Film festival explores cultural connections between Taiwan, SE Asia

2017/10/25

A special film screening and audio-visual performance program is set to take place Oct. 27-28 as part of the New Narratives Film Festival, a 10-day event showcasing a variety of Taiwan and Southeast Asian movies at Taipei City Hakka Cultural Park.
 
 Supported by Taipei City Government’s Hakka Affairs Commission, the program comprises the Oct. 27 Taiwan premiere of “#BKKY” by Thai director Nontawat Numbenchapol, a work examining identity politics through the intermixing of a fictional story of two teenage girls in Bangkok and interviews with youths from the city. Following the screening, German DJ David Geer will deliver an improvised musical performance to accompany Numbenchapol’s short film “Skateboarding.”
 
The following day, Taiwan’s Flying Group Theater, local director Lin Jiaming and Indonesia’s Papermoon Puppet Theatre will jointly stage “Mwathirika / The Oppressor.” An adaptation of an original work by the Indonesian troupe, the puppetry show exploring life under oppressive regimes will be performed alongside footage from Lin’s 2015 film “The Treasonists.”
 
According to HAC Chairman Tseng Nian-yeou, the third edition of the annual New Narratives Film Festival presents performances and cinematic works that explore conversations between ethnic groups, gender and identity, and the urban-rural development gap. The event also spotlights parallels in cultural development and historical experiences between Taiwan’s Hakka people and communities across Southeast Asia, he said.
 
 Festival curator Chung Shefong said Taiwan and Southeast Asian nations share deep artistic and cultural connections, citing the influence of the Taiwan campus folk song movement of the 1970s on the development of the Mandarin music industry in Singapore in the subsequent decade. The festival aims to deepen this mutual understanding through providing viewers with the opportunity to experience diverse worldviews, she added.
 
 According to organizers, the Oct. 20-29 festival comprises screenings of 36 films from home and abroad as well as discussions with directors and musical performances.
 
 Featured works have been divided into five categories, Birds on a Wire, Bento Cinema, City Borders, In Between and History Re/Vision. The first grouping consists of films containing musical works that highlight key social issues from the periods in which they were written, while the others examine livelihoods, immigration, transgender issues and overlooked historical events from Southeast Asian countries, respectively.
 
 Such efforts to foster exchanges between Taiwan and Southeast Asian nations have intensified recently in line with a major government program to expand ties with the region. The New Southbound Policy, a central plank in Taiwan’s national development strategy, seeks to deepen agricultural, business, cultural, education, trade and tourism links with the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states, six South Asian countries, Australia and New Zealand.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=18&post=123658)