Urban Nomad Film Fest (城市游牧影展), Taiwan’s only truly independent underground film festival, kicks into full gear tonight with screenings of Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Part 1, a dozen shorts, and a film by a director who rode the rails across the US for 16 years, armed with a Super-8 camera and documenting the universe of hobo graffiti.
Now in its seventh year, the festival screens experimental and animation works, features, short films and documentaries by foreign and local filmmakers.
As always, it’s a refreshing change of pace from the earnestness of Taipei’s other film festivals. But in recent years the quality of its program has improved dramatically. What was once primarily a showcase of mostly local, extravagantly lo-fi productions, is now attracting international attention.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF KEVIN ESTRADA
Over the past, Urban Nomad has toured outside Taiwan for the first time. Last year’s program was shown in its entirety this past March in Hong Kong. Organizers were also invited by the Scope art fair to show Urban Nomad films and video art at exhibitions in Miami and Basel, Switzerland.
“The cool thing is that it gave us the chance to show Taiwanese film and art outside Taiwan, which is not happening that much,” said festival cofounder David Frazier. (Frazier was formerly a reporter at the Taipei Times.)
Urban Nomad is now nearly 100 percent bilingual: Chinese-language films have English subtitles and vice-versa. Frazier believes this is one of the main reasons why it’s been attracting more and better films. This year there were more than 250 submissions— 70 were accepted — compared with 140 submissions last year. As late as two years ago, Urban Nomad’s entire program consisted of fewer than 50 films.
Photos courtesy of kevin estrada
A glance at the schedule shows plenty of promise. There’s a special China Human Rights program on Monday. The Corporation, which traces the origins and the evolution of the corporation, screens on Tuesday. Wednesday features a Star Trek parody billed as “what may be the most-watched film in the history of Finnish cinema.” And on Thursday there’s Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, a rock ’n’ roll documentary about Californian band Dengue Fever with a Cambodian-American singer who tour Cambodia with a repertoire of 1960s and 1970s Khmer oldies.
Among the shorts worth checking out: Hiya, a hilarious piece starring members of local punk band Children Sucker (表兒) filmed by Lai Wen-hsuan (賴文軒) that shows tonight at 8:30pm; Who Kills Rockstars?, tomorrow at 7:30pm; and Waterfront Villa Bonita, a film about cults and bank robbers by Ian Lou (樓一安), editor of the recently released, critically acclaimed movie God Man Dog (流浪神狗人). Waterfront will be shown on May 2, at 7:30pm.
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During the Japanese colonial era, remote mountain villages were almost exclusively populated by indigenous residents. Deep in the mountains of Chiayi County, however, was a settlement of Hakka families who braved the harsh living conditions and relative isolation to eke out a living processing camphor. As the industry declined, the village’s homes and offices were abandoned one by one, leaving us with a glimpse of a lifestyle that no longer exists. Even today, it takes between four and six hours to walk in to Baisyue Village (白雪村), and the village is so far up in the Chiayi mountains that it’s actually
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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
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