Taiwanese film festival for SA

The festival launches at Cinema Nouveau screened by Jameson Rosebank, Johannesburg from 26 October 2007 to 1 November and then moves to Gateway Mall, Durban, 16 – 22 November, and V&A Waterfront Nouveau, 23 – 29 November. Taiwanese film aficionados will have the opportunity to see seven award winning films specially selected for SA audiences.

Taiwanese movies first stepped onto the global scene in 1982 with the New Wave movement, led by a group of young directors that transformed cinematography with completely new styles and subject material.

The New Wave cinema is best exemplified by the work of director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, whose masterpiece Three Times, will screen at the festival and which follows a pair of lovers through three different incarnations covering different periods in history, beginning in 1911 and ending in contemporary Taipei.

Second Wave

In 1990, the Second Wave of Taiwanese directors began to create yet another era in filmmaking. Lee, the top Asian director in Hollywood, is perhaps the most well-known Second New Wave director and is fittingly the focus of the festival.

Lee continues to receive international acclaim for his outstanding work, and only last month his latest offering Lust, Caution won the Golden Lion Award for best film at the Venice Film Festival. The festival will bring three of Lee's classic movies to the big screen.

Pushing Hands and Eat Drink Man Woman depict the foibles of contemporary family life, and form part of Lee's "Father Knows Best" trilogy. Pushing Hands depicts the life of a retired Tai Chi coach who travels to the US. to live with his son, while Eat Drink Man Woman is the story of a master chef and his three lovely daughters. In a different vein, Brokeback Mountain tells the story of homosexual love between two cowboys that is hampered by their heterosexual relations with women.

Another distinguished Second Wave director is Tsai Ming-Liang, who interprets the desolation of modern society and the chaos of urban life from a cool, detached point of view. On show at the festival is Tsai's Goodbye Dragon Inn, a nostalgic piece that honors the closing of Taipei's Fu-Ho Movie Theatre by committing it to cinematic memory.

"If there is something you ought to do, do it now or you will never do it for the rest of your life". This is the opening line from Island Etude, the newest offering at the festival, which tells the tale of a strong-willed young man who rides his battered old bicycle all the way around Taiwan.

The only documentary to be screened, Let It Be, is an account of the day-to-day life and labor of three farmers in the heart of Taiwan's rice-producing county. The film follows the planting, nurturing and harvesting of the rice crop over the seasons; celebrating an age-old way of life that is under threat from globalization.

Entrance to the Taiwan Film Festival is free and screenings will take place every evening at 5.30pm and 8.15pm, respectively.