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REVIEWS<br />
Taiwan’s Singing<br />
Chen and South<br />
Korea’s Jero Yun<br />
collaborated on<br />
short film <strong>The</strong> Pig.<br />
Taipei Factory<br />
This collective shorts project unites young Taiwanese<br />
directors with filmmakers from across the globe<br />
BY STEPHEN DALTON<br />
A portmanteau project designed to help propel young Taiwanese<br />
film talent onto the world stage, Taipei Factory is bookending the<br />
Directors’ Fortnight program this year. A joint enterprise between<br />
the Taipei Film Commission and the Fortnight section organizers,<br />
this feature-length patchwork is composed of four short films, each<br />
co-directed by a Taiwanese filmmaker in partnership with a collaborator<br />
from outside the island. <strong>The</strong> intentions are noble enough, but<br />
the results are highly uneven, with little parity between the films in<br />
tone, theme or quality. This kind of collective promotional vehicle is<br />
tailor-made for festivals dedicated to new talent and Asian cinema,<br />
but commercial prospects outside Taiwan will be very limited.<br />
<strong>The</strong> opening and closing sections provide more or less conventional<br />
dramatic narratives, while the middle two are more experimental.<br />
A collaboration between Taiwan’s Singing Chen and South<br />
Korea’s Jero Yun, <strong>The</strong> Pig depicts the shared despair of an ageing<br />
showgirl and an impoverished farmer forced to sell his prize pig just<br />
as his neighborhood is being demolished for redevelopment. Silent<br />
Asylum by Taiwanese-Burmese filmmaker Midi Zhao and French<br />
actor-artist-director Joana Preiss combines harrowing docudrama<br />
testimony describing state oppression in Burma with Preiss reading<br />
somber poetry about Hiroshima. An important subject, but a bad<br />
fit for such an arty and mannered format. Equally underwhelming<br />
is A Nice Travel by Taipei director Shen Ko-shang and Chilean Luis<br />
Cifuentes, a jumble of episodes in the life of young woman as she<br />
prepares to leave Taiwan to get married in Chile.<br />
<strong>The</strong> best of the quartet is the closing chapter, Mr Chang’s New<br />
Address, by Taiwanese director Chang Jung-chi and his Iranian collaborator<br />
Alireza Khatami. This Kafkaesque fable follows a middleaged<br />
professional thrown into existential meltdown when his house<br />
disappears, leaving just a door at the end of his street. Layered with<br />
dark humor, this is the only film of the four likely to leave viewers<br />
wanting more. <strong>The</strong>re unquestionably is budding talent on show<br />
here, but overall Taipei Factory feels like a cross-cultural experiment<br />
that gets lost in translation.<br />
Directors’ Fortnight<br />
Directors Singing Chen, Jero Yun, Midi Zhao, Joana Preiss, Shen Koshang,<br />
Luis Cifuentes, Chang Jung-chi, Alireza Khatami // 75 minutes<br />
NFVF D4 051813.indd 1<br />
5/15/13 11:50 AM
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