REEL TAIWAN

REEL TAIWAN
A Celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Women Make Waves International Film Festival (WMWIFF)

Presented by the Asian Film & Media Initiative at the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

Co-sponsored by the Center for Religion and Media; Center for Media, Culture and History, NYU

721 Broadway, 6th Floor, Michelson Theater
Nov. 17-19, 2023


This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Women Make Waves International Film Festival (WMWIFF, Taipei). For three decades, WMWIFF, the largest of its kind in Asia, has promoted and nourished countless women filmmakers from around the world including the Sinophone sphere. This special program (consisting of five fictional, experimental and documentary films) joins the celebrations taking place in Taipei, Paris and elsewhere this fall. The event also provides the happy occasion for a “homecoming” reunion of several filmmakers who studied at Tisch School of the Arts before they launched their fruitful careers as filmmakers, curators, critics, and educators.

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The event is co-organized by Zhen Zhang (Director of Asian Film & Media Initiative), Cristina Cajulis (Events Coordinator, Cinema Studies), Yushan HUANG, and Jane H.C. YU.

Special thanks to Women Make Waves International Film Festival and Tingwu Cho.

Thanks to Greg Helmstetter and student projectionists for technical support.
 

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This event is free and open to the public. RSVP required. Non-NYU persons will need to show government-issued photo ID for building access.

Friday, Nov. 17

5:15pm
Welcome and introductions by Yushan HUANG, Jane H.C. YU, Zhen ZHANG

5:30pm
Of East and West 高飛 (She-wei CHOU 周旭薇, 18 min, 1988)

CHOU’S graduate thesis work, Of East and West is a film about “disorientation.” Gao Fei (played by the great Ang Lee, also Tisch alumnus) is an energetic young man from Taiwan who wants to give himself a best shot of life in New York, the city “with all the possibilities and fortune.” He does not expect that there will be a series of miscalculations and unfortunate surprises awaiting him.

About the filmmaker:

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, CHOU graduated from the History department of National Taiwan University, and Graduate Film/TV department of New York University. She worked on several film productions, including Ang Lee’s “Pushing Hand” as assistant director. Her work With or Without You was selected to screen in Rotterdam International Film Festival and won the first prize in Women Film Festival in Seoul, the Asian Shorts competition of 2009. Her first feature, The Golden Child, was selected for the Sao Paulo International Film Festival and nominated for best picture, best screenplay , best director, and best leading actress at Taipei International Film Festival of 2012.

5:50pm
Spring Cactus 真情狂愛 (Yushan HUANG, 110 min, 1998)
Followed by Q & A with the filmmaker
Moderated by Zhen Zhang (Director of Asian Film & Media, NYU) and Beth Peijen Tsai (SUNY Albany) 

Based on the true story of the Buddhist Tzu-Chi Foundation volunteer Chen Ai-lan, this film was made possible after several years of field investigation. Lan leaves her broken family and school to work in the sex industry but finds herself sliding deep into a world of drugs and violence. She meets a kind social worker, Ming-Dau, and lives with him. One day, under an uncontrollable impulse caused by her addiction, she hurt Ming-Dau. After her release from prison, she meets Blacky, a gambling addict. Their relationship also ends badly. Eventually she meets the Dharma Master Cheng. Under his influence, she discovers a sense of her true self and an inner peace, but tragedy strikes again. A candid portrait of vulnerable young women in the Taiwan society undergoing drastic social and economic changes, Spring Cactus exudes a raw neo-realist energy shared by other seminal works of Taiwan New Cinema.


About the filmmaker:

Yushan HUANG, filmmaker, fiction writer, scholar, and curator, obtained her MA in Cinema Studies at NYU in 1982. She is a co-founder of the original WMAIFF (Taiwan Women’s Visual Arts Festival) in 1993. Her independent film studio, Black & White Film, has produced and distributed many films by women filmmakers. She also co-founded South Taiwan Film Festival and Kaohsiung International Film Festival. Selected Filmography: Autumn Tempest (1988), Twin Bracelets (1990, Audience Award for best feature in Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in San Francisco in 1991), Peony Birds (1990), Spring Cactus (1999), The Strait Story (2005), The Song of Chaitain Mountain (2007), Taste of Life (2015), and numerous documentaries.

8:15 pm
Reception and book launch (Women FIlmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema by Zhen Zhang)

Saturday, Nov. 18

3pm
Fresh Kill (Shu Lea Cheang 鄭淑麗, 80 min, 35mm, 1994)
Followed by Q & A with the filmmaker
Moderated by Zoe Meng Jiang (Cinema Studies, NYU)

“Kill” is Dutch for “stream.” FRESH KILL is a lethal satire swimming through a torrent of toxic multinational treachery. FRESH KILL tells the story of two young lesbian parents in New York caught up in a global exchange of industrial waste via contaminated sushi. Raw fish lips are the rage on trendy menus across Manhattan. A ghost barge, bearing nuclear refuse, circles the planet in search of a willing port. Household pets start to glow ominously and then disappear altogether. The sky opens up and snows soap flakes. People start speaking in dangerous tongues. Premiered in Berlinale in 1994, FRESH KILL in its restored 4K version will be relaunched in 2024.

About the filmmaker:

Shu Lea Cheang is an artist and filmmaker who engages in genre bending gender hacking art practices. She obtained her MA in Cinema Studies, NYU in 1979. Celebrated as a net art pioneer with BRANDON (1998 - 99), the first web art commissioned and collected by Guggenheim Museum, New York, Cheang represented Taiwan with 3x3x6, a mixed media installation, at Venice Biennale 2019.  Her feature length films, FRESH KILL (1994), I.K.U. (2000) and FLUIDø (2017), and UKI (2023) seek to define a genre of Sci-fi New Queer Cinema. She is currently touring UKI, termed a Sci-fi Viral Alt-Reality cinema, presenting in Berlin (LAS Art Foundation), Paris (Centre Pompidou) , New York (MoMA, on Nov. 20), ICA (London) among other venues.
 

5:15pm
God, Man, Dog 流浪神狗人 (Singing Chen 陳芯宜, 119 min, 2007)
Followed by Q & A with the filmmaker
Moderated by Anglea Zito (Co-director of Center for Religion and Media, NYU)

This is a rhapsody of Gods, men, and dogs down and out together. A meandering truck full of gods gets mixed up with a cast of outcasts whose lives gradually entwine with each other. 

Yellow Bull, the owner of the truck, travels around giving shelter to deserted God statues yet can’t afford to have his artificial leg fixed. Biung, an alcoholic aboriginal, transports top-class peaches between a remote village and Taipei city yet finds himself less valued than even a peach. 

Ching, a depressed middle-class wife, attempts to redeem her marriage after the death of her newborn. Then there’s a fatal car accident caused by a stray dog. Can it change their lives and put an end to the obvious and distinct boundaries between them?     

About the filmmaker:

Singing CHEN's work encompasses fiction, documentary and VR films and has received numerous festival accolades. Her debut Bundled (2000) competed at Vancouver IFF, God, Man, Dog (2007) premiered at Berlinale. Her documentaries detail artistic practice and the environment. Through VR technology she explores space and movement. Afterimage for Tomorrow (2018) was exhibited at the NewImage Festival. Her VR experience The Man Who Couldn't Leave (2022) won Venice Immersive Best Experience at 79th Venice International Film Festival. 

Sunday, Nov. 19
4pm
Come Home, My Child 愛子歸來 (Jasmine Chinghui LEE 李靖惠, 92 min, 2023)
Post-screening panel discussion with director Jasmine Lee, music composer Kat Vokes, and executive producer Zhen Zhang
Moderated by Jane Yu (guest curator)

After the death of her husband and her son, Mama Yang, immigrated to New York from Taiwan at the age of sixty. Other young people had also taken this journey, but instead of finding their American Dreams, they ended up in prison.

For more than two decades, Mama Yang’s mission in life has been to correspond with inmates in New York’s prison system. The documentary follows Mama Yang’s extraordinary life journey to tell stories of a group of people searching for a way out of tragedy, who encounter each other in a world of loneliness. How do they cope with the pain and how do they survive? Mama Yang writes letters – whether to the incarcerated or to her own troubled Taiwanese-American granddaughter– to heal lifetimes of wounds.

Filmed over the course of ten years, woven together with their stories, this film reveals the harsh truths of the unpredictable ups and downs in life, while showcasing the transformative power that love can reach and liberate captive souls across races and generations.

About the filmmaker:

Jasmine Chinghui LEE has been working as an independent filmmaker for 25 years. Her award-winning documentaries focus on themes of gender, family, and migration. Her protagonist-driven narratives are built on long-term relationships LEE develops with her subjects. Money and Honey won the AND Distribution Award in BIFF and 10 more awards internationally. Come Back, My Child is selected by the San Diego Asian Film Festival, 2023.
 

About the guest curator:

Jane H.C. YU 游惠貞received her MA in Cinema Studies from New York University in 1991. She is a veteran programmer, and one of the founders and committee member of Asian Network of Documentary Fund (AND), Busan International Film Festival, from 2006 to 2018. As a producer, Jane had produced the documentary FaceTaiwan: Power of Taiwan Cinema (2016). She has been working with dir. LIN Cheng-sheng’s production team since 2019. She is currently producing a documentary The Accidental Politician (Dir: YANG Cheng-Shin). YU has written, edited and translated many books on cinema, including The Cinema World of Editor CHEN Po Wen, Asian Documentary Today, and Women and Image: Diverse Views of Women’s Cinema.