"My Grandmother Is an Egg (我的阿婆是一顆蛋)," an eight-minute animated short by Taiwanese director Chang Wu-ching (張吾青), has been selected as part of this year's Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival which runs from April 19 to May. 9.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the festival will be held virtually this year. With 222 selected films from 66 countries, more than half of the films are directed by women directors. Chang's work is the only Taiwanese film selected this year.
According to the synopsis on the organizer's website, Chang uses a variety of animation techniques, including egg yolk as paint. She creates a stirring tribute to her grandmother who was sold as a young girl to another family and raised as their future daughter-in-law. Her grandmother was forced to perform household chores and denied an education, but she later found her freedom through financial independence.
Founded in 1993, Hot Docs Festival is North America's largest documentary festival, conference and market. It was established by the Documentary Organization of Canada (formerly the Canadian Independent Film Caucus), a national association of independent documentary filmmakers. In 1996, Hot Docs became a separately incorporated organization with a mandate to showcase and support the works of Canadian and international documentary filmmakers and to promote excellence in documentary production. Each year, the festival presents a selection of approximately 200 cutting-edge documentaries from Canada and around the world.
Chang received M.A. Animation at Royal College of Art in the UK and B.F.A in New Media Art at the Taipei National University of the Arts. She tells stories about life through visual art, and creates animation and illustration by exploring personal experience and female issues. Her films are often based on experimental, documentary and historical context through interviews and research in the pre-production stage.
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