For a testament to the presence of underground amateur film talent in Taipei, as well as to the concept that almost anyone can make movies now with a Guanghua-market PC and a cheap handycam, look no further than the Urban Nomad film festival, which starts today and runs through Sunday. The event screens a selection of short films by expat and local filmmakers that, while often extravagantly lo-fi in their production, are a refreshing break from the earnestness of Taipei's other film festivals.
This year, the organizers have tightened up their programming to cut down on the genuinely bad movies that have marred previous Urban Nomads and selected the choice cuts from among the movies submitted. They also solicited films from abroad and at colleges in Taiwan. So, this year's lineup of movies will try to balance the quirkiness of amateur alternative film with some near-professional level films to make the audience feel like their NT$200 wouldn't have been better spent on the latest Hollywood schlock flick.
A sneak preview of a handful of the scheduled movies shows plenty of promise. Tomorrow's digital shorts category will include former Taipei resident Jay Spieden's gory animation Choppy the Chimp and Les Arthur's Street Pong. In this second movie, two ping-pong players wheel their table through the streets of Taiwan to play in some random locations like in front of a Family Mart and eventually end up on a beach with the tide coming to add tension to their dramatic match point. It's not brilliant, but it's fun.
PHOTO COURTESY OF URBAN NOMAD
Norman Szabo's Dignity, which also screens tomorrow in the same category, enjoys some surprisingly good acting from local expats, as does TC Lin's spy thriller Clay Soldiers. Lin's film was submitted to the ladyxfilms.com film project that collects amateur spy flicks from around the world, and, in keeping with the genre's tradition, there are mysterious and ravishing ladies, a secret disc and a high-speed chase with bullets flying.
In tonight's program, two of the films previewed that are worth cheking out are The Locust, which is basically a music video for the LA band by the same name, and The Varieties of Romantic Experience, a short by Northwestern University film student Dan Freed shot with professional actors.
The highlight of the festival will be Sunday's screening of Aza Jakob's feature film Nobody Needs to Know, which has a synopsis on the film's own Web site that is entirely incomprehensible, but suggests a theme that explores the notion of the camera -- both the closed-circuit and the film kind -- as a tool of control. Part of the festival's program will be a free workshop tomorrow at Huashan Arts District by Ulead software company to tutor amateur filmmakers in its editing software.
PHOTO COURTESY OF URBAN NOMAD
PHOTO COURTESY OF URBAN NOMAD
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, speaking at the Reagan Defense Forum last week, said the US is confident it can defeat the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Pacific, though its advantage is shrinking. Paparo warned that the PRC might launch a “war of necessity” even if it thinks it could not win, a wise observation. As I write, the PRC is carrying out naval and air exercises off its coast that are aimed at Taiwan and other nations threatened by PRC expansionism. A local defense official said that China’s military activity on Monday formed two “walls” east
The latest military exercises conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last week did not follow the standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formula. The US and Taiwan also had different explanations for the war games. Previously the CCP would plan out their large-scale military exercises and wait for an opportunity to dupe the gullible into pinning the blame on someone else for “provoking” Beijing, the most famous being former house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Those military exercises could not possibly have been organized in the short lead time that it was known she was coming.
The world has been getting hotter for decades but a sudden and extraordinary surge in heat has sent the climate deeper into uncharted territory — and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Over the past two years, temperature records have been repeatedly shattered by a streak so persistent and puzzling it has tested the best-available scientific predictions about how the climate functions. Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming, and that natural climate variability can also influence temperatures one year to the next. But they are still debating what might have contributed to this
For the authorities that brought the Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道) into existence, the route is as much about culture as it is about hiking. Han culture dominates the coastal and agricultural flatlands of Tainan and Chiayi counties, but as the Greenway climbs along its Tribal Trail (原鄉之路) section, hikers pass through communities inhabited by members of the Tsou Indigenous community. Leaving Chiayi County’s Dapu Village (大埔), walkers follow Provincial Highway 3 to Dapu Bridge where a sign bearing the Tsou greeting “a veo veo yu” marks the point at which the Greenway turns off to follow Qingshan Industrial Road (青山產業道路)
RSS