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DIRECTOR IN ATTENDANCE
Taipei tattoo artist Takeko (Isabella Leong) finds herself smitten with Jade (Rainie Yang), a girly teenager who’s come to her shop seeking a spider-lily tat like the one that graces Takeko’s arm. Present secrets and past desires spill out in Zero Chou’s dreamy exploration of childhood crushes, adult guilt and erotic longing featuring two of Asia’s hottest young celebrities.
Director Zero Chou, whose film Splendid Float about drag queens won the Best Taiwanese Film award at the Golden Horse Film Festival in 2004, is no stranger to queer films. But apart from homosexual love, Spider Lilies also touches upon the notions of holding on and letting go of past memories. The film won the Teddy Bear Award for the best gay/lesbian film at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007 and is reported, in the June 2007 International Herald Tribune, as the highest grossing local film at the Taiwanese box office so far this year.
Zero Chou, heralded as one of Taiwan's most important new directors studied philosophy at university and first worked as a television reporter. She left journalism for filmmaking, creating documentaries like Corners (2002) and Poles Extremity (2003) that quickly established her as a talented director. Poles Extremity was the winner of the 2003 Marseille Festival of Documentary Film for Best Documentary while Corners was the winner of the 2002 Taipei Film Festival for Best Documentary.
For more information on this year’s Taiwanese Cultural Festival: Ilha Formosa, including screenings of other films by Zero Chou, see taiwanfest.ca/events/tcf07/Vancouver.
Screeners Available
In Taiwan, 'Spider Lilies' fuels a small gay renaissance...read more
Official site: http://www.encorefilms.com/spiderlilies/index.html
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