"Small Talk" (Taiwan's LGBT Movement) Submitted to Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently announced the complete list of country submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film category for the 2018 Oscars. Titles garnering hype include Foxtrot, an Israeli film about an IDF soldier’s grieving parents; BPM: Beats Per Minute, a depiction of France’s AIDS crisis in the early 90s; and In the Fade, a German drama about a woman’s search for justice against neo-Nazi terrorists.
By comparison, the nominations coming from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China have not attracted much buzz internationally, but each region’s submission touches on issues in that capture the ambitions, desires, and insecurities of its people. Taken as a trio, they provide the perfect glimpse into three culturally distinct but closely intertwined, places.
Small Talk: Taiwan’s LGBT movement
Shot over a nearly 20-year period, Small Talk is a documentary on filmmaker Huang Hui-Chen's attempts to connect with her emotionally distant mother Anu. While working as a Taoist priestess in Taipei, Anu maintained many romances with women in an era when homosexuality was taboo. While she never attempted to hide her sexuality, she also never discussed it with her daughter. Huang tries to break her mother’s silence on her past, coaxing her through the film’s titular chit-chat.
Critics describe Small Talk as a portrait of a relationship rather than a politically charged argument about homosexuality in Taiwan. “The documentary doesn’t aim to criticize the country’s current socio-political climate or use Anu’s accounts to generalize its human rights issues. Quite the contrary: the film charms with its ability to stay compelling and critical by merely centering on one family, whose struggles feel more realistic and salient than those of a whole nation,” writes Point of View Magazine.
But the film also comes as Taiwan’s LGBT movement reaches its apex. Small Talk hit theaters in Taiwan weeks before the island’s top court declared a civil code barring same-sex marriage unconstitutional—paving the way for its eventual legalization. That landmark decision placed Taiwan well ahead of its peers in Asia on gay rights, including Australia and Hong Kong.
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