I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned, but the feature length film Gaga by Indigenous director Laha Mebow is now screening in theatres across the nation, and will also be screened at the upcoming Golden Horse Film Festival. It’s a family drama focusing on the trials and tribulations of an Atayal community high up in the mountains of Yilan. Stunning scenery is mixed with family tensions and corrupt local politics. How will this family pull through?
One annoying aspect of this film (I am sorry to say) is the presence of the family daughter Ali who has recently returned from studying overseas in New Zealand. Fair enough, but when her boyfriend Andy appears from from NZ, his English sounds like it could rather be from Canada or parts of the US. This switch up is akin, I said to a friend, to treating waisheng Mandarin as interchangeable with the sort of Mandarin spoken by Chen Shui-bian. It’s an unnecessary own goal by a director whose thoughtful work is otherwise well worth seeing.
I much prefer the poster on the right, which more closely captures the spirit of the director I know rather than the director the marketing department of her production team apparently wants her to be.
About the film’s title: as some forumosans will know, gaga refers to a larger complex ontological / ethical code governing life in Atayal communities. In the first half of the film, gaga is often invoked in relation to how this code is being broken.
Nominated in six categories, Gaga took home two awards: best supporting actress for Kagaw Piling’s depiction of an Atayal matriarch trying to maintain order in the family as things fall apart (she is reportedly the oldest woman to receive this award in the festival’s history); and best director to Laha Mebow, who continues to shine as the first Indigenous woman in Taiwan to direct a feature length film.
Hopefully this recognition will give the film some extra legs at the box office, if only to help ensure that more films like this get made in the future.
Yesterday I watched a really old Danish porno from the 70s. This was not entirely intentional. When you download a bunch of movies from the 70s and the titles are unclear sometimes a porno slips in (heh heh).
Aside from the excessive body hair it wasn’t bad. What surprised me about it was how many acts you don’t see in those kind of movies now, for obvious reasons. Dudes putting their salamis together to that a woman can pleasure them at once (but not gay?), or dudes putting their salamis into a single person (but not gay?), or some dude getting pegged by a lady with a strap-on.
Porn in 2022 seems to be more stiffly (heh heh) divided between “gay” and “NOT gay,” but back then they don’t seem to have worried about it as much. I really get nothing out of dudes bringing their light sabers into close contact, I just thought it was funny.
