This year, the Taiwanese film festival "Taiwan on Screen", which is running for the sixth year, will be waiting for the audience in cinemas from November 23 to December 2. Ten films of various genres will invite you to get to know the distant Asian country, its culture and the diversity of cinema in Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda.
The film festival, which is growing every year, will present a diverse program of ten films to the residents of Lithuania's big cities this year. Here you will be able to watch the latest, award-winning films well known to Taiwanese and international audiences. As always, the program of the "Taiwan on Screen" festival, which is characterized by a variety of genres, will be diversified this time not only by horror films, but also by two animations - Sung Hsin-Yin's "On the Street of Joy" (2017), which examines the experiences of a person living in the diaspora, and Wang Shau-di's "Grandmother", which has already become a cult and her ghosts' (1998).
The festival will be opened by John Hsu's horror comedy "The Gifted Ghost Company" (2024), which was well received by film critics and was presented at the Toronto Film Festival this year. It will take viewers to the world of ghosts and tell the story of a recently deceased teenager who wants to become famous in it. This year, the film has also been nominated for four awards at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, the winner of which will be announced on the opening day of "Taiwan on Screen".
According to the organizer of the festival, the Asian Arts Center, this year's entire program is united by the focus on mutual connection. The films look at the connection with family, home, one's history, society or even the living world from different perspectives. The main characters of the strips find themselves in the snares of social media love, trying to understand their relationship with the past or wondering what home really means to them after returning to Taiwan after a long time.
The representative of Taiwan's Ministry of Culture and film expert dr. will visit the festival this year. Pin-Chuan Chen, and the tapes will be presented by various specialists in Asian cultures. After the screenings, festival visitors will be able to participate in virtual question-and-answer sessions with the filmmakers and ask them their own questions.
This year's "Taiwan on Screen" visual was created by designer Lukas Tomaševičius, who was inspired by the streets of Taipei. "For this year's visual, we chose a typical image of a Taipei alley - unpolished, unadorned, where the real lives, experiences, joys and pains of real people boil, just like in our films from this year's festival," say the festival organizers.
"Taiwan on screen" started as a one-time screening of Taiwanese retro films at Vilnius University, and every year it expands more and more. This year, films will be presented not only in Vilnius, Kaunas, but also in Klaipėda. This perfectly responds to the growing interest of our society in this distant Asian country, its history and culture.
The Taiwanese film festival "Taiwan on screen" will be held this year at the Skalvija cinema center (11.23–12.01), at the Romuva theater in Kaunas (11.28–12.02) and at the Klaipėda cinema “Arlekinas” (11.24–12.01). The festival is sponsored by Taiwan's Ministry of Culture.
You will find the festival sessions in Romuva here.