| DATE: | Friday, September 29, 2006 to Sunday, October 1, 2006 |
|---|---|
| PLACE: | Pacific Film Archive Theater and UC Berkeley Art Museum Theater |
| FORMAT: | Film screening |
| SPONSORS: | Institute of East Asian Studies, Asia Society Northern California, Chuan Lyu Foundation, TECO-SF |
This year the Institute of East Asian Studies is co-presenting the 2006 Taiwan Film Festival. The film festival will showcase eight feature and documentary films from Taiwan. An overview of the films in alphabetical order is included below. Admission to all screenings is free. Seating is limited. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. For further details please visit
http://2006tff.blogspot.com/.
How High is the Mountain
(by Tang Hsiang-chu)
What do family and fatherhood mean in contemporary Taiwan? How do Mainland refugees relate to the families they left behind when they fled to Taiwan in the late 1940s? The director uses his own family to explore the answers to these questions. He not only explores his search for his father’s past, but also examines his own recent experience of becoming a father himself. The director and his father return to China to meet relatives and reestablish long-broken ties of kinship through family gatherings, folk rituals and religious ceremonies, and through conversations with family members, teachers, and old friends.
Saturday, September 30, 2006, 4:00 pm
Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
Love Go Go
(by Chen Yu-hsun)
Mismatched love, isolation, and the universal hope of finding one’s soulmate are the themes of this poignant film set in contemporary urban Taiwan. The story’s various characters each have some connection with the small bakery shop run by Ah Sheng’s aunt. Ah Sheng works in the back of the shop baking and designing pastries; his long-lost schoolmate is the woman who comes in to buy lemon pie: his roommate develops a blind love for the owner of an electronic pager she finds; a young salesman who sells defense gadgets tries to rescue a beautiful woman. This award-winning film is marked by a riot of bright colors, a sometimes anarchic spirit, and an always playful sense of fun.
Saturday, September 30, 2006, 9:00 pm
Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
Murmur of Youth
(by Lin Cheng-sheng)
Lin Sheng-cheng’s second feature, this film is perhaps the first in Taiwan to broach the subject of lesbian desire. The film offers a cross-section of Taipei society with the story of two teenage girls who share the name Mei-li. One Mei-li inhabits the concrete world of high-rise apartment buildings in the city center with her middle-class family; the other lives with her working-class family living in the lushly green outskirts of the city. The two girls’ paths cross when they both take jobs selling movie tickets, and in the cramped space of the ticket booth, their developing friendship takes an amorous turn.
Friday, September 29, 2006, 3:00 pm
Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
Ocean Fever
(by Chen Lung-nan)
This verite portrait of young rock ‘n rollers was an audience favorite at the 2004 Taipei Film Festival. Aboriginal Taiwanese director Chen Lung-nan takes a fly-on-the-wall approach to chronicling the experience of five fledgling bands including a raucous rapmetal combo called Stone and the punkish girl trio Hotpink in the heady days before they perform at the Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival, a massive beachside talent contest for aspiring pop acts. In classic “rockumentary” fashion, the film captures the hopes and dreams (not to mention the personal doubts and unexpected setbacks) of the competing bands while offering an affectionate look at contemporary youth culture in Taiwan.
Saturday, September 30, 2006, 7:00 pm
Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring
(by Sylvia Feng)
Two plays collide, as do the memories and emotions for the past and present. Through a scheduling mistake, two troupes find themselves trapped in the same rehearsal space. One play is a lofty, pretentious take on a soap opera awhile the other is broadly farcical, and yet the plays share common themes. Scenes and dialogues juxtaposed manage to cause offense, create comedy, and point to deeper truths. Based on Stan Lai’s famous play of the same name, the film also works as an allegory depicting a mainlander who fled China in 1949. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the original play.
Saturday, September 30, 2006, 2:30 pm
Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
The Strait Story
(by Hsang Yu-Shan)
The year was 1943 and Taiwan was under Japanese rule. After finishing his studies in Japan, famous Taiwanese sculptor and painter Huang Ching-cheng boarded the “Takachiho Maru” ship from Kobe, Japan to return home before heading to China for a teaching job. As the huge vessel approached the Kneelung harbor, it was torpedoed by an American submarine. The Strait Story is the director’s attempt to recover a lost page of Taiwanese history. Viewers discover Huang’s childhood in rural Taiwan, his maturation as an artist in Tokyo, and his enduring passion for art and love.
Sunday, October 1, 2006, 9:30 pm
Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
Tiger Women Grow Wings
(by Monika Treut)
German director Monika Treut focuses her lens on Taiwan, examining the lives of three women of different generations against the backdrop of the socio-political changes of Taiwan and the 2004 presidential election. Treut offers subtle, moving portraits of the famous Taiwanese opera singer Hsieh Yue-hsia, award winning novelist Li Ang, and up-and-coming filmmaker Chen Ying-rong. Through their eyes and stories, the viewer glimpses the many changes and continuing conflict in Taiwanese society, as well as the raucous campaigning typical of Taiwan elections.
Friday, September 29, 2006, 7:00 pm
Museum Theater, UC Berkeley Art Museum, 2621 Durant Avenue, Berkeley
Viva Tonal - The Dance Age
(by Chien Wei-ssu, Sylvia Feng)
“I’m a cultured woman, traveling about footloose and fancy-free.” So begins a lilting tune from Taiwan’s “Dance age” of the 1920s and ‘30s, a paradoxical time when the island’s occupation by Japan also brought youth culture and a measure of artistic freedom. Women smoked cigarettes, love scandals were rife, and risqué Taiwanese pop was born. This lively historical documentary mixes engaging interviews with catchy songs, haunting period footage, and reenactments of the unrequited romance between the lovely chanteuse Sun Sun and her songwriter Chen Chun-yu.
Sunday, October, 1, 2006, 7:30 pm
Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
