Chiayi City International Art Documentary Film Festival
Literature on the Rise
Poetry, Art, Heart to Heart
HUANG Mingchuan
Taiwan｜2014｜54 min | Chinese/ English Subtitles | G
3/13 Fri. 19:00 ★World Premiere ☆Filmmaker in Attendance
To honor the 20th anniversary of Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 20 well-known poets had been invited to offer 40 poems as art collections. Afterwards, inspired by artworks and poems, the composers wrote out 8 pieces of music. The ultimate episode was the documentary, Poetry, Art, Heart to Heart, shooting in the collection storeroom. Along with visual effects in filmmaking, the transfer of rhymes and rhythms in poetry reading mirrored the musical nature of languages in the myriads of performance.
Olando: Documentary
CHIU Hsaio-Wei, CHEN Kuan-Yu
Taiwan｜2009｜62 min | Chinese Subtitles | G
3/21 Sat. 17:30
Robert Wilson, the director and artist, owns the reputation of a minimalist capable of powerful theater. WEI Hai-min, a renowned Peking opera diva from Guo-guang Opera Company. When west met east, Wilson, a post-modern stage director, and WEI, an artist of Mei Lanfang School, began a cross-cultural collaboration based on Virginia Woolf's gender writing Orlando. A radical difference from other version of "Orlando adaption" had promised to be a two-hour performance in National Theatre & Concert Hall in 2009.
Deaf Jam
Judy LIEFF
USA｜2011｜54 min｜Chinese Subtitles | G
3/29 Sun. 17:30
Aneta BRODSKI is a deaf teen introduced to American Sign Language (ASL) Poetry, who then boldly enters the spoken word slam scene. In a wondrous twist, Aneta, an Israeli immigrant living in the Queens section of New York City, eventually meets Tahani, a hearing Palestinian slam poet. The two women embark on a collaboration/performance duet - creating a new form of slam poetry that speaks to both the hearing and the Deaf.
Sound of Sakura
HUANG Mingchuan
Taiwan｜2014｜80 min | Chinese /English /Japanese Subtitles | G
3/15 Sun. 13:00 ★World Premiere ☆Filmmaker in Attendance
Sound of Sakura tells the history of Taiwanese literature, with portraits of trans-lingual writers who went through Japanese colonial period to post-World War II and suffered from writing in the loss of languages. By calling back memories of their very own, from youth to adulthood, this documentary shows the voices of the times, the strength of literary mind, and also, the identity of Taiwanese.
The Man Behind the Book
LIN Jing-Jie
Taiwan｜2011｜106 min | Chinese Subtitles | G
3/27 Fri. 16:30
Every night the novelist fights with himself in a confined space, in which he simply writes out 30 words a day. By keeping track of a young novelist, WANG Wen-xin, The Man behind the Book connects the various pieces of his literary career. Impressed by the heavy book shelves in the library, the random trees, and forked roads, WANG's sensitiveness to art and beauty in every corner appears nearly spiritual in an unadorned aloneness. It is a mystic process that transforms thoughts into symbols precisely, and eventually turns to words.
The Woman with the 5 Elephants
Vadim Jendreyko
Germany, Switzerland｜2009｜94 min | Chinese Subtitles | G
3/21 Sat. 19:30
Swetlana GEIER is considered the greatest translator of Russian literature into German. Her translations of DOSTOYEVSKY's five great novels are known as "five elephants" in her life works. This film is following her first trip since the war back to the places of her childhood in the Ukraine, delineating how philosophical GEIER would be about great sufferings, silent helpers and unhoped-for chances – and a love for language that outshines all else.
