Arts Listings
Moving Pictures: Taiwan Film Festival Comes to UC Campus
Another weekend, another film festival.
This time it’s the Taiwan Film Festival, held on the UC campus at the Berkeley Art Museum and at Pacific Film Archive Friday, Sept. 29 through Sunday, Oct. 1.
The festival’s theme is “Beyond the New Wave” and features eight documentary films selected to demonstrate the range and vitality of contemporary Taiwanese filmmaking.
The “New Wave” refers to Taiwanese films of the 1980s by directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang, films that took the country’s film industry beyond the formulaic teen romance and kung-fu features that dominated the country’s output in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The New Wave films instead took a more realistic approach, delving into Taiwanese history and depicting the lives of ordinary people.
In recent years, affordable digital technology has fostered a boom in Taiwanese documentary filmmaking, but these films rarely make it to U.S. theaters. These screenings, several of which feature the directors in person, represent the only chances Bay Area moviegoers may get to see any of these engaging films.
The screenings are divided between the Berkeley Art Museum (2621 Durant Ave.) and the Pacific Film Archive theater (2575 Bancroft Way). For more information, see http://2006tff.blogspot.com.
