experimental & animation special screening
aground
George Hsin/taiwan/80mins/North America premiere
Old Ji is a farmer. Alone in the mountains, he harvests a modest amount of wet rice. One day, a traveler, Chin arrives. Old Ji leaves the house in her care and goes away. Chin makes herself at home. Her quiet is disrupted by the sudden appearance of a Japanese girl. Who is she? Where did she come from? We find Old Ji. He’s in a hospital, in the room of a Young Man. This man is severely disabled. Old Ji bathes him, but roughly, without care. The pair take a ferry to an isolated sandbar. The Young Man refuses to eat. Old Ji loses his temper. Suddenly the Young Man is transformed – disability-free, he stands and sings a patriotic song. A young glove puppeteer, Ton, comes to the house. He pleads with Chin to let him pitch his tent in the field. That evening, he performs a new ‘Journey to the West’ for
her. The Monkey King cannot control his magical double, King Monkey. The monkeys begin to fight. There’s a full moon tonight. Chin and the Japanese Girl; Old Ji and the Young Man; Monkey King and King Monkey all fight with each other, looking for a way to relieve their sorrows. Finally, Old Ji and Chin can face their pasts and look for closure.
fleeting strangers
keru yuan/china/27mins/North America premiere
Fleeting Strangers virtualizes 4 parallel worlds, and tells 4 soft sci-fi stories that happen at different times each in different ways. The leading characters in these 4 stories represent the Test Item, the Administrators, the Survivor, and the Cyborg respectively. They are gradually infringed, deprived, assimilated in the development of science and the manipulation of the system. They lost their loved ones, freedom and ideals, like beasts sealed in the darkness of the world or on the edge of the universe. Between the dawn and dark of their fleeting lives, they also struggled, trying to break through the cage of class and destiny and search for the barren homeland and self-salvation, nonetheless because of such contradiction, confusion, vulnerability and restraint for their awareness of being unable to act, they ultimately failed to escape the characters they have been set up.
Harry
haoran zhou/china/7mins
One day, a group of blue fish flying over the town, since then the boy began a lifetime waiting. Tall buildings grew around the town and he also gradually used up in the circular work, However , those flying fish never come back. Finally , In the snow, he met them again in a special way.
origami man
Yujie Huang/china/9mins/North America premiere
The wonderful origami paradise in dreams is portrayed in reality as a source of mediocrity". Facing the people who do not understand him, facing the cup of tea, a young man who is about to enter middle age , must make his own choice. Is to follow the deep desire of the heart, or succumbed to the arrangements, to live according to the track given by others? It tells the story of a man entering a dream and making a choice when he lives on a given path and is about to become Self-abandonment. This story wants to express the theme of finding the heart, finding the stick to the good, and the direction of progress.
two men
yuanhao zhao/china/4mins/North America premiere
The story of Two Men takes place in a highly theatricalized setting, namely an arched iron cage. Two men fall in love with each other in an all-male world. As their relationship develops, however, it is no longer their own personal matter, but rather a jarring dissonance in this masculine world. The minorities express their needs, but their expression seems so powerless and fragile in comparison with the society at large. Nevertheless, the yearning for ideals in their tender souls never fades.
understand? Understood.
LEE WEN JIN/taiwan/4mins/North America premiere
The aloneness and loneliness of dogs need your understanding and embrace.