on Turkey’s history and socio-political realities. Journey to
the Sun (1999), for example, follows a young Turkish man’s journey to
bring the body of his dead Kurdish friend to his home near Iraqi border.

For cinephiles, TFF offers a number of new works by international auteurs
including Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain and Mekong Hotel
by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The much anticipated Before Midnight will be
shown together with the first two installments of Richard Linklater’s
Before trilogy that periodically follows the ever-developing relationship
between the extremely loquacious and intelligent Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and
Celine (Julie Delpy).

This year’s programs on cinematic classics contain Hou Hsiao-hsien’s (侯孝
賢) 
A Time to Live and a Time to Die (童年往事), All That Jazz by Bob Fosse,
Federico Fellini’s Fellini Satyricon and Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon
amour, which is showed both in 35mm and newly restored digital formats.

Featured filmmakers including 82-year-old French director Pierre Etaix,
Ustaoglu, Wang from China and Hong Kong’s Peter Ho-sun Chan (陳可辛) will
attend the festival and discuss their works.

More information can be obtained through the event’s Web site at
www.taipeiff.org.tw.