The film festival, “French Classics Rediscovered: Freedom For Us,” opened Friday in New Taipei, providing the audience in Taiwan with a rare glimpse of the artistic freedom expressed in French cinema and society during the interwar period.
A selection of 31 French movies produced from 1915 to 1939 will be screened at weekends at the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI) in Xinzhuang, New Taipei, for the duration of the film festival, which runs through July 31.
They include “An Andalusian Dog,” a 1929 Franco-Spanish silent film by Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel in collaboration with artist Salvador Dalí. The 21-minute short is considered the epitome of surrealist film.
The TFAI will also screen “The Rules of the Game,” a satirical comedy directed by French filmmaker Jean Renoir in 1939. The film was ranked fourth in the list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time by the U.K.’s Sight & Sound magazine in 2012.
Speaking to CNA on Friday, the festival’s co-curator Wafa Ghermani said although Taiwanese movie enthusiasts tend to be more familiar with French New Wave films from the 1960s, movies made during the interwar period were equally important in French cinema.
It was an era in which French society was more liberal compared to the two World War periods and artists from around Europe gathered in Paris to create and experiment freely, said Ghermani, who works at Cinémathèque française and has curated many film festivals.
Such artistic freedom can be found in the French films of that period, and it is hard to draw clear lines of demarcation between experimental and commercial films, according to Ghermani.
Avant-garde filmmakers at the time did not resist working on commercials, while commercial directors were apt to fuse experimental elements into their dramas, she added.
The films during the interwar period also marked an important transition from silent movies to talkies and had an enduring influence on French New Wave filmmakers such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Ghermani said.
According to the TFAI, the French film festival which opened Friday is part of an exchange between the TFAI and its French counterpart, Cinémathèque française, that began in 2019, when a Taiwanese film festival with lesser-known Taiwanese movies made from the 1960s to the 1980s was held in Paris.
It is hoped that the selections for the French film festival “refresh our imagination of cinema” and allow for reflection on Taiwanese people’s own “fight for cultural freedom” in the 1920s under Japanese rule, TFAI Executive Director Wang Chun-chi (???) noted.
Meanwhile, TFAI Chairman Tony Lan (???) said at the opening on Friday evening that of all the public screenings the TFAI has organized over the years, French movies have always been the most popular among Taiwanese audience.
The film festival is an excellent opportunity for people to get to know more about French cinema, Lan added.
In addition to the regular program, the TFAI will host an open-air screening of two experimental films — “The Madness of Dr. Tube” by Abel Gance and “The Seashell and the Clergyman” by Germaine Dulac — outside the TFAI building on July 9 to celebrate the coming Bastille Day (July 14), according to the institute.
The event, which runs from 3:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., will also feature music performances put on by jazz band Interesting Quartet and sound artists DJ Jez and DJ Kay Lee, the TFAI said.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel