Taichung Journal: Taichung's International Animated Dreams

The Taichung International Animation Festival is in its fifth year at Kbro Theaters in Taroko Mall, Taichung. There are dozens of full length and film shorts being shown between October 11th and 20th, afternoons and evenings and mornings on weekends, many of them vying for awards in the competition. I am studying the TIAF book we picked up at the theater last week and highlighting shows. The tickets are 160 NT the day of the shows but only 80 for students and those over 65.

Watching the short film competition at the Taichung International Animation Festival (TIAF) was like sleeping with my eyes open, Competition 4 mostly dreams and Competition 3 mostly nightmares. Naturally the 3’s were approved for viewers aged six and over and the 4’s over twelve. Each segment had seven films for a total of fourteen; as short as four minutes and as long as eighteen. As with dreams and nightmares, I slumbered in my theater seat as I would going to bed, without a thought of what illusions I’d experience in each rapid eye movement period. The writers of these films woke up and put their memories on film, eventually producing animation and soundtrack. I was in every film-maker’s head along with the audiences.

At the end of the sets, we could ask a producer of a film questions and make a tear on the paper listing the seven films near the one we liked best. At first I wasn’t sure what to do, instructions being in Mandarin. I thought I needed to make a mark with pen on the slip and caught the eye of a young woman to borrow a pen. She explained the tear method and continued to chat as we left the theater for my intermission; I would be back in for the next set of films. She really liked animation; she was going to many shows. I asked for suggestions. I told her I liked a TIAF t-shirt she was wearing. It was a raffle gift for buying tickets to five showings, she said. Since I was planning to come back for more shows, I chose three more shows, one free for choosing to attend the award ceremony, and was given a sealed lottery ticket to see what gift I had won; it was a TIAF tote bag.

Director in Focus; Raimund Krumme's program was forty-two minutes worth of six animations, with the artist himself joining us for a Q&A afterwards. Mr. Krumme is considered one of the most important contemporary animation artists, but his minimalist style leaves me cold. "Rope Dance", voted one of the 100 most important animations of all time, was first in the set. The calisthenics of two black stick figure men in a stark black-lined box with a ribbon of red ink joining them was an engineer’s dream, amazing for its versatility and cleverness. But I was raised on Looney Tunes and Betty Boop and required some more slapstick to brighten my animated existence. However, I could see how Mr. Krumme should be admired for his purist calligraphic brush stroked exercises. I wasn't surprised when he admitted in the Q&A that whatever impression viewers had, like the floating audience in "Spectators", was fine with him; "Once I draw it it belongs to them," he said, but I missed any political message he said he had in "The Message" as rumors spread that "he's back again." "Crossroads", his film from 1991, was not unlike "Rope Dance" from 1986 but there were five black stick figure men, four of them interacting with the first through angles that morphed from passage ways to cliff sides and crosswalks. "Passage" was an exercise in geometries with a nod towards things that skid on ice and snow. Now I know Krumme, and will not seem dumb at cartoon cocktail parties, but my favorite artist Crumb (or should I say "arteest") is Robert.

With the eight short animated films I saw in "TIAF Observatory: Harmony & Disharmony of Narrative", that made twenty-eight films; six from Raimund Krumme, seven in "Short Films in Competition 4", seven in "Competition 3". I heard from my animation companion, Ms. Yang, that two of the films I saw won placement in the award ceremony: "The Night of the Plastic Bags" and "Winter in the Rainforest." Other winners were sets I didn't attend; she saw them all! I will say something about each film I saw:

Remote Life Drawings struck me as very sloppily done, but it was done that way on purpose, with smudges, fingerprints, and spills. If they tried to make it look amateurish, they succeeded.

Flow, initially, was my favorite entry in Competition 4. The flow of lines morphed occasionally into recognizable figures as the artist followed a woman on a day in the life from wakefulness to tropical vacation after a flight, but the hurricane that stirs it up is a crescendo

Movements was ten minutes of a knobby creaking tree moving slowly in comparison with a greyhound, a baobab, and the earth itself. The revelation was not earth-shattering; in fact, aside from the sound effects of the old tree, I felt like time had slowed down.

Winter in the Rainforest was my third favorite in Competition 4. I loved the porcelain-looking animals in the real life background footage with the sound of the season turning frigid and the water rapids replenishing towards spring.

Deep Love started with plastic bags blowing up a statue of Lenin and ended up with the current corrupt leader of Ukraine. I couldn't get the connection with the title. It was a bunch of littered streets and graffiti in an ugly city setting. It reminded me of New York City in the 70's.

Tututu was my choice for the best of Competition 4. I was surprised when the artist herself, Rosa Peris (in the lead photo of this blog) came out to speak with us afterwards. The humanity of a ballerina daydreaming about the beautiful life as she stumbles and is ridiculed by other dancers was touching.

Kingdom looked like something a classmate in junior high school might have drawn between classes. I don't remember anything about it; that's how impressed I was by it.

Every film in Competition 3 was like a nightmare, starting with Imbued Life. The taxidermist's attitude reminded me of the heroine in The Sound of Water. With the film she found in the animals' bodies made me think of my youngest daughter (who studied it and worked in Paxton) and her photographer boyfriend.

Fox Boy was the most poignant social commentary when a naive child finds a way into a paradise that becomes a nightmare hunted by children with fox heads until he realizes he can't beat them and joins them wearing a fox head he finds.

Still Life still baffles me. I have no idea what it was about. I sat for six minutes watching artifacts moved in different poses with some corny Finish narrative.

Metamorphosis was my favorite from Competition 3 because it was so gruesome and had ugly faces on the characters, including the dog. The cigarette smoking slob redeems himself in liberation from his ugly wife becoming a butterfly from a pupa and escaping through the basement window of his ugly home.

Inside Blue was an exercise in geometric shapes in a bathroom that the character draws around his body parts to confide him; very neurotic and annoying film.

Looking back on Coyote, I now feel it was one of the most comprehensively disgusting film I saw at the festival, but now I know why the coyote howls at the moon. I would too if I had to go through the gut-wrenching shit he endured in his family. This film will remain with me like Van Gough's Scream does.

The Night of the Plastic Bags was fifth on my list in this set but was a winner in the Festival. The film noir feel and comic book sensation was too literal to be symbolic. It was the second film I saw that had plastic bags as villains.

The eight short animations in the TIAF Observatory began with Threads. All films, but one, seemed to be about family life or relationships, and threads showed how a mother adopts her child, nurtures her, and lets her go from the red thread that united them. Very sweet and touching.

The Triangle was a hilarious depiction of infidelity when Eduard, a little man in a mafioso suit emerges from under the sink and enters the dull life of Julia and Victor breaking up their marriage. The only dialog was the couple calling each other's name in different inflections and had me in stitches.

Mamoon was so spooky with shadows of a mother and her infant forced to leave their geometric home. It was one dimensional though with little room for interpretation other than its intention.

The Making of Longbird could have been a Spongebob Squarepants episode on how to make a cartoon. The dialogue was right out of Brighton Beach; I could hear now. I couldn't stop chuckling but in the end I was saddened that the paper-cut figure was abandoned by its artist and went up in flames. It didn't deserve that end.

Las Del Diente made me feel like I was overhearing women's conversation through the wall of a locker room. I'm sure if I were female, this film would have been more meaningful, but the light blue drawings morphing from fetus to office, may me feel "so that's what intelligent women discuss!"

Lonely Bones was the most frightening film of the festival. I was having flashbacks of bum trips watching this one. The rotting floors, the sewer lid over a funeral pyre into a bottomless pit, the reapers attacking, the darkness. Wow.

As scary as the previous film was, The Hunt was like Pink Panther in its silly childishness and simple drawings and fruit colorful primitive landscapes.The story was silly, too, down to the moose that bops to a transistor radio round his neck

Finally, Scenery, the world is a series of sets that only we can animate with love, was more satire than revelation. The Spanish narrative was serious in its silliness, but the soundtrack was eerie.

I have a ticket for one more showing in this Festival; Sunday's Aragne: Sign of Vermillion. It is the only full length feature I will have seen, but I wanted to share this blog with you now so you have three days of animated films left to view before they are erased from our memories until next year, if there is a next year. Thanks to Taichung's previous mayor, Lin, the camera was rolling with TIAF for five years but, I heard, there were some problems this year and our current un-imaginative, Mayor Lu, may not follow up next year, she dropped the ball on other Taichung international cultural projects for enlightening people, like the Flower Expo.
I relished having a crumb of Manhattan dynamic in Taichung for a week; it is as rare here as fresh air. Take off your surgical masks, Taichung, and breathe while you can still pretend through the magic of animation.