2015 Urban Nomad Film Festival Official Website

Hi everyone, 2015 Urban Nomad Film Festival has an official website now. Please find all of 2015 film festival info here: 
WWW.URBANNOMAD.TW

← Click the picture to download the screening schedule as .pdf

2015 Feature/Short Film Selections

Here is the list of short films that will be screened in the 2015 Urban Nomad Feature/Short Film Program. We will send out more info about the screening schedule and all the films very soon, but for now, here is the list of OFFICIAL SELECTIONS.

--Official Selection--

Our Opening Party...is now a Music Festival!

SHRIMP MANIA! 蝦蝦蝦！蝦到你！ 2015遊牧影展戶外派對！
Urban Nomad’s Outdoor Music Fest

★★★★ 派對資訊 | BASIC PARTY INFO ★★★★

時間 | Time: 4/18 (Sat / 六), 2pm - midnight
地點 | Place: 微遠虎山 台北市信義區福德街221巷186-1號
Tiger Mountain, No.186-1, Ln. 221, Fude St., Xinyi Dist, Taipei
門票 | Tix: $500 advance / $650 door
預售 | Buy Tickets: www.iNDIEVOX.com, KGB, AMPM, Toasteria, Shrimp Daddy
資訊｜Info: www.urbannomad.tw

很廟的舞台 | MAIN STAGE:
Autopsy of a Dead Shrimp (JP), 司卡拉ＯK大樂隊Skaraoke, 白目樂隊White Eyes, 馬克白Macbeth, 森林合唱團Forests, Marcus Aurelius, Golden (JP), DC & the Funky Duds and more!

DJ 區 | DJ ZONE
華衛音樂自救會, Hi-Five, Resident Soul, and more to be announced!

This year Urban Nomad’s opening party will morph into a full-blown music festival, with seven bands on a main stage, a DJ stage, a full day outdoor music festival, vendors, and okay, here’s the thing -- THE SHRIMPS ARE COMING! You may think you have seen shrimps before, but you have never seen shrimps like these. They are an eight-piece funk band from Japan that takes the stage dressed as prawns, playing wild, tribal, 70s lo-fi funk. We have filled out the rest of the lineup with the best bands and DJs we can find: Skaraoke, White Eyes, Macbeth, Forests, Marcus Aurelius and others. And we’ve asked them to create the strangest, wildest musical performances they can. Because this is SHRIMP MANIA!!! Guaranteed to be Taiwan’s shrimpiest concert ever!

★★★★ 地點與交通 | LOCATION & TRANSPORT ★★★★

微遠虎山：台北市信義區福德街221巷186-1號。
捷運1：後山埤站, 走路約10-15分鐘可抵達
捷運2：象山站, 走路約20-25分鐘可抵達, 或轉信義幹線公車到奉天宮站
開車：微遠虎山隔壁有付費停車場, 30元/小時
地圖：https://goo.gl/maps/6ZvQg

Miculture Foundation is a private estate in a small valley at the bottom of Elephant Mountain, just a 5-minute taxi ride from Taipei 101.
Address: #186-1, Lane 221, Fude St., Xinyi Dist, Taipei.
MRT: Houshanpi Station, 12 minute walk
MRT: Xiangshan Station, 20 minute walk (or take the Xinyi Line bus to Fengtian Temple)
DIRECTIONS: Follow Xinyi Rd until it becomes Fude St. Continue for 1km and turn right at the brown sign to the Fengtian Temple (奉天宮). Walk past the temple 150 meters, up a hill and you will see signs for SHRIMP MANIA on your left.
CAR PARKING: available for $30 / hour
MAP: https://goo.gl/maps/6ZvQg

★★★★ 樂團與DJ的介紹 | BANDS & DJs ★★★★

溺蝦驗屍報告 THE DROWNED SHRIMP! (JP)

Formed in 2001 in Kyoto, the Drowned Shrimps started out playing shrimp funk in little known reefs and backwater tide pools, with more than 100 shrimp musicians cycling through their ranks. In 2013, they made their way out of the ocean and up mountain streams to Fuji Rock, where they won “Best Rookie Band”, getting more than twice the votes of any other band. In 2014, they were assigned to play one of Fuji Rock’s main stages and stupefied an audience of 5,000 land-walking humans, in a late-night shrimp mania dance party. Other gigs have followed. They have been called “the weirdest band in the world” on more than one occasion. This does not bother them, because they are shrimps.

https://www.facebook.com/drownedshrimp

Hey Taiwan, Get Ready for Urban Nomad 2015!

We are happy to announce Urban Nomad's dates and events for 2015. The festival has expanded to a longer format. Instead of an all too quick 10 days in the theater, this year events will cover a full month. We will kick off on April 17 with a special event, with special events every weekend until we finally occupy the comfortable seats of Ximen's LUX Cinema from May 8 to 17.

Highlights include our annual opening party on Saturday, April 18, which has grown to a stand-alone full-day music festival, with 8 bands, 5 DJs and the surprises the Urban Nomad Party is known for. But basically we are doing this because we believe alternative environments are extremely valuable and make for great events. Not only are they better for socializing, they also allow more experimental events and hybrid events, such as films together with live performances, or.... there are announcements coming soon, and they will be exciting.

The films will be the same high standard of international documentary and indie film you have grown accustomed to, as well as the best of Taiwan. The international section will feature more than 20 Taiwan premiers. The competition section is for the first time open to feature films, and we will host several world premiers of feature films. Submissions of short films and music videos numbered around 300, including lots of outstanding work. The jury will include an international curator from a top US film festival, which will not only bring a new set of eyes to evaluate Taiwanese films, it will also provide the potential for screening outside Taiwan.

The basic info is below. We look forward to seeing you all at the 2015 Urban Nomad Film Fest!


2015 URBAN NOMAD EVENT INFO：

Warm-up Events: every weekend from April 17

Party: 4/18 (Sat) 2pm to midnight
Party Location: Tiger Mountain (台北虎山), #186-1, Lane 221, Fude St, Xinyi District, Taipei (台北市信義區福德街221巷186-1號）
Party Tickets: www.indievox.com

Film Fest: May 8 - 17 
Film Fest Location: LUX Cinema in Ximen, #85, Sec 2, Wuchang St, Taipei (台北市萬華區武昌街二段85號）
Film Line-up Announcement: coming in early April, tickets through www.books.com.tw

Film Submissions Are Closed ~ and yes! Don't worry! We will watch your film!

Film submissions for the 2015 Urban Nomad Film Festival is now officially closed. Around 300 shorts, features and music videos were submitted from Taiwan and all corners of the world. Our film selection committee is hard at work enjoying and appraising your creations. Thank you so much for participating!

Please click the following links to check the complete submission lists to make sure we got your films:

Short/ Feature Film Submission list: http://goo.gl/eXEMjo
Music Video Submission list: http://goo.gl/RQeNyw

Our screening committee will begin the selection process soon. Official Selections to the festival will be announced in early April! Thank you again for your patience, and please keep following our news for this the Urban Nomad Film Fest at this blog.

Music Video Sessions competition announced!

We're happy to announce our second annual MUSIC VIDEO SESSIONS competition section. Last year's first edition was fantastic, and MTV has stepped in to help us give even more exposure to videos in the competition, and we think that's a great way to help support indie bands!

Urban Nomad's "Best Indie Music Video" prize was created to support Taiwan's local indie music scene. Once the 2015 nominees are announced in April, MTV will show the nominees as part of normal programming, with videos identified onscreen as “Urban Nomad Top 10 MV of 2015”. MVs will be screened at the festival before music-themed feature films and directors and bands will be invited for Q&As.

Music Videos (MVs) can be 1) by Taiwanese bands or artists, 2) by Taiwanese directors, or 3) by directors or musicians living in Taiwan. In case there are questions of eligibility, Urban Nomad has the right to decide the eligibility any submitted MV. You must apply online, and please note, the Music Video Form is different from the Film Application Form!

Go to the: Music Video Submissions Form

See more on competition rules and suggestions by clicking on the link below.

DEADLINE: March 2, 2015
(no submission fee is required)

SHORT FILM APPLICATION FORM
MUSIC VIDEO APPLICATION FORM

Urban Nomad’s annual competition is for Taiwanese films and music videos, with total prizes in 2015 of at least $50,000. We also have non-competition sections for international films, including both features and shorts.

In 2015, Urban Nomad is opening its main prize to Taiwanese films of any length. Previously, the competition was limited to Taiwanese short films only, but since we receive submissions of several feature-length films every year, we have decided to make narrative features and documentary features eligible for the main prize.

Internet videos can count as short films! We would also like to emphasize that the competition is open to Internet-based videos, including those created for YouTube, Vimeo or other platforms. Internet films will be considered as short films and are welcome to join the competition.

We are also looking for Taiwanese feature films that can be considered as an opening or closing film for our festival. To be considered, your film must be a Taiwan premier.

I want to read more about:

SHORT FILMS
MUSIC VIDEOS
FEATURE FILMS
INTERNATIONAL FILMS
COMPETITION PRIZES
WHAT DO I GET IF MY FILM IS ACCEPTED
COMPETITION RULES & ELIGIBILITY

2014 Closing Film: JALANAN director Daniel Ziv with the audience.

The 2014 Urban Nomad Taiwanese Short Film Awards concluded Sunday night, May 18, 2014. In all, this year's competition drew more than 300 submissions, including 66 submissions in a new category for Taiwanese Independent Music Videos. The festival featured eight programs of shorts, including 28 short films, 33 animated films and 10 music videos. Congratulations and thanks to all of the participating directors. From the story of how the black metal band Chthonic learned martial arts for their music video "Supreme Pain for the Tyrant" to John Hsu's parody of "micro-film" marketing campaigns in "The Great Escape from Cafe City", there were plenty of great moments. 

Jurors for the 2014 Urban Nomad Awards included indie singer (formerly signed to Sony Music Taiwan) Desserts Chang (張懸), Bark Magazine editor Guo Xin-xin (郭心芯), and film producer Roger Cheng (黃江豐).

2014 Big Nomad Prize winner Ella Raidel (center).

「大遊牧獎」The Big Nomad Prize

Prize: $20,000

Film: Cinema Isn't I See, It's I FlyDirectors: Ella Raidel (日得艾蘭)
Award presented by: Anjalika Wang (王耿瑜), chairperson of the Taiwan Original Filmmakers Union (TOFU) and David Frazier, Urban Nomad Festival Director
Film info: 2013 / Taiwan, Austria / 1 minute / no dialogue

Synopsis: An old man in a Taiwanese nightmarket stall watches a television, which shows a man skydiving. The depiction of this simple short scene quickly becomes a metaphor for cinema itself, and the liberation one can experience in the face of moving images.

Juror's Statement: Due to its Intense visual style and the poignant editing of the narrative, the film is very brief, but very hard to forget.

Yes, there are still tickets left for the Burning Man Movie!

There are at least 60 tickets still available for SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY on May 10 at 7:25pm, including Q&A with Steve Brown. Tickets can be purchased at the theater from noon Saturday.

Urban Nomad's online advance tickets are only sold until about 36 hours before each film. If our ticketing website, www.books.com.tw, says there are no tickets left, this does not mean that screenings are sold it. It just means the system has stopped selling tickets. In the event of sold-out screenings, we will post the information at the top of the left-hand column of this blog.

The reason for this is that the ticketing system, books.com.tw, allows users to place an order online, and then reserves the tickets for 24 hours, giving users time to go to 7-Eleven to pay and collect the tickets. In order to have a correct count of tickets available at the door, we have to stop advance sales early. We apologize if this is any inconvenience.

There are still tickets left for all showings this weekend. Please refer to this blog as the official word on sold out tickets. This year we have moved to a larger theater to allow more people to see the films.

Before the screening of SPARK, there will be a pre-party from 4:20pm at the nearby venue Custard Cream. Entry is free and please keep the burner spirit alive and bring a bottle or two to contribute to the open-share bar.

Spark director Steve Brown

SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY -- PREMIERE PRE-PARTY

WHEN：5/10 (Sat) 4:20-7:00pm
WHERE：Custard Cream 卡市達創業加油站- 武昌街二段122-1號
Wuchang Rd Sec 2, No 122-1 3F
MORE INFO: Please see the Facebook event

Steve will also be part of a panel discussion on Sunday, where he will introduce his new film project, Occupy The Farm. The panel discussion will also include directors of 99% The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film, Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites, and Taiwanese documentary filmmaker Lee Jia-hua.

PANEL DISCUSSION: OCCUPY, PROTEST, DOCUMENT

WHEN: 5/11 (Sun) 4pm
WHERE：Custard Cream 卡市達創業加油站- 武昌街二段122-1號
Wuchang Rd Sec 2, No 122-1 3F
MORE INFO: Here

2014 Urban Nomad Opens May 9 with 22 feature film premiers, 50+ short films, parties and of course... beer!

We are this psyched! DJ Peanut Butter Wolf in the hip hop doc Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton.

Opening on Friday, May 9, the Urban Nomad Film Fest continues to grow as Taiwan’s largest independent film festival, featuring 30 film programs, more than two dozen Taiwan film premiers, four international director visits, more than 60 local filmmakers as well as panel discussions, parties and related events. International feature documentaries explore art, music, extreme sports, queer culture and other topics. Local filmmakers are featured in seven programs of short films and animation as well as Taiwan’s first music video showcase at a film festival. Urban Nomad will take place at the LUX Cinema, a theater in the heart of Taipei’s movie street from May 9 to 18.

This year, Urban Nomad’s opening film is 99% The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film (2013), a look at the US grass-roots protest movement against corporate greed. Directors Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites will be in attendance, and they will also present an earlier film on Norway’s extreme heavy metal scene, Until the Light Takes Us (2008), to Taiwanese audiences for the first time.

Opening Film: 99% The Occupy Wall Street
Collaborative Film. Directors will be in attendance.

Other visiting directors include Steve Brown, CEO of the Ignite Channel, who will present his film, Spark: A Burning Man Story, and Daniel Ziv, a Canadian filmmaker, writer and photographer living in Indonesia. Ziv’s film Jalanan won the prize for Best Documentary at the 2013 Pusan Film Festival and is just beginning its tour of international film festivals. Jalanan is a portrait of three street musicians living in the margins of Jakarta.

As Taiwan has recently experienced its own “occupy movement”, Urban Nomad has invited visiting filmmakers Ewell, Aites and Brown to meet local filmmakers at a panel discussion (Sun, May 11) and discuss protests and what it means to document them. Taiwanese filmmakers Lee Jia-hua is head of a collaborative project -- it has some similarities to Ewell and Aite’s recent film -- that aims to document the Sunflower Movement. Brown is now working on a film project called Occupy The Farm, which is a post-Occupy Wall Street movement now taking place near San Francisco. Other panels will look at the start of Taiwan’s anti-China protests, how to become famous as a YouTube filmmaker and techniques in animation. Panels are free to attend and advance registration can be completed online.

The 23 feature films in the program include 22 Taiwan premiers. Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton premiered at last fall’s LA Film Festival and features Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Quest Love and numerous other hip hop artists, who discuss the influence of LA’s independent hip hop label Stones Throw Records. Doc of the Dead just saw its world premier in March at SXSW and looks at zombie culture, interviewing George Romero, Bruce Campbell (Army of Darkness) and The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, as well as lots of zombies. Murder of Couriers is a film about Vancouver bicycle couriers that has won the interest of Taiwan’s fixed gear cycling clubs. More than 30 clubs have come together to support the film’s screening on Friday, May 16, which will be preceded by raffles and followed by a huge group ride.

Doc of the Dead

Monk with a Camera tells the life story of Nicholas Vreeland, the grandson of famed Vogue editor Diana Vreeland who spurned the jet-setting life to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Unhung Hero is a US production partially filmed in Taipei. A comic romp, it visits Taipei's Snake Alley and a local kung fu sect that hangs weights from their male members, while asking the question, does size really matter? A Skate Man by Taiwanese director Jaco Yu looks at Taiwanese skateboarder Wu Meng-long's attempt to break the world record for the greatest distance covered on a longboard in one day -- more than 400km!

Tickets are available at the theater for most screenings. Advance tickets are available through books.com.tw at this link:
http://tickets.books.com.tw/progshow/01040001011286

Event: Urban Nomad Film Fest
Time: May 9 to 18
Place: Lux Cinema, #85, Sec 2, Wuchang St, Taipei (Ximen)
Tickets: $230 at the cinema / $200 in advance
Web: http://2014.urbannomad.tw

Drinks on hand at the festival include: Peroni, Grolsch, Erdinger, Hitachino (craft beer from Japan), Chilean red wine, Red Bull and various soft drinks.

Monk with a Camera