Women Make Waves Film Festival set for Taichung

2015/10/30

The Women Make Waves Film Festival is to tour to Taichung City for the first time Oct. 30, with movies showing the challenges and gender biases faced by women in contemporary society.

“We’re working to raise public awareness of sexual and gender diversity in order to dispel stereotypes and encourage people to embrace self-identity,” Mayor Lin Chia-lung said at an Oct. 27 promotional event.

Held at the National Library of Public Information, the three-day fair will feature eight movies from home and abroad culled from the Oct. 9-18 Taipei version of the festival.

The films to be shown are “Aphasia” and “Hebei Taipei” from Taiwan, “Corinne’s Secret” and “Ella” of Germany, “Sexy Money” from the Netherlands, “My No-mercy Home” of South Korea, “Boxing for Freedom” from Spain and mainland China’s “One Summer.”

The opening film “Corinne’s Secret” by Maike Conway is a documentary about an HIV-positive girl infected at birth. The work follows the protagonist as she struggles to lead a normal life and decide between revealing the disease and hiding it away.

The director spent more than 10 years recording Corinne’s life since she was a child, pulling back the curtain on her relationship with her protective foster parents and her efforts to cope with the bias and fear she encounters in mainstream society. The movie was screened at the 2015 International Documentary Film Festival Munich.

Another eye-catching work is “Hebei Taipei” by Li Nien-hsiu, who beat 21 other submissions to win the top prize in Taiwan Competition at the 22nd WMWFF in Taipei. The film documents the war memories of Li’s soldier father, as well as her efforts to retrace his tumultuous past in Hebei province, mainland China.

Choosing to move to Taiwan after fighting against and being captured by U.N. forces in the Korean War (1950-1953), Li’s father never had a chance to return to his hometown in the mainland.

Haunted by memories of the conflict and his experiences during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), he started to wear wigs and women’s dresses, trying to recollect his youth. The work was also shown at the 2015 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan.

Launched in 1993, the WMWFF began touring Taiwan in 2001. The event is intended to serve as a platform where an array of perspectives on women’s issues can be presented, according to its organizer Taiwan Women’s Film Association.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=238335&ctNode=2194&mp=9)