Five Taiwanese film will be featuring at the 2021 edition of London East Asian Film Festival – the largest film festival of its kind in the UK. Running from the 21st to 31st October, dozens of classic and contemporary hits from Asian cinema will be screened across the capital. With the support of Taipei Representative Office in the U.K., UK audiences will have the opportunity to watch a number of Taiwanese films for the first time, including, “The Falls”, “A Leg”, “My Missing Valentine” and “The Silent Forest”. Edward Yang’s cinematic classic, “Taipei Story”, will also be hitting the silver screen once more.
Director Chung Mong-hong’s “The Falls” is fresh from its world premiere in the Horizons section at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. Set during the pandemic, “The Falls” depicts the strained relationship between mother and daughter amidst a home quarantine. Ko Chien-Nien’s drama, “The Silent Forest” follows a hearing-impaired student’s transfer to a special needs school, where he gradually learns the institution’s dark secret. “My Missing Valentine”, by Chen Yu-Hsun, follows a post worker who longs for love, though wakes up to find that Valentine’s Day has mysteriously passed. The romantic comedy won five Golden Horse Awards in 2020, including Best Director and Best Feature Film.
“A Leg” will be featuring in this year’s Competition strand at the Festival with Cheng Yao-Sheng’s dramatic comedy portraying a woman’s Kafkaesque encounters will a hospital bureaucracy. The Retrospective strand of the Festival will be featuring “Taipei Story” – a landmark in early Taiwanese New Wave Cinema, which reflects on the Taiwanese society during a period of rapid economic modernization. When released in 1985, the film won the FRIPESCI Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival.
Hye-Jung Jeon, Director of the London East Asian Film Festival, stated that British cinemas had been greatly affected by the pandemic. “Navigating the pandemic, we are coming back stronger than ever with a vital and exciting lineup from directors new and established. After the past difficult year, our festival is a needed coming together for our diverse community and we are so excited to show such a moving, varied line programme for them to enjoy,” she says.
Director of the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK, Dr. Chen Pin-Chuan, also comments on Taiwan’s cinematic offerings. “As arts and culture have been recovering from the pandemic,” he said, “Taiwanese films have been finding larger audiences in the UK. The London East Asian Film Festival provides a major platform for the British public to fall in love with Taiwanese cinema.”
This year’s London East Asian Film Festival will be held from 21st to 31st October. A total of 34 films from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam and China will be screened. In addition to the Official Film Selection and Competition strand of the Festival, this year will also include Documentaries, Hong Kong Focus, Retrospective and other selections.
- For screening time and further information, please visit:
