Six short films exploring different subjects and visual styles will be shown in this screening.
Event: Stuttmyndir frá Tævan (Taiwanese Short Films)
Time: 13 March 2019 20:00
Approx. total length: 131 mins (For each film’s length, please refer to respective section below.)
Venue: Bíó Paradís
The Glamorous Boys of Tang (唐朝綺麗男)
Dir. Su Hui-yu 蘇匯宇
2018 | 15min
In artist Su Hui-yu’s signature style, a moody slow-motion pan captures a wild, glitter-scattered, blood-splattered orgy during the Tang dynasty. The film is an invocation of scenes from 1985 Taiwanese cult film Tang Chao Chi Li that only existed in the screenplay, unfilmed until now due to what can only be imagined as budgetary restrictions and censorship pressures during the Martial Law era. Presented without narrative context, the orgiastic murder scene plays out like an unsettling nightmare. Su Hui-Yu has re-created The Glamorous Boys of Tang to call together the differently gendered bodies and subcultures of Taiwan’s diverse society
Award nominations:
2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam
2018 Taiwan Biennale at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
Blossom (繁花盛開)
Dir. Lin Han 林涵
2017 | Drama / Mandarin / 25min
A life of a person is an endless search of one’s sense of belonging. What kind of family can provide a complete belonging if one can choose? In Taiwan, it is already tough for those who wants to create a family with a child of one’s own due to the economic and social consensus. Not to mention for the marginalised transgendered community, there is a great revolution of equalisation that has not yet succeeded. Cherry identified herself as a drag queen. Before the show, she found out her boyfriend had been cheating sleeping with another girl for awhile. Pulled herself together she walked on her way to work, she met with an abandoned baby. When she was performing sparkly on the stage with her close sister, Lena, they discovered something weird about this baby…
In Trance We Gaze (恍惚與凝視的練習)
Dir. Chen Singing 陳芯宜
2018 | Art, Doc / Taiwanese, Mandarin / 20min
Under constant regimes of discipline and incorporation, rituals, faiths, bodies, and the position of man and god all trend towards uprootedness, where we lose our links to the land and to others. Time is dissected into ever more infinitesimal parts. Those who could not keep up appear within the gaze of a stopped frame. All destruction and rebirth meet at this point in search of a safe corner.
The Pig (豬)
Dir. Chen Singing 陳芯宜
2013 | Drama / Mandarin / 21min
Dawang’s home is about to be demolished. The pig he has painstakingly raised is about to become a religious offering at a Temple Fair. Meanwhile, it hasn’t rained in Taipei for ages. Dawang recalls the Buddhist fable of a benevolent king who sacrificed himself to end his city’s long drought. Dawang’s neighbor, A-Mao, a showgirl with pink hair, worries about being outcompeted by younger girls. In this parched city, two lost souls come together in a struggle for survival.