“What do you want in life? What are you thinking on the surface and in your sub-consciousness?” Have you ever thought about learning to know and love yourself before others? Flower Fish is an animation short about an anxious woman who lacks self-awareness and a fish in a tank who’s curious about the outside world. The woman keeps putting the fish which keeps jumping out, back into the tank, until the glass breaks up. The woman and the fish become one in the water; together they return to the origin resembling the womb. This creates an interesting gaze upon oneself. Parallel Worlds, made and performed by Allison CHANG and Eden HUANG, is an experimental short which depicts a girl’s nightmare through theater language. Does the girl dream of a ghost or does the ghost dream of the girl? Or is the ghost the girl herself?

 

The journey of looking for oneself takes many forms. In PUNCH, we first see the seemingly beautiful face of PUNCH before the camera shows us her obese body. She leaves her private room and enters the public sphere. Scenes change highlighting shallow judgments on obesity. PUNCH fights back, yet, she’s lonely. Beyond the Hole introduces all kinds of holes in the human body. Some holes are natural while others are manufactured. These holes need to be filled or even intruded in bizarre ways. They are the black holes and desires which symbolize innate needs and thus become evidences of existence. Using the image of Alice in Wonderland, The Garden tells the forbidden and pleasurable nature of sex with Schubert’s piano sonata No. 17, the “Gasteiner Sonate” playing in the background. The mosaic, against the light method, has turned the rabbit and flowers into obscure desires and sex symbols. The animation is a private story of a girl turning into a woman.

 

Girls’ secrets can be simple as well as complicated. The Voice of Angel and The Afternoon deal with little girls’ viewpoints on the adult world. The Best is Yet to Come talks about the coming-out of young Asian American lesbians. The title, h=1/2gt² is the formula of gravity acceleration, which is to imply the falling sensation of an unhappy girl. Ching Ching is the name of the protagonist. The name implies the girl’s desire to be close to men. With her father unattainable, she got close to the teacher she adores by accident, and then there’s a classmate trying to be close to her…

 

Women’s secrets can be dark as well as sweet. Thro’ Your Body, I Reach documents two beer saleswomen’s lives before and behind their customers. A-Feng tells the story of a middle-aged sex worker’s maternal nature and her longing for a family. City of Sleepwalkers looks at the same betel nut salesgirl from the viewpoints of a teenaged boy and a bus driver. Mind Dance is the story of Chris who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. In his world of memories and illusions, Chris remembers his wife when she was young. Clover documents the mother of one directors. It begins with the mother’s previous broken marriage and continues to prospects for future life. Director Hsiu-Yi HUANG starts Grandma’s Ring by the ring her grandma gave her when she left home for school and looks at her life as a filmmaker. The trip back home brings Huang new understandings into her grandma’s beliefs and family history. What Men Don’t Know looks at the women in Tao culture. The Tao men catch the fish. To show their love for the men, Tao women insist on making taro cakes and catching land crabs by hand to prepare a feast for the men’s hard work.

 

Love can also be seen in all groups and boundaries. Now He is a She documents the director’s high school teacher after he changed sex. Focusing on four people who had been classmates for 11 years since kindergarten, Classmates discusses Taiwan’s inclusive education through two protagonists with disabilities. Animation short A+B=?, and two documentaries Nothing to Do with Love and The Power of Women, are about intermarriages. Through Chinese, Western and Indian brides’ costumes, A+B=? shows the fun and anxieties of the meetings of different cultures. The latter two films document the inevitable breakups of intermarriages which lack communication. Nothing to Do with Love is about love, but the love is too possessive, too selfish. The man obviously does not understand the woman’s need to communicate in a marriage. The Power of Women documents a story of a divorced Vietnamese, Yuzhen Mai, who established a new immigrants’ association in Taiwan to help with all sorts of problems encountered by foreign brides on the island.

 

The Power of Women should be viewed with Love Riverand Hand in Hand. These three films document women’s contributions to the society of Taiwan from three different generations and backgrounds. Mrs. Tien in Hand in Hand, who had a sense of democracy through elopement and marriage with her husband. Fashion designer, Shu Fang Tsai, sets up a workshop and hired physically-challenged women like herself. Tsai helped with their professional skill training to day-to-day life. Mrs. Tien participated in local democratic movements. Tsai petitioned fiercely for the rights of minorities. What pushed them to devote themselves in things greater than their own lives is love for others.