The 2009 Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival to be held in Taipei next month will showcase 34 films from 11 countries.
Lin Wen-ling (林文玲), curator of the biennial event, said the films at the festival, which will run from Oct. 2 to Oct. 6, feature indigenous, traditional and alternative healing practices of different cultures. The films also explore the issues of suffering and care, as well as depicting viewpoints on life and death, he said.
With “body and soul” as the main theme of this year’s entries, the 34 films are from the US, China, South Korea, the UK, France, Israel, Australia, Nepal, Norway, Belgium and Taiwan.
US ethnographic filmmakers Timothy and Patsy Asch and anthropologist Linda Connor, who jointly produced A Balinese Trance Seance and Releasing the Spirits: A Village Cremation in Bali, have been selected to be this year’s directors in focus.
Another director in focus will be Bilin Yabu of Taiwan’s Atayal Tribe. Two of his films will be shown during the five-day event.
One of Bilin Yabu’s films is a documentary The Stories of Rainbow (彩虹的故事), which is about the Atayal legend of the rainbow that leads the soul of a deceased person to heaven after he or she dies. The facial tattoos of the tribe’s people is the way for them to reach the rainbow.
Bilin Yabu’s other work Through Thousands of Years (走過千年) is a film about the migration history of the Atayal people and the intercultural conflicts they experienced.
Launched in 2001, the film festival is sponsored by the Taiwan Association of Visual Ethnography, a non-profit organization dedicated to greater public awareness of documentary and ethnographic films, and the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Ethnology.
Opening at 7pm on Oct. 2, the 34 films will be screened at the Taipei Shin Kong Cineplex from 10am to midnight from Oct. 3 to Oct. 6.
The curator has invited some directors to join the audience in post-screening discussions.
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