last night peter and i went to see our second film at the taiwan vs east europe festival. last week we saw jan svankmajer's conspirator's of pleasure which was just as wacked and wonderful as i remembered it being. one of the best things about seeing this film, was that for once not a single cell phone went off, and no one spoke during the film. this is a very rare occurance in taipei - as quite a few people here aren't very concerned about how their actions may disturb others(people tend to be better behaved at taipei film house though).
last night we saw jan svankmajer's little otik which i'd not seen before. the film is about an infertile couple who can't have a baby the natural way - but end up "adopting" a tree baby. i think this may be my favourite of the jan svankmajer features. there were quite a few scenes that reminded me of some of his short work. i tend to prefer his shorts to the features, so that may be why i liked this feature a bit more than his other features.
sadly, the audience this time wasn't so great. still no cell phones, but there was a couple behind peter who felt like it was their right to talk throughout the movie. i have very few qualms about shushing people like this. but peter didn't seem up to the task last night.
a lot of the films at this festival had both english and chinese subtitles. the film we saw last night had both. the english subtitles were part of the actual film, but below the screen they had put a small rectangular screen where they projected the chinese subtitles.
as we left the venue i picked up the scheldule for the taiwan international animation festival. this starts next week(why do i only find out about these things at the last minute?). there are lots of cool shorts playing from all over the world, as well as some features. i was really excited to see that the triplets of belleville will be playing, until i realized that i'd be in tainan the only day i could see it. their also having a tribute to rene laloux which looks like it could be cool. the only problem is that the scheldule doesn't mention anything about what language any of the films are in or what kind of subtitles they will have. i emailed the festival in english to find out, but i'm not sure if i'll actually get a response. with a short 2 or 3 minute film a language barrier may not be such a problem, but with a feature it would be.
