【Thursday Art & Culture】2014 Youth Future Film Festival Witnesses the Past and Future

Text / Compiled and reported by the Editorial Department of MOOK Scenic Spots Travel Life Network

 

Where to go in the sweltering summer heat? Aside from eating ice cream, shopping, or staying in an air-conditioned room, you can head to an art museum to watch films. Young directors from around the world, who are just beginning to make their mark, have carefully curated and packaged their most representative and promising short films, presenting them to you.The 【2014 Youth Future Film Festival】 is an international short film festival organized, programmed, and planned by youth groups.The 【2014 Youth %? Future Film Festival】 conveys an aesthetic spirit of diversity, vitality, locality, self-discovery, and social care. “These are the issues we truly care about—this is a film festival that truly belongs to the new generation,” said curator Lin Wei-lun confidently.

Using films to change the world, the festival becomes a platform for spreading ideas. “Future Film Day” is a cultural event initiated by several young designers and artists. Under the name “Lives out of life / Life beyond life,” the team brings beautiful imagery into everyday life. To date, they have held dozens of film festival events across northern, central, southern, and eastern Taiwan. The festival collaborates with many local shops, including cafes, galleries, barbershops, live music venues, classrooms, and basements, allowing the public to casually, comfortably, and freely sit down to watch films.Each short film is no longer than thirty minutes, yet within a short span, it offers a glimpse into different perspectives and cultures around the world. At the same time, it actively promotes outstanding Taiwanese works internationally. Countless talented Taiwanese directors have expanded into international collaborations thanks to the “Future Film Day” initiative.

The “Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art” (MOCA) has, since 2010, built a youth film festival that is closer to life, younger, and more socially relevant on the underground experimental ‘creative show stage’ of the Zhongshan MRT Station’s underground bookstore street in Taipei. Based on the experience of integrating art into space, it has created a youth film festival. This event has successfully established a new platform for Taiwan’s independent film and animation industries.

This year marks the fifth edition of the Contemporary Youth Film Festival, organized in collaboration with the “Future Film Day” team for the “2014 Youth Future Film Festival.” Time is the fairest resource bestowed upon us by God. From the perspective of the absolute self, it discusses the linear continuation of the past, present, and future. Some describe time as a long river, flowing continuously from ancient times to the present. From the perspective of the relative other-self, including juniors, peers, and elders; children, fathers, and grandfathers—through understanding, communication, and imagination, time may be more like a cycle. In the Mayday song “Dry,” the lyrics go: “Now is that future, that world.” Just imagine, when the imagined future finally arrives, will we be ready to embrace it?Looking forward to the future is actually an exercise in facing oneself, strengthening the exploration and reflection of the meaning of the “present/NOW” in one’s existence. The “past” shapes the “present,” and the “present” creates the “future.” That glimmer in the eyes of those who talk passionately about the future is “youth.”

 

(Image source / Future Film Day in Taiwan)