In late February 2025, I talked with filmmaker Manuel Embalse about the film he edited, Under the Flags, the Sun (Bajo las banderas, el sol), which premiered in the Panorama section at the 75th Berlinale. We first met at the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival in Seoul, South Korea, where his film The New Ruins (Las ruinas nuevas) was screened in the Frontier Competition, and we have kept in contact since then. I did not know that we would be lucky enough to meet again so soon.

On a sunny morning in Berlin, we sat down at a cafe to exchange experiences after the festival and talk about the project that became Under the Flags, the Sun. The conversation soon shifted to the film industry, history, and politics at large.

Maja Korbecka: How was the festival experience for you?

Manuel Embalse: It was a very particular experience. Being editor of a found footage film directed by a close friend, a project in which editing is so important, having worked a lot and having it premiering at a polemic film festival, it all made me wonder if to go to the Berlinale or not. Even so, the experience was valuable. I chose to participate. I had a lot of conflicting feelings about being there because of the attitude of Berlinale since 7th October 2023. I work as editor and sound designer, but I also recognize myself as a Jew pro-Palestinian filmmaker—during 2024, I was present at festivals as a director, speaking openly about Gaza, reading poems of Mahmoud Darwish. I’m conscious of what’s happening in Palestine and it affects me everyday.

In December, when I found out that Under the Flags, the Sun had been accepted into the Panorama section, I started wondering what it would mean to attend the festival, especially in the current political context. I also found out that the film’s distributor is from Israel. So, here we were with a film from Paraguay, coproduced by Argentina, United States, Germany and France, countries whose governments—not their people, but their governments—are complicit also in the genocide in Palestine. Also, when I saw the dates of the festival, I didn’t realize at the time that the festival would end just as the German elections began.

With all this information, for me, as a Jew and a Latin American editor, I started to have a lot of contradictions, and I thought: “If I go to the festival, I can’t be silent and I must make a speech.” After speaking with the director, Juanjo Pereira, my friends and colleagues, I decided to go, but was convinced that I have to speak at the premiere. Juanjo supported me and other filmworkers too. Before flying to Berlin, I talked with friends attending the Berlinale Talents about what we were planning to do. When we arrived, we got together with Talents from different countries and with other filmworkers for Palestine that were participating in the festival. We organized to be brave and supported each other. We were few compared to this giant festival.

But, luckily, the first person who spoke out at the Berlinale 2025 was Hong Kong director Jun Li. He did that the night before the premiere of our film. During the Q&A after his film Queer Panorama (眾生相), he read a statement written by his Iranian actor. Because he used the phrase “From the river to the sea,” he was investigated by the German police, and before going to sleep I read a lot of news on social media about him. So we can’t say there was no censorship. There was censorship. It felt like an “updated Cold War”—being watched. But I also feel calm that I wasn’t the first to speak.

Before the first screening of Under the Flags, the Sun, I was anxious. It was the first time I ever doubted whether I could speak freely at a film festival, I mentioned that in my speech. I said that I’m not calm in this country and in this film environment. I wrote different versions of my speech, and I decided to quote Sebald, German writer with some excerpts from his book Natural History of Destruction. In Paraguay, Argentina and across Latin America, Under the Flags, the Sun  has drawn a lot of attention, as a work-in-progress project taking part in industry events at international film festivals in recent years, it was an “expected film”. Everyone in the documentary world was asking: “When will it premiere?” Once it premiered in Berlin, I knew that whatever I said would spread widely. So I felt pressure. After my speech, I felt calm. I had chosen to be there.

By the end of the festival, I counted maybe seven or eight films that explicitly addressed Palestine. I’m flying back on Monday, and I admit I’m a little paranoid. Of course, nothing will happen—it would look bad if they retaliated against people who spoke out from Latin American Countries. But the atmosphere shaped my entire experience. I still believe I did the right thing. I’ve received a lot of support and probably a lot of people hated me. I had courage that day, but now I’m scared. The festival unfolded smoothly, but under a psychological cloud.

Maja: It’s telling that two of the competition films were titled Dreams. It’s as if the whole industry is dreaming— just not awake to the big changes happening now and those still to come.

Manuel: There was also After Dreaming in Panorama. That’s a good observation. The programming was political in some ways. Our film from Paraguay directly addresses Germany’s complicity in Nazism. So yes, there are political films. But there was also a silence on stage—a hesitance to speak politically. It made me wonder: are they dreaming of the future, as if to say, “Let’s move past this”? In my speech, I quoted postwar Germany: “Don’t look back. Rebuild the city. Silence the past.” And it’s eerie. It’s election day, yet nothing is happening in the city. In Argentina, there would be energy, tension, and political conversation.

Maja: Today is so quiet.

Manuel: Just a normal Sunday here. When I was deciding whether to come, I thought—maybe this is the perfect moment to say something. Even if you go to bed a little afraid, at least you’ve spoken.

Maja: I’ve been thinking about Berlinale’s origins. Did you know the festival’s first director, Alfred Bauer, was a Nazi?

Manuel: No, but I suspected.

Maja: Film festivals themselves were born from nationalism. Venice FF under Mussolini. Berlinale under the Cold War. This festival was established because the West needed a glamorous front to counter the Eastern Bloc.

Manuel: And now everything that happened this week is part of Berlinale’s history. The director of the festival said she wanted to persuade the Chinese director who spoke out first—that’s political. Even the screenshots from Instagram stories—they’re part of Berlinale’s archive now.

Maja: In the Chinese filmmaking community, there was also criticism of Berlinale programming. Have you heard?

Manuel: No, what happened?

Maja: Several Chinese film professionals criticized Berlinale for selecting What’s Next for the Forum section. The film was made using AI, and the filmmaker Cao Yiwen (曹译文) is known on Douban—the Chinese equivalent of IMDb—as a fake (野鸡导演), giving false information about claiming various awards.

Manuel: I can’t believe it.

Maja: The filmmaker claimed various awards and achievements on Douban, but they were fabricated. I think the programmers might not be aware of her reputation.

Manuel: I heard that some filmmakers after they spoke in solidarity with Palestine during their screenings were confronted by Berlinale organisers.

Maja: The festival is dependent on state funding, it is understandable the organisers are anxious and want to negotiate, it is a survival strategy. Everyone’s afraid of losing their jobs.

Manuel: True. In the Berlinale Shorts section, they could speak, but I also heard that filmmakers had a meaningful conversation with programmers, and they wanted to read the statements about Palestine. They got together and read their planned statements phrase by phrase, analyzing what they can say or not. It’s shocking.

Maja: Maybe filmmakers in Shorts were freer because their films aren’t as marketable. There’s less media pressure.

Manuel: That’s something for your book. In Argentina, the market for shorts is tiny, but it exists.

Maja Korbecka: How was Barlinale, the boycott festival?

Manuel Embalse: It was interesting, there were different boycotts. I think that’s part of the problem, because a lot of activities were happening at the same time in different places in the same city.

Maja: So they weren’t united.

Manuel: Exactly. Everyone wanted to have their own opinion, their own agenda, their own curation. It’s OK, but it distracts me a little bit. I attended one screening of the boycotts on Thursday, the 20th. The exhibition space had a very good atmosphere—like a living room, with people drinking beer. Inside, there were maybe thirty people. It was the first day of the public transport workers’ strike, but I don’t think that explains the low attendance. The program started with the world premiere of a British short about a Palestinian girl now living in Berlin—the story of her migration from Palestine to Germany. It felt very academic, like a film school thesis, but very sensitive. Then they showed an Argentine feature directed by a close friend, a beautiful film. The discussion afterward was short—fifteen minutes about how the director started working on the film and what inspired it. Then they had to close the event, I wanted more discussion.

Maja: Woche der Kritik has a similar format—pairing a short and a feature, then hosting a discussion. In that case, the short was shot by a filmmaker from the UK who had filmed in Kenya on 16mm. It focused on domestic workers. Someone in the audience pointed out that after these women spent all day working in people’s homes, he then asked them to appear in his film—essentially to continue working.

Manuel: Did they talk about colonization—or meta-colonization?

Maja: Yes, the film discussed how the domestic workers became part of the household space—how one of them couldn’t speak or see, her senses seemed paralyzed. It was framed as a commentary on colonization. But what the filmmaker didn’t do was to reflect on his own position as a tourist.

Manuel: Why? I don’t understand why white people go to Africa and don’t reflect on their own role. Start the film with that! Say anything!

Maja: The filmmaker actually appeared in the film himself. He was one of the guests staying at the bed-and-breakfast where the film was set, but he didn’t expand on it in the plotline. The house where he filmed had been turned into a homestay for tourists, so he positioned himself in the background. He acknowledged his presence, but what really struck me was what happened after the screening. When an audience member challenged him, he said, “We can discuss that further,” in an open and calm way. And the person who asked the question just replied, “I don’t want to discuss it. I’m not interested.” It was very aggressive.

Manuel: The audience member said that?

Maja: Yes. From their perspective, the issue was serious—and rightly so—but these discussions need to happen without accusations. Accusations don’t resolve anything.

Manuel: So the audience itself didn’t want to engage? That’s the real problem—both filmmakers and audiences.

Maja: Exactly. We’re all trying, but intermediaries like us can’t always act as peacemakers. Who are we to take that role? I don’t want that authority. I’m also taking a position, like everyone else.

Manuel: That’s the core issue—the politics of art and society in general. It’s not just about Palestine or Israel. The same thing happens with Russia and Ukraine, with the left and the right, even with the center positions. There’s so much anxiety around taking a position. People have forgotten how to have a conversation—to take time, to speak without hurry, to disagree peacefully. Instead, it becomes, “I’m not speaking to you. I don’t want conflict.”

Maja: It’s so childish.

Manuel: Yes. Look at our world leaders—they behave like children who never learned boundaries. Trump is a perfect example: a child who lacked love but had money.

Maja: Everything is transactional.

Manuel: He’s a businessman. Now he wants to negotiate with Putin, penalize Ukraine, and make them repay the U.S. for its military investment. It’s important to talk about all these overlapping realities. That’s why I’m an editor.

Maja: That’s so true.

Manuel: Editing itself—parallel montage, as taught by Pudovkin, Eisenstein, or Vertov—was the great lesson of the 20th century, before social media. It showed us that the contradictions of history and reality unfold simultaneously, everywhere, in everyone. We’re having this conversation right now, and probably in some hotel, the Berlinale committee is congratulating itself for giving awards to certain films. It’s all parallel. Do you know Adam Curtis? He’s a British documentarian who made HyperNormalisation.

Maja: Yes, it’s on YouTube—I watched parts of it.

Manuel: His recent work on post-1989 Russia, TraumaZone, is a big reference for me. That feeling of hypernormalization—it’s exactly what I sense now. His films show how politics became secondary once the internet reshaped global life. What we consume, what we hide, what we erase—all of it became part of a digital narrative.

He argues that after the 1990s, we started living in parallel realities: one visible, one hidden. And that’s where we are now. People in the cinema are afraid to speak out. In the past, you had Glauber Rocha in Locarno shouting that the jury was bought off. Or Godard interrupting Cannes in 1968, saying that the festival cannot go on while workers and students are protesting in the streets. Now, people dream of a reality where film festivals shouldn’t be political.

Maja: Berlinale used to brand itself as “the political festival.” That was its identity. And now everything feels so quiet.

I can imagine last year, under Chatrian, a lot of people working for the Berlinale were completely overwhelmed by the controversies surrounding Palestine and Israel. The emotional and psychological toll was huge because there is an identity conflict between individuals and the institution they work for. I think that kind of burnout—and the choice to stay silent—also comes from fragmentation. There’s no unity among like-minded people. Everyone’s isolated. And on top of that, the workload of festival organizers is absurd. So how is anything supposed to function? Bureaucracy dominates everything. This Berlinale felt strange for me too, because I didn’t have time to attend any public screenings with Q&As.

Manuel: Because as a juror, you can’t?

Maja: I could, but I was too busy—twenty-plus competition films, a regular job, festival coverage. Everyone’s so overworked that there’s no space left to think.

Manuel: Exactly. The next day just becomes about survival—coffee, deadlines, capitalism.

Maja: Right. It’s all about just getting through the day. That constant rush builds a kind of mental blockade.

Manuel: It’s all market logic now.

Maja: So I was also wondering — how was the audience feedback for Under the Flags, the Sun during the Q&As?

Manuel: The audience feedback — well, the premiere was amazing. There were a lot of Paraguayans and Latin American friends, which made the premiere very special. It was very important because many people who had supported the film — programmers, festivals — hadn’t seen the rough cut, only a trailer. Juanjo received a lot of positive feedback. As the editor, I received a different kind of feedback, of course, since I’m not the director. Not bad feedback — all of it was interesting and positive — but sometimes during the Q&A, people wanted more information than the film gave them.

You know, it’s Juanjo’s first feature, but it’s not a “shy” film, it has an interesting attitude. Some people praised me, because it’s a film made entirely from found footage, and I know the amount of work that went into the editing. Julián Galay too — he’s the sound designer. I think it was really special that people noticed and appreciated the editing and sound design. That doesn’t happen often. But with a footage film, the editing is always speaking — like, “hello, I’m here, I’m the editor” — and the sound is fully present all the time also.

What was also interesting is that almost no one knows anything about Paraguay — not even many Latin Americans. Paraguayan people said, “Wow, this film is so important.” Some cried during the Q&As — people who had migrated from Paraguay. The screening at Zoo Palast was the best I’ve ever been to. There was a Paraguayan girl in the audience who started crying, saying, “I can’t believe you did this. This speaks about why we migrate.” It was very emotional — about the history of Paraguay, the silence, the fear that still exists in society.

So, all the feedback — whether people liked or disliked certain scenes — was deeply meaningful. As an Argentinian who knows Paraguay’s history, I’m often the strange guy at dinner saying, “Did you know there was a 34-year dictatorship in Paraguay?” No one in Argentina knows that. So there was this strong reaction about how important the film is for Latin America in this context.

And I think also, as a filmmaker and someone who thinks about history and editing, there’s some part of the history that isn’t shown deeply: the film doesn’t show how the resistance existed during the dictatorship, but it was a director’s decision that I respected, not to develop the part about the movement that existed against Stroessner. Juanjo was very conscious about that: this film can’t include everything. For me, there were some subjects that the film explored that are so unique, such as the “Archivos del Terror / The Terror Archive — the only Latin American archive that keeps the dictatorship files.

Maja: And where is it?

Manuel: In Paraguay. And the film doesn’t get so much into that.

Maja: I didn’t know exactly where the materials were from.

Manuel: It’s in the credits — “Archivos del Terror.”

Maja: Yes, there could have been more context.

Manuel: For Juanjo and I, the story of the film begins in 1880, with the War of the Triple Alliance — a war between Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, supported by Great Britain. It destroyed half of the population of Paraguay. After that, there were almost no men left. Then came the Partido Colorado, which ruled continuously. From the early 20th century until 1954, when Stroessner took power, there were about different coups — all from the same party. It was like a cycle. During the Second World War, there was also the Chaco War, financed by the U.S., between Paraguay and Bolivia over the Chaco region — rich in oil land.

So the film could have included more historical context — like an Errol Morris commentary. The War of the Triple Alliance was actually the first war photographed in Latin America, by a British photographer. There should have been more about how Paraguay arrived in 1954 and the dictatorship. But the production and Juanjo decided the film couldn’t be that long. People in Paraguay need to speak about Stroessner, not the Triple Alliance. I totally understood it. There is a 4 hours cut that includes the period before the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, and the film continues until the Covid pandemic times in Paraguay and in the present. There are steel boots of Stroessner’s statue still left on the mountain near the capital city of Asunción. It isn’t a memorial site. People go jogging there. No one knows that the feet of the dictator’s statue are still there. (Now, ten months after our conversation, in October the feet disappeared and no one knows what happened).

Maja: It’s so interesting — why the feet were left there. Because there are so many parallels with what happens to other statues, like those of Stalin in Eastern Europe, or Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan. In Taiwan, for example, there’s a park that gathers all the statues of Chiang Kai-shek.

Manuel: Yes! I’ve seen the same in Hungary — in Budapest, in “Memento Park”, near a highway. All the communist statues, with a giant hand over a wooden base, all the mountains of sculptures — amazing, but in the middle of nowhere.

Maja: In Poland, there’s only one small museum in a tiny town in the east — a Museum of Socialist Art in Kozłówka. And then there’s the DDR Museum, which is like a Luna Park.

Manuel: I went there last time I was in Berlin — and also to the Stasi Museum.

Maja: Yes, though the DDR Museum is different. It displays everyday objects from the DDR — as if it were a theme park. So these feet — how the past is still here, unresolved. It’s either ridiculed and turned into entertainment, or it just stands there, without context, but still present. It’s so Wagnerian — like a scene from a Wagner opera, at the top of the mountain.

Manuel: The director told me that no one knew the feet were still there — and now it will finally be public. No one is interested. I went to Paraguay only three times, I can’t speak as a Paraguayan, of course, but as an anthropologist-tourist, I can say Asunción feels a little bit abandoned and it’s so sad. There’s no visible political opposition. The city center is still from the Stroessner era, waiting to be demolished to make way for malls and new houses.

The idea of the statue — we never discussed ending the film there, but there’s a monument made from the statue’s remains. It’s an art piece by one of Paraguay’s most important artists, Carlos Colombino. In his work “Contramonumento / Countermonument”,  he reassembled Stroessner’s parts — the head here, the hand there. In one moment, the film ends with that artwork, in the Square of the Disappeared, near the government house.

But well, we couldn’t include everything, there were only 2 shots filmed in the present and the entire project is based largely on archival materials. I think this is the problem with footage films. When you bureaucratize, when you start working with institutions—European, American, even Latin American—the only thing people want to talk about is the price: how much the archives cost, how you got the footage. For me, that was very difficult.

Maja: It’s so twisted that all these grants from European institutions end up going back to the EU. In the end, the money circulates back to the investors.

Manuel: Behind the flags, behind the curtains, there’s another story—the real process. In this case, the conditions of production affect the creation, because footage is money, too. In one moment of the process, after the co-production started and some work-in-progress prizes appeared, the director decided to do all the legal process to find the archives. Of course, it’s a pleasure to work with European funding. I was paid for every editing period. Without the funding, completing the film would have been a longer process and a cheaper film. So, little by little, we constructed the idea that film must tell the image of power, and we discarded a lot of scenes of other subjects because they were expensive.

Maja: It’s the same problem with academic research. You always have to choose a perspective—“from which point of view are you writing your thesis?” It doesn’t have to be the official one, but you have to choose one. And by choosing one, you’re already telling a subjective story, while research and science is supposedly objective – it is the idea it projects about itself.

Manuel: By telling one history, you silence others.

Maja: Exactly. You can write from the perspective of resistance, or from power, or from the media—but there is an assumption that you can’t tackle all of them. And if you want to tell a story that feels more true, you somehow have to try. Even though of course it’s impossible to tell the whole truth.

Manuel: Anyway, I know we could have made that film. Because in the last week of editing, there were two scenes. One showed the five political parties that opposed Stroessner—it appeared around minute ten. Remember those small red transitions separating scenes? That sequence used to last two minutes, just red, no images. After the part where Stroessner visits Germany, you hear about the Mengele connection. That whole section was once two minutes without image—just the sound of the forest, thinking of the disappeared people thrown from airplanes. The Archive of Terror, one of my favorite aspects of this project, holds the personal diaries of officers during the attacks, describing how they hunted the Resistance.

All of that happened in the forests, not the cities. In minute ten, the Resistance was introduced—visible. You saw still photos of rural and Indigenous fighters, people with guns, extraordinary images found in the archives. We had their names, the names of their parties, maps of Paraguay marking the locations of attacks. Then the film returned to the main thread. The resistance was present. Later, the film showed Margarita’s personal file—then her brother speaking in his own archives.

Maja: Because for me, as a viewer, that part came out of nowhere. It wasn’t properly introduced.

Manuel: Exactly. Suddenly you’re giving voice to the disappeared—through police investigation archives. But in an earlier version of the film, there was a ten-minute introduction preparing you for that. You understood there was Resistance. Later, in minute thirty, came the police diary describing gunshots and raids. It established that the Resistance was fighting back. And then you saw Margarita—kidnapped, her husband killed, her child lost. Those scenes were in the editing, but finally Juanjo decided to not include them and I didn’t insist.

Maja: I thought there simply weren’t any images of the Resistance—only official or foreign newsreels.

Manuel: They say there’s no audiovisual footage—no Super 8 films from the Resistance—but there are photographs. Many. If you work with the state archives, you find photos of soldiers raiding houses, of confiscated pamphlets, typewriters—evidence of people who gave their lives to resist.

Maja: It’s fascinating how photographs are treated as less valuable than film. As if one photo couldn’t contain more than a thousand frames.

Manuel: Half an hour at the beginning of the film was originally about the nineteenth-century war, the genocide, with nitrate scans of incredible quality. Those photos are in Uruguay now, not Paraguay—and Uruguay was one of the countries responsible for Paraguay’s destruction at the time. Juanjo was under immense pressure. He shifted focus—from searching within the archives to searching for archives. And I was the one inside the archives.

Maja: There’s such a difference between searched footage and found footage. When you find it, you’re listening to it. When you search for it, you’re imposing meaning.

Manuel: Exactly. I did my best and I learned a lot.

Maja: I think, for me, an even more perfect film would be to actually make it into a very, very long film, in parts—but edited together with footage of other, similar incidents from different parts of the world. For example, when I was watching the film, I immediately thought about the Manila Film Center. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this story. The Manila International Film Festival was actually established by Imelda Marcos, the wife of the dictator of the Philippines. And what happened during the building of the festival center was that more than 160 workers were buried under cement. The building still exists. The festival actually took place there in the early 1980s—the first edition was in 1981—and it was meant to be an international film festival. Many film professionals boycotted it, but programmers from Venice FF and several other major festivals were there.

But I know more about the festival from the perspective of Chinese filmmakers’ reports. And no one actually mentioned that tragedy. What they did mention was that, during the opening ceremony of the festival, there was an explosion—an attack by guerrillas—and how inconvenient for the festival participants it was.

Manuel: I love that information.

Maja: Yeah, and it’s interesting that in the Philippines, the Resistance also stationed in the forest. It wasn’t in the city. Anyway, often I feel as if history is repeating itself and we haven’t learned anything over the years. So, actually, what would be an even more powerful film would be to make this transnational film editing parallel events that seem to be echoing each other.

Manuel: 1989, the dictatorship falls…

Maja: And in so many places—South Korea, Taiwan…Everything, everything. In Poland too. And how, in that moment, everything that happened in the 1990s—it was like we lost the struggle. The politics, yeah, exactly. Eastern Germany was colonized by Western Germany, its lifestyle, ideology, economic system, everything it represented. In Poland, the whole industry was privatized. Many big companies and factories were sold to the West. And we were just poor. I don’t know—it’s a long story. My parents lost everything overnight because of the inflation. They got married in 1989, and I was born in 1992. When they got married, all the presents and money they received for their wedding—overnight, it was worth almost nothing.

Manuel: You have to see this footage series by Adam Curtis—TraumaZone. It’s about that period, about how inflation destroyed the Soviet Union.

Maja: It’s so interesting. For many people the early 1990s was a period full of dreams. The first thing my parents bought was a satellite dish to watch TV from Germany. We were so saturated by this media, trying to be the West, trying to be as…

Manuel: The American dream.

Maja: And everything was just lost in the 1990s, I think. Complicity came.

Manuel: The ’70s and ’80s showed us revolutions and struggles, but with the ’90s… We are that generation—we are the kids of the ’90s. Capitalism and hyper-normalization of life is what we got. “You have to have a Tesla car.” That dream destroyed all the other dreams—that you could change something, that you could…

Maja: That’s a lot about colonization too. How one dream is kind of colonized by another dream.

Manuel: Exactly. I don’t feel represented by that materialistic desire in life. But I know that many in our generation want another life—the one they’re supposed to have. And for me, well, I’m part of two collectives. I have proof that there are people resisting. But we’re such a minority.

For me, the problem is: how can those people get involved in politics if they work sixteen hours a day and then have to care for their children?

The international media say about the situation in Argentina: “How did Javier Milei win? How did he appear like that in society?” And you think—why don’t you talk to a worker? It’s the same in the U.S., of course. Talk to them about how they make it to the end of the month—with so little money. Political parties change, but the situation stays the same. The people who voted for Milei aren’t getting involved in politics. They continue to struggle to make ends meet and live a decent life as best they can. Argentina’s history is so complex, as every country.

For me, the global problem is how to make it possible for all classes—especially the working class—to have the time to get involved in politics, to go to the theater, to watch films, to read books. Techno-capitalism today creates more distraction. The less time you have, the less you want to get involved—because you’re tired, because you want to have time for your children. And if you don’t have children, you want to make your own films, like me.

Maja: That’s your child.

Manuel: Of course—my cat and my films. And I know, I’m very conscious that I’m part of that segment of society that gets involved—but I’m not changing the world. But what is to change the world now anyways?

近几年，欧洲主要国际电影节的评委团特别欣赏具有鲜明话语风格的短片，比如柏林电影节2021年的《下午过去了一半》（导演：张大磊）以及戛纳 2022 年的《海边升起一座悬崖》（导演：陳劍瑩）。2025 年的洛迦诺电影节短片竞赛（Golden Pardino – Pardi di Domani）评委团——Jihan El Tahri、Lemohang Mosese 和 Sara Serraiocco——选择了杨名导演的美中合拍项目《鬣狗》。在洛迦诺，观众称赞了这部短片的视觉语言和大规模的制作。如果说有哪一部短片的形式可以被形容为“大片”，《鬣狗》肯定是一个例子。短片的本质不就是以相对较低的成本探索新的叙事方式，并让电影制作人摆脱市场的束缚，获得一定程度的自由吗？我开始问自己，为什么在当下的电影环境里，像《鬣狗》的一部短片有如此大的成本、如此多的群众演员。在洛迦诺，我有机会与杨名、摄影师，以及制片人邓煜曈讨论《鬣狗》的制作过程和项目背后的故事。

Maja：我们可以从你自己的故事开始。因为在介绍电影的手册你有提到，你到18岁都住在寺庙里。你能不能介绍一下你自己的教育过程呢？

Altay（杨名）：我比较坎坷，我小时候在内蒙古，过着标准少数民族式的生活，爸妈对我的学习并没抱太大期望。由于喜欢画画，我考到了北京，算是从草原搬到了城市。高中在中央美院附中上学，大学去了北京电影学院。我的学习过程中，环境比较鼓励我去释放个性、随意穿衣打扮、留长发，老师也来自世界各地。学校有一个电影社，一个club，胡英海，也就是HYENA的联合导演，是第一届社长，带我一起拍电影。我高一，他高二。第二年我接任社长，我们就继续拍。学校特别支持我们拍电影。

我在高中时拍了一个45分钟的短片，还在电影院放映，我记得当时我的海报贴在《速度与激情》的旁边。那是我第一次在大屏幕上看到自己的片子，我去做DCP，调放映机，感受观众的反应。从那时起，我做电影就一直想着“大屏幕”的感受。

Maja：当然。而且你在电影里很多场景都挺“西方”的，比如那个城堡。

Altay：对。我从小学画画，学了十年，从油画到雕塑，全是西方艺术体系的内容。我能背出所有流派：文艺复兴、巴洛克、洛可可……我的专业就是西方绘画。所以对我来说，古典绘画特别理性、严谨，很适合我片子里的主题——“狂热（frenzy）”。我一开始可以不用画室做场景，但我觉得画室里那种古典理性的氛围，能更好地衬托人的疯狂。

Maja：那你觉得，这种狂热在别的环境里也会出现吗？它是不是和西方艺术特别相关？

Altay：对，我在做片子时也想过。我让美术帮我找的所有画都和“群体”有关，比如杰利柯（Géricault）的《梅杜萨之筏》（Le Radeau de la Méduse）。那幅画讲一群人漂流到最后互相残食。西方绘画里从中世纪到19世纪都有很多关于“群体疯狂”“群众力量”的图像。

在宿舍里我们挂的是德拉克洛瓦（Delacroix）的《自由引导人民》（La Liberté guidant le peuple）——那也是群体的象征。我用这些画并不是要观众直接读出含义，而是因为西方绘画里确实有大量关于“狂热”和“群体”的思考。

Maja：明白。

Altay：另外，我的背景也影响我。我妈妈是蒙古族，我爸爸是汉族。我小时候在蒙古族部落长大，唱歌跳舞，像游牧民族那样生活。后来进入城市才逐渐学习中国文化。我做电影时，很多人说我作品比较“世界性”，我想可能是我在做更“人性”的主题，比如人性中的疯狂、本能、愤怒。我上一部片也是拍这种人性里动物性的愤怒。这种东西属于所有人，不分国界。

Maja：这部电影是在北京拍的吗？

Altay：对，那个“城堡”其实是北京郊区一个停用的赌场，我们租下来改造的。我小时候上课的画室原本只是个别墅，但我那时很小，觉得它巨大得像逃不出的城堡。长大再回去看，才发现其实很小。所以我选择把片子放在一个更宏大的“城堡”空间里，象征那种封闭与恐惧。

Maja：而且雕塑也很有压迫感。

Altay：我们特意选了黑白。彩色会显得没那么可怕。黑白让石膏像“人脸”一样，当它们被打碎，就更让人不安。整个空间被这些人脸盯着，就会产生恐惧。我上一部其实是拍蒙古的故事。那部片是在瑞士Freiburg拿了短片最高奖，他们给了我很多资金，这才让我拍了这一部（笑）。我感觉瑞士挺喜欢我。

Maja：那这次在这里，观众的反馈怎么样？

Altay：目前很好！在party上大家都来祝贺我。放映后我都会留下来和观众聊天。很多观众说他们喜欢这个片子，因为“好看，不会想睡觉”，但也“不至于太深刻”——我觉得这是夸奖（笑）。他们觉得看完有思考，但不会太沉重。

我其实想让片子更“好看一点”，甚至带点 commercial 的方向。观众缘很好，但评委缘我就不知道了（笑）。

有观众身体不适中途离场，我猜是因为音量太大。中国影院的音量本来就比欧洲大很多，我想让观众感受到那种强烈的冲击。

Maja：是的，确实音量习惯不同。那我还想问关于90这个角色。看他时我会想到日本漫画里的角色。为什么让他是全白色、白头发的形象？

Altay：我想90是“无性”的。片子里其他男孩都特别有男性特征，而九十像一个无性的存在。我发现小男孩聚在一起时，特别爱谈性别。如果你缺少“男性特征”，就会被孤立或霸凌。大家会用性别相关的脏话，展示“man”的感觉。

我演的那个角色，是带头的那种“big dick vibe”。我其实想讨论这种“男性狂热”。拍完我甚至担心观众会“厌男”。但如果全是女生，也会有类似的暴力，所以这和男女关系不大。

我觉得男孩有自己的一套system，像狼群一样。在十五六岁这种原始阶段，他们渴望力量，还处在动物性的状态。

Maja：那你觉得，这是不是他们考不上好成绩的原因？九十被霸凌是因为他成绩好。

Altay：是，其实在真实生活里，最让我难过的是——现实中90画得很好，但没考上；而带头霸凌他的人反而考得很好。那些人其实很聪明，会观察、会站队。

大师（Master）最惨，他其实有几次选择机会，但都错过了timing。一位瑞士观众看完片子说：“大师一点都不可怜，因为他每次都错过时机。” 我觉得这个评论很残酷但现实。

Maja：对，这样悲剧就产生了。那我也想问一个制作层面的：对你们来说，这个项目最大的挑战是什么？在拍摄或剪辑的过程中？

胡英海：我先补充一下刚才那个关于九十为什么他全身是白色的。其实最初我们想到的就是要让九十穿白衣服、染白头发。其实是因为最后他被绑在那个大笼子上，而开场时老师一直在强调这个雕像是“被俘的奴隶”。我们要做的是让被绑的九十和“被俘的奴隶”之间产生某种关系。其实“纯白色的人”代表的是一个绝对纯净的人，但他在一个狂躁、甚至肮脏的环境里，是不被接纳的。其实这也是一种隐喻：他不只是讲中国的事，也可以包含所有世界的历史。比如我们为什么要砸那些雕像，像伏尔泰（Voltaire）这些石膏像，都是欧洲著名的历史人物、象征理性光辉与智慧的哲学家或思想家，但他们都被砸碎了。

所以九十象征的是一个最纯粹、最纯洁无瑕的人，但当他面对一群狂热的人时，他就会被击碎。这种事件无论在中国历史还是西方历史中都屡见不鲜——关于一个纯洁的人如何在疯狂的环境中无法生存并被排斥的状态。

所以白色是出于这个考虑。我们在布置场景时也加入了很多石膏像——其实中国画室里不会有那么多石膏像，但我们故意买了非常多，把房间堆满。所有石膏像都是历史人物，是理性和智慧的象征，他们“看着我们”，但又离我们很远。我们让这些像摆满整个空间，再把它们砸碎。这是刚才那个问题的补充。

Altay：制作方面——虽然这是一个high budget的片子，很贵，但我觉得这不难，因为我受到了很多电影节的支持，他们给了我很多钱。最难的部分其实是我自己又演又导。

你看到我在里面是演员，又是导演。最难的是平衡。因为这是我自己的真实经历，想到它我会非常情绪化。这个片子也要做得很emotional，但这种情绪化的东西又需要绝对理性来控制。光平衡这一点就已经很难了。

在现场，我没办法立刻从感性变理性。演完之后立马变导演状态也不行。虽然最后很多镜头没用，但我需要时间去调整回来。

到了后期问题更明显，因为我不能确定我是否真的从这件事里走出来。一个导演要把自己的真实经历拍好，必须已经看透它。但那时我还不知道我有没有“get over”。所以脑子里有各种noise，又怕自己做不好——毕竟那么多人帮我、那么多钱。

当时我以为我失败了。所有问题都聚在一起，我只能坐在剪辑房里哭。我就觉得：不就是一个小短片吗，怎么这么难？觉得自己没演好、没导演好、搞砸了。后来我每天给自己写小日记，关于片子的想法，最后写了四万字。每天记录调整思路，最后团队也来帮忙。对我来说，最困难的就是平衡和掌控整个体量。这个片子的体量是我从未 handle过的，压力特别大，尤其是群戏——好几组人同时表演。第一部短片还很聪明，就两个人对话，很轻松。这次却是复杂调度、多人群戏，非常疲惫。我们拍的时候每天拍二十多个小时，只睡四小时。

胡英海：不过在现场就像打了鸡血一样。尤其到夜戏，大家后半夜特别困，群众演员容易松懈。国内很多群众演员都是做行活的，不是专业演员，只是来挣五十块钱的。

所以调动他们的情绪很难，但Altay做得非常好——他自己演孩子王，又在调动大家的情绪。为了让所有人都疯狂，他自己要先疯狂。尤其到后半夜，他能把所有人带进癫狂状态。群众演员、工作人员都特别愿意配合。很多表演都是自然流露出来的。

Altay：而且有些表演我们用了体验派的方法。比如Master角色，他后来跟我说他觉得我在片场“霸凌”他。他觉得我太苛刻，但其实我是故意让他体验被孤立的感觉。因为他本人是个“老好人”，从来没被孤立过，演不出那种状态。

我小时候被霸凌过，知道那种感受，所以我让大家别和他说话，让他体会那种孤立。他真的开始觉得我们不理他，结果演得特别好。后来我们成了好朋友，但他现在还笑着说我当年“欺负”他。

我觉得这些表演都非常真实的状态。我们拍的时候演员提前一周进组，在那个画室生活。那地方真的成了一个画室，每天大家就那样生活。

而最讽刺的是，当年欺负我的人，现在真的开了一家画室，成了老板。当时他还想投资我，不知道我这片子讲的就是他（笑）。我去见他的时候，他还特别热情：“哎呀兄弟，好久不见！”但他真的没意识到他当年在霸凌我。他觉得那只是“闹着玩”。我特别震惊，也觉得很心碎。但这也让我意识到——很多霸凌者根本没有“霸凌意识”。

其实我后来又遇到很多暴力事件。拍这片子两个月前，我还被同学揍了。当时我有两个剧本，一个爱情片、一个是现在的HYENA。我本来要拍爱情片，是很 commercial 的项目、还有大公司准备投的，但那次被揍改变了我的人生，我就决定拍HYENA。

Edyta（邓煜曈）：我喜欢奉俊昊那种，在 commercial 和 arthouse 之间找到平衡的方式，这是我们的目标。

Maja：那你们现在准备新的项目吗？

Altay：当然，我们现在有两部在筹备。一部是我的第一部短片的长片版，是蒙古族的故事——父亲绑架儿子去山上出家当和尚。

Edyta：这是个关于身份认同（identity）的故事，想拍成法中合拍片，一个跨国公路片。讲一个蒙古人生活在法国或纽约，面对 identity crisis 的故事。

Altay：里面会有蒙古宗教的象征、超自然元素（shamanism），我自己在庙里生活过，那种生命与死亡观让我震撼。因为我当时真的在庙里生活过，跟师父聊了很多。他带给我的震撼，不是那种表面的、形式上的东西——不是说你穿上袍子、把头剃掉就算修行了——而是那种真正走到内心深处的思维方式。你会被他对死亡、对生命的态度深深打动。那种态度和我们生活在城市里的人完全不同。我当时就觉得，这个片子一定会让人震撼——因为它让你看到另一种生命的态度。其实蒙古人对生命的看法是非常独特的。比如蒙古人的葬礼方式——羊吃草，人吃羊，人死后被放在草原上让狼吃掉，生命循环。

Writer: Lv Junke 吕俊珂

Ghost Writer is a film that easily catches attention. Even in BISFF’s abudant program spanning almost 300 short films not lacking in experimentation, avant-garde, and exploration of visual media, it’s a very different piece. This seemingly cost-free film uses Google Maps street View images and first-person voice-over to tell a simple, mysterious story. Perhaps because of its simplicity, or perhaps because of its delicate balance between form and narrative, I couldn’t help but want to explore it further.
In this film, I see the gesture of director Abe Callard as a young film auteur. Curious about how Abe came to this unique gesture in a series of choices, I interviewed him at the Goethe-Institut, 798 during the BISFF after party, to learn about the story and choices behind Ghost Writer. We finished our interview in the corner of the Goethe-Institut with the music of the dinner party and the sound of conversation everywhere. The interview was very smooth and enjoyable, perhaps because we “got to know” Abe in advance in the gesture of the film. We had similar perspectives on many issues, and Abe also provided many interesting and special insight.

Q: Have you ever been to Grand Marais, the town in your film?

A: No. I wanna go.

Q: To which one?[1]

A: The one in my film.

Q: Was the story inspired entirely by the town, by the Grand Marais, or was it influenced by other things like real life, experience or other works of art or literature?

A: No. I think I just stared at the town until the story came to me.

Q: Was your story inspired by works of literature? When I watch your short film, I feel like reading a short novel.

A: I think I’m more influenced by novels than by films. Maybe like Murakami, the Japanese writer. I’m a big fan of his, and this kind of story where it’s like a boy and a girl meeting randomly and having this strange connection, and it’s kind of haunted and mysterious. It’s probably influenced by him. But I don’t think I’m very influenced by other movies. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

Q: Do you think the film needs a story? Or do you think a story needs a film to show it? Or how you think about the relation between film language and storytelling？

A: I think story comes first. I think a story can really be told in any way and I never start with a technique or a certain type of image or anything like that. I always care most about the characters and the story. And then I think I just let the story determine the image.

Q: So why you choose film but not other forms?

A: I have done storytelling in other forms. I’ve written books. And I’ve done plays and stuffs. I love every form. I want to make a video game.

Q: Why did you choose to shoot this film entirely with Google Maps?

A: Because I think that the images on Google Maps are not that different from my actual filming style. The way that the world looks in Google Maps, just like this kind of stable you might say wide shots of places, it’s kind of like how I would shoot a movie anyways. So it looks like how I imagine the world to look like.

Q: What role does the mouse cursor play in your short film?

A: It’s like that’s like the only representation of the protagonist. So you don’t see his body but you see that.

Q: How do you think of the relation or distance between you as a director, and the protagonist or the narrator in your short film? Because you use the first point of view and your own voice in the voice-over.

Q: I found the voice-over of the main character being you yourself. How do you consider the tone and rhythm of the voice-over？

A: When I’m directing actors, I always tell them act as little as possible, don’t give any emotion, just say the words on the page. So it was really nice when I was reading my own lines because I could do it exactly how I wanted which is monotone. I just try to read it like an AI voice reader.

Q: Can we say this is kind of minimalism?

A: Yeah. I think so.

Q: So how do the images and sounds work together in the film? I think the images are very minimalist, with no real characters appearing, yet the narration is very detailed—it describes perceptions of the environment, associations with the scenery, and even aspects of the body. How do you deal with that?

A: Every movie is like give-and-take where you want to give some things to the audience and take some things away. So I had to decide, for example, do I want to put in natural noises? Or do I want to just put silence and voice-over? And I thought if it’s just silent, it’s like I’m taking too much away and then the viewer is not immersed in the world shown in the film. Then that’s why I decided to include noises and music. I usually don’t put music into films. But I felt like in this case, because you’re just looking at a still photograph, if there’s no music it would be too desolate. So there needs to be some warmth. And also because the main character is so flat and effortless, I feel like I need to put in that music to give the sense of spirit. But the image is giving almost nothing.

Q: You mentioned the soundscape and the music, but also your writing is full of details. Why you choose this way? Sometimes you give a portrayal of the narrator’s inner world and sometimes you go into the description of the environment.

A: I think that’s just how I think about the world.

Q: I noticed that in the lines spoken by the female character you use a girl’s voice. But the other characters, they don’t have their own voice, instead you use your own voice to speak for them. So why you choose this way?

A: Because she stands apart from the world, from everybody else. And she’s an outsider even in her own town.

Q: Do you have a unique language for this film? Because you use Google Maps and I notice that you use close ups to some parts of the space and then zoom out to the whole environment.

A: I think I try to make the film as close as possible to how I see the world. A filmmaker who edits a lot and has a handheld camera and many different angles sees the world in that way. They see it in this kind of chaotic, exciting, vibrant way. And I think the way I see the world is like just a still image. Sometimes I notice a detail and it’s like zooming in on it. So that’s what I’m trying to depict.

Q: I noticed sometimes the camera goes to the sky and zooms in.

A: Just because I like to look at the sky.

Q: Why you keep the watermark of Google Maps?

A: Because I don’t know how to remove it.

Q: I think it’s kind of beautiful in the sky, like some stars.

A: I like it in the sky. Yeah, it does look like stars. But it was not an intentional choice. The thing is there are some people, when they watch my movie, they think it’s about digital images. Maybe it is. But I didn’t think about that when I was making it. I’m just interested in the story and the place. I thought this is the best way to express it through those images partially because they don’t have any people in them. And I like that. But I’m not trying to say anything about maps or anything like that. I don’t know.

Q: Did you adjust the light or the color of the scene during your post production?

A: No I didn’t. I thought about doing it. Because the black in the film is not very black. It’s very light. But when I color-corrected it, it just didn’t have the same magic as when I originally discovered the images. Because the first thing I discovered was the image of the lakeside, outside his hotel at night where the main character meets the girl for the first time. And I was so struck by that image because you never really see night images on Google Maps, they don’t take them at night. So that was like a rare instance, and then I started to explore the town, and the whole town was depicted at night. It had this very rich warm color. I don’t know what kind of camera was used to take it, but it’s very beautiful to me. When I dropped the black down to something darker, it took away those details.

Q: Did you ever think of including some people in your images? I noticed that there are some people in the Google Maps without face, with mosaics on their faces.

A: That’s just because Google blurs them out. I didn’t blur them out. It would be a little creepy if there were no people. But I didn’t want to show the characters because I felt like when you’re talking to somebody in real life, you don’t actually look at their face very much. Like I’m talking to you right now, but I might be looking at another thing. Maybe the best way to represent a conversation is just looking up at the sky or something like that.

Q: My last question is the one that you once asked another director[2], and now I want to ask you. This world around us, and the world in your film, which one do you think is more real?

A: The world in my film.

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[1] (The following words reveal the plot) The protagonist of the film comes to the wrong place: there are two Grand Marais towns in the United States, and the punk singer’s hometown is in Michigan, but the protagonist comes to the Grand Marais in Minnesota. So the one Abe wanted to visit is Grand Marais, Minnesota, as shown in the Google Maps image in this film.

[2] During the post-screening sharing of the 3^rd section of International competition at UCCA, Abe asked Eneos Carka, one of the directors of I Accidentally Stepped on a Flower (which digitally modeled an abandoned stadium after scanning it, then used more than a million point clouds to redraw it), the same question, and the latter replied “Both”.

From October 17 to 26, 2025, the Women Make Waves International Film Festival (WMWIFF) celebrates its 32nd edition, presenting a diverse selection of films in the programme shaped by strong curatorial concepts. This year’s thematic sections include Sci-fi Reimagined: The Body as an Alien World, Seeing in the Dark (addressing social issues), The Way Things Go: Notes on Existence (exploring personal experience), Distilled Landscape (looking at history through the lens of landscape), Queering Voices, as well as two short film programs—Unruly Desires (XPOSED) and Cinemini. The festival will also feature a documentary retrospective section titled Special Screening: Salute to Trailblazers!, dedicated to the history of women in cinema, along with a retrospective of Chantal Akerman.

Since attending several screenings at the Women Make Waves in Taipei in 2017, I have continued to follow its curatorial direction with great interest. The festival’s programming has consistently been impressive—its team maintains a delicate balance between experimentation, openness, and intersectionality, holding firm to its principles while avoiding elitism. Women Make Waves is also among the few festivals that have managed to achieve a thoughtful form of commercialization, maintaining coherence between its brand image and core values. Its spirit extends beyond the films and audience engagement to include practical festival merchandise that embodies the festival’s philosophy.

In addition, WMWIFF continues to advance the documentation and re-examination of women’s filmmaking and the history of Taiwan’s feminist movement, furthering these discussions through book publications. As a festival with a strong sense of social awareness and responsibility, WMWIFF does not participate in the prestige competition of the festival circuit; rather, it remains steadfastly committed to its own goals and mission—premieres have never been its sole measure of success.

I first met Chen Huei-Yin, the festival’s chief curator, in Taipei in 2022, when she invited me to visit the festival office, which also serves as an archive. Over the past three years, Chen has frequently travelled in search of films suitable for the festival, and we have crossed paths many times at different film festivals and in various cities. This interview emerged naturally from our ongoing conversations. In it, Chen reflects on the founding of Women Make Waves IFF, the transformations it has undergone, and how every step of its development has remained closely intertwined with the social dynamics of Taiwan.

Maja Korbecka (MK): How did the Women Make Waves International Film Festival begin?

Chen Huei-Yin (CHY): Our festival was founded in 1993, closely tied to the social atmosphere in Taiwan at the time. The country had just lifted martial law, and movements concerning gender and minority rights were gaining momentum. The key figure behind the festival’s founding was filmmaker Huang Yu-Shan (黄玉珊), who then ran a film production studio called Black & White Studio (黑白屋電影工作室). The studio not only produced films but also participated in organizing a variety of cultural events and festivals.

The creation of the festival can be traced back to the collaboration between Huang Yu-Shan, a group of activists and scholars (including Li Yuan-Zhen [李元貞], Wang Ping [王蘋], Chang Hsiao-Hung [張小虹], and Ting Nai-Fei [丁乃非]), and the women’s organization Awakening Foundation (婦女新知). The first edition took place at the Hoke Art Gallery in Taipei (台北霍克藝術會館), and this choice of a non-cinematic venue reflected the experimental nature of the festival’s early days. In addition to film screenings, the event included forums, photography and painting exhibitions, and other hybrid formats. The second edition was held at the Crown Theater on Guling Street, an experimental performance space. Starting from the third edition, the festival collaborated with the Dimen Art Education Foundation and was held at the Dimen Art Center—still outside a traditional theater setting. From the fourth edition onward, the festival became more stable and was hosted for three consecutive years at the audio-visual room of Eslite Bookstore’s Dunnan branch.

It wasn’t until the year 2000 that the festival formally entered the cinema space, expanding its scale and beginning to use 35mm film projection. In the early years, the festival had a kind of guerrilla character—films were screened in non-theatrical spaces, often with audiences gathered before a simple projection screen. Once it moved into theaters, the festival gradually came to be recognized as an official film festival and began to acquire more commercial characteristics.

MK: So in the beginning, did the festival screen films on VHS or 16mm?

CHY: In the early years, we mainly used home video formats such as VHS. This only changed after the festival entered theaters, when we gradually transitioned to professional formats like Betacam and 35mm. The early editions were deeply intertwined with the broader social atmosphere of the time. “Women Make Waves” was one of the earliest film festivals to emerge in Taiwan—before our founding, the only existing festival was the Golden Horse Film Festival. We were also the first issue-oriented festival in Taiwan to focus specifically on gender.

Two years before our establishment, in 1991, the Golden Horse Film Festival had already begun to pay attention to women directors, presenting a special program of works by renowned filmmakers such as Chantal Akerman and Agnès Varda. These programs, titled Special Focus on Women Directors, reflected a growing social awareness of women’s filmmaking.

This trend wasn’t limited to the film world. Other major art institutions also began organizing group exhibitions of women artists, signalling a rise in gender consciousness in early 1990s Taiwan. Therefore, the birth of our festival was by no means coincidental—it was a product of that social climate, providing a platform devoted to women filmmakers.

MK: There didn’t seem to be many women filmmakers during Taiwan’s New Wave of the 1980s, but by the 1990s, filmmakers such as Wang Shaudi and Huang Yu-Shan began to work in the film industry. Does director Huang still participate in the festival today?

CHY: She usually attends whenever she can. Although she has long lived in Tainan, she makes a special effort to come support the festival during its run. She also co-founded the South Taiwan Film Festival, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022. It’s quite remarkable that both festivals have continued to this day.

MK: I’ve recently been reading a lot about Huang Yu-Shan and really loved her 1990 film The Peony Birds (牡丹鳥). It’s a pity that the film isn’t better known internationally. I also noticed that she places great emphasis on using film festivals and education to reshape audiences’ viewing habits and ways of thinking.

CHY: That’s right. One of the defining features of the Women Make Waves is that, from the very beginning, we not only showcased works by women directors but also made special efforts to introduce important international films about women. In its early years, the festival focused on landmark works in gender and feminist cinema, aiming through this curatorial strategy to expose Taiwanese audiences to global discussions of gender representation.

At the time, our team couldn’t travel abroad for film selection, so we relied on Taiwanese friends studying overseas to help choose films locally and recommend them for screening in Taiwan. This combination of global vision and local initiative has been a key characteristic of the Women Make Waves.

MK: Balancing the global and the local seems to be crucial factor in the success of any film festival.

CHY: In its early years, Women Make Waves not only highlighted women directors’ works but also sought to uncover the histories of women in Taiwan. The organizing team, board members, and participants included not only filmmakers but also creators producing works from a female perspective—such as films about Taiwan’s first female painter or first female doctor. By screening these works, the festival re-recorded and re-presented women’s histories through moving images. This approach was not merely about screening existing works but emphasized re-creation and the cinematic reimagining of history.

The festival was founded during a time when Taiwan’s gender movement was rapidly evolving. For instance, in 1994, Taiwan’s first feminist bookstore, Fembooks (女書店), opened in the Gongguan area of Taipei. Around the same time, gender studies programs began to appear in academic institutions, such as the establishment of the first Gender Studies Center at National Central University (中央大學) in the early 1990s. These developments were closely linked to feminist discourse in academia. Professor Josephine Ho (何春蕤), a prominent activist and scholar, was leading the gender movement with her well-known slogan, “I want orgasm, not sexual harassment.” That slogan captures the vibrant and radical spirit of the 1990s feminist wave. In short, the founding of the Women Make Waves can be seen as a natural extension of Taiwan’s gender movement and its broader social context.

MK: Do you follow a fixed format when designing the festival programme?

CHY: Each year, we redesign the program sections according to the main theme rather than keeping a fixed format. The theme usually relates to current social issues or to certain perspectives we wish to explore. Sometimes, it focuses on areas that tend to be overlooked. For example, one year we curated a section about reproduction, which ranged from the choice not to give birth to transgender experiences of reproduction. Through the way we structure our programs, we also ask whether another perspective is possible—whether we can step outside mainstream attention and present the world as it is unfolding.

MK: I’m curious—have you noticed changes in the audience demographics in recent years?

CHY: From my observation, the festival has built up a loyal audience base—people who have a particular interest in women’s and gender issues. At the same time, many of these viewers also attend other film festivals, such as the Golden Horse Film Festival. I’ve noticed an increase in younger audiences, while the proportion of older viewers has somewhat declined. In addition, the number of male audience members has grown significantly compared to the past.

MK: In recent years, a relatively large commercial women’s film festival called “Shanyi” has been established in China. Their programming approach doesn’t restrict directors by gender—they include male directors as long as the films relate to women’s issues. What’s your view on the role of male directors in a women’s film festival?

CHY: In terms of programming, we still primarily showcase works by women or creators who self-identify as women. The goal is to ensure a creative platform for women filmmakers, which has always been one of our festival’s core intentions. However, for sections such as the queer cinema program, we have gradually become more open over the past decade, no longer dividing films by the gender of the director. Similarly, in research-based or thematic retrospectives, the director’s gender is not a limitation—the focus is instead on a gendered reading of cinema. For instance, our 2018 program Women’s Revenge included many exploitation films directed by men.

Women’s film festivals around the world face similar questions: should they focus on women’s issues, on women directors, or on feminism itself? Each festival defines its own position. Our approach is to remain open and expansive in terms of gender, while still maintaining a commitment to feminist perspectives. I believe this flexibility is one of feminism’s most vital characteristics—it allows for greater possibilities in the festival’s future development.

MK: I’ve always felt that one of the biggest challenges for feminism is how to focus on women without treating them as an exception.

CHY: In Taiwan, film festivals dealing with gender issues are often questioned. For instance, people might ask, “Now that Taiwan has legalized same-sex marriage, why do we still need a women’s film festival?” Such questions are quite common. But when you look deeper, you realize that women still rarely occupy leading positions in Taiwan’s film and television industries. Gender awareness may exist, but it hasn’t yet become an everyday social practice. That’s why the Women Make Waves remains so crucial—it foregrounds women’s perspectives and opens up discussions about gender diversity. Ultimately, our goal is to continue expanding the scope of these conversations.

MK: How large is the organizing team?

CHY: We’re generally a small team, operating year-round as a nonprofit association under the name Taiwan Women’s Film Association. The association organizes various regular activities throughout the year. However, from around June or July to November, we enter the festival’s intensive preparation period, during which the workload and pace increase dramatically. Even so, our core team remains relatively small—usually no more than a dozen people—which is considerably fewer than most other film festivals.

Our funding comes from multiple sources: government grants, ticket sales, sponsorships, and other small-scale income streams. Since we operate as an NGO (a non-profit organization), our financial structure is quite different from that of larger festivals.

MK: What about volunteer participation?

CHY: Each year, we recruit between 30 and 50 volunteers. During the festival, the total number involved—including those working in various shifts and departments—can exceed 80 people. Volunteers usually work in the office from noon to evening during the preparation period, and on a shift basis during the festival. They participate in all aspects of festival operations—not only office duties but also tasks like campus outreach and promotional events.

MK: Do you plan to collaborate with Taiwanese streaming platforms like Giloo?

CHY: Yes, we’ve considered collaborations in various forms, such as media partnerships or licensing arrangements. For instance, Giloo might acquire streaming rights to certain films screened at our festival, while we would provide subtitles. This is different from the South Taiwan Film Festival’s 2020 collaboration with Giloo, which converted the festival into a fully online format. For now, we still focus primarily on in-person screenings—including touring programs—because of their time- and place-specific character. We did consider online options during the pandemic, but the costs of online screenings are relatively high.

MK: I’m also intrigued by your festival merchandise—it feels quite distinct from other festivals’. How do you decide which items to make?

CHY: We usually start by brainstorming ideas with our team and interns. While we may have certain concepts in mind, whether we can actually produce them depends on whether a manufacturer is willing to collaborate. Some products come about unexpectedly—for example, a cocktail was a partner’s idea, and we decided to give it a try. On the other hand, there are items we’ve long wanted to make but haven’t been able to due to cost—such as an eternal pen, which we had to postpone. This year, instead of our usual folders, we opted for more practical items like tissue packs. The inspiration came from promotional giveaways commonly used during Taiwanese elections—and, since tissues are always useful in the office, we thought it was a fun and down-to-earth choice.

Festival merchandise in Taiwan is quite distinctive—each year brings new creative products. By contrast, merchandise at foreign festivals tends to follow a fixed pattern.

MK: I think an eternal pen has a deep connection with feminism—it symbolizes women writing their own stories, ensuring they’re not erased or forgotten.

CHY: Exactly. We have to be especially thoughtful in designing our products. We avoid any advertising or design that might objectify women, which is something we pay particular attention to—perhaps more so than many other festivals.

MK: That’s fascinating—the merchandise design not only expresses creativity but also extends the festival’s influence. Which items sell the best?

CHY: The tote bag still sells the best. This year, we’ve received some feedback about it, so we’re considering adjusting or replacing it with other products.