The Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh (Taiwan FFE) has returned for its third edition, which will screen around 20 Taiwanese films at locations across Scotland until November. Since 2020, it aims to bring the essence of Taiwanese films to audiences across Scotland and the UK.
As part of the series of programs, Taiwan FFE collaborates with Scottish Poetry Library to screen "Le Moulin (日曜日式散步者)" a 2015 experimental documentary about Taiwan's first avant-garde literary group in the 1930s, during Japanese colonial rule. Following the screening which will take place on May 19, Scottish poet Heather H. Yeung (楊希蒂) will discuss poetry and surrealism with Taiwan Film Festival chief curator Liu Kuan-ping (劉冠萍).
In the early 20th century, Taiwan was rapidly developing into a modern state under the influence of Japanese colonial rule. It was against this backdrop that the country’s first modern art group – Le Moulin Poetry Society – arose in the 1930s, in protest against the colonial power’s assumed cultural superiority. Deeply rooted in a love for Western, and particular French Surrealist culture, the poets of Le Moulin wrote in an uncompromising and aesthetically sophisticated style to confront the turbulent era they lived in.
Le Moulin not only records a historical period that paved the way for new freedom and self-awareness in East Asian cultures, but also explores how Asian Modernist writers encountered foreign culture, contemplated identity, and reinvented Modernism to suit their unique political and cultural circumstances.
As the summer holidays begin in June and July, the festival will arrange a series of kid-friendly screenings of the newly restored animated work "Grandma and Her Ghosts (魔法阿媽)" and other animated films. Bringing films aimed at younger audiences, the festival hopes to broaden its reach to a new generation of film viewers.