Fifteen Taiwanese films are being screened in London at Myriad Voices: Reframing Taiwan New Cinema, a film festival jointly hosted by Taiwan’s Culture Ministry and the British Film Institute (BFI).
A seminar on Taiwan New Cinema by Huang Yu-shan (黃玉珊) took place on Saturday, exploring Taiwanese cinema from academic, cultural, societal, political, and industrial perspectives. Huang, the founder of the Taiwan International Women’s Film Festival, led the seminar to explore the themes, industry practices, and feminist perspectives of the 1980s, regarded as Taiwan’s “golden age” of cinema. University of California, Santa Barbara researcher Tsai Pei-chen (蔡佩真) noted that the proportion of women directing Taiwanese movies is relatively low and mostly restricted to documentary work.
Classic Taiwanese New Wave films from directors Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), Edward Yang (楊德昌), Wang Toon (王童), Wan Jen (萬仁), Chang Yi (張毅), Chen Kun-hou (陳坤厚), and Huang Yu-shan (黃玉珊) and more are being showcased at the festival, taking place at the BFI Southbank through April 30.