Taiwan Film Days Newest S.F. Film Society Series
SFFS Program Brings Recent Films From Ang Lee's Birthplace
Nov 4, 2009
Despite Academy Award-winner Ang Lee’s fame, his birthplace’s cinema is not well known in America. Cinephiles may be familiar with Lee’s Taiwanese compatriots Tsai Ming-liang and Hou Hsiao-hsien. But the Asian countries an average moviegoer associates with cinema are usually limited to China, India, Japan, and Hong Kong. The San Francisco Film Society, longtime promoters of Taiwanese art cinema, hopes to raise the visibility of Taiwanese cinema with their Taiwan Film Days showcase.
Taiwanese Cinema and the S.F. Film Society
The film movements that brought Taiwanese film to the attention of international festivals were known in Taiwan as the New Wave Cinema (1982 on) and the Second New Wave (1990s on). Their emphases on the struggles faced by everyday Taiwanese provided an antidote to the formulaic melodramas of previous decades’ cinema. That focus allowed these films to discuss problems confronting Taiwanese society in those periods.
An American viewer may notice the familiarity of the problems discussed in Taiwanese New Wave films. According to a China Detail article on Taiwanese cinema history, these problems include conflicts between native Taiwanese and the new government in power (Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City Of Sadness) or the clash between traditional cultural values and materialistic drives (Edward Yang’s A Confucian Confusion).
The experience of viewing a Taiwanese New Wave Cinema film differs greatly from viewing a Hollywood film. The Western film cherishes melodramatic action while the Asian film focusses on observing real Taiwanese life in all its mundanity. An analogy which accounts for the sometimes patience-stretching long takes of these films might be that of the ornithologist dedicatedly recording the behavior of the birds he or she observes, however long it takes to find relevant data.
The San Francisco Film Society has over the years brought 40 Taiwanese films to San Francisco Bay Area audiences through the S.F. International Film Festival. Yang’s A Confucian Confusion and Tsai Ming-liang’s Venice Film Festival winner Vive L’Amour were among the many Taiwanese titles screened at the international film festival.
The Taiwan Film Days Lineup
Writer Brian Hu ironically notes the audiences intended to benefit from the products of the Taiwanese New Wave turned against what they felt were elitist and over-Westernized films. This rejection ultimately led to the end of the New Wave movement. But the experimentation fomented by the Taiwanese New Wave got incorporated into more mainstream Taiwanese films. Some of these results are on display in the Taiwan Film Days program.
Singing Chen’s God Man Dog is an ensemble drama looking at the relationship between religious belief and modern Taiwanese society. Chen Yu-chieh’s Yang Yang tells the story of a half-Taiwanese, half-French competitive runner whose mixed nationality identity raises questions of personal alienation. Doze Niu Chen-zer’s What on Earth Have I Done Wrong? is an acerbic look at a budding filmmaker using ethically questionable means to make his political mockumentary a reality.
Yang Li-Chou’s Beyond The Arctic is Taiwan Film Days’ sole documentary. It’s a look at the 2008 three-man Taiwanese team competing in the Polar Challenge, an endurance race to the magnetic North Pole. Fu Tien-yu’s Somewhere I Have Never Traveled is a coming of age tale about a color-blind girl who longs to leave her small town for a place where she won’t be treated like a freak.
Two Academy Award submissions round out the program. Wei Te-sheng’s enormously popular Cape No. 7 intertwines a creation of a rock band story with a post-World War II tale of unrequited love between a Japanese school teacher and a secret lover. Leon Dai’s festival prizewinner No Puedo Vivir sin Ti tells of a father struggling to be re-united with his daughter after the government forcibly separates them.
Attending the Taiwan Film Days Program
The Taiwan Film Days program runs from November 6 to 8, 2009 at the Landmark Opera Plaza Cinema. The theater is located at 601 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. Cape No. 7 acts as opening night film, and a reception will follow the first screening. For further information about the films shown in the festival, interested readers are directed here.
