The 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominations were just announced, within which, Test Pattern, the work of Taiwanese producers Pin-Chun Liu and David Yu-Hao Su, has been nominated for Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay, and Best Female Lead. Pin-Chun Liu has also been nominated for Best Producers Award. Taiwanese cinematographer Ante Cheng has been nominated for Best Cinematography for his work Blue Bayou. Cheng has received top prizes for Press and Fine Art at Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3) in 2014, with his work Timeless, which is a series of Fang-Yi Sheu’s photographs, the world-renowned choreographer from Taiwan, shot on black and white film.
Test Pattern follows an interracial couple whose relationship is put to the test after a Black woman is sexually assaulted and her white boyfriend drives her from hospital to hospital in search of a rape kit, encountering further prejudice along the way. The film does not only explore #MeToo issues but also touches on gender, patriarchy, the unsound medical system, and racial topics that have long been problems for the United States. Test Pattern was world premiered at the Blackstar Film Festival in 2019 and received Lionsgate/Starz Best Producer Award. The Blackstar Film Festival functions as a showcasing platform for Black filmmakers and filmmakers of color.
Graduated from Sociology of National Taiwan University and Film Producing of the American Film Institute, Pin-Chun Liu’s short film Contrapelo was nominated in the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. Contrapelo is a story about moral conflicts between the leader of a drug cartel and a proud Mexican barber who is forced to shave him. It has also been shortlisted for the 2015 Oscar nomination for Live Action Short Films. Her work Paper Tiger received the Audience Award for Narrative Feature at the 2020 Austin Film Festival and was distributed in North America in the summer of 2021. She is currently developing a feature adaptation of her HBO Visionaries short film, Wonderland.
Graduated from American Film Institute in producing, David Yu-Hao Su was selected to the Film Independent's Project Involve as a producing fellow in 2018. He produced The Cloud in Her Room, which received the top prize-the Tiger Award, at the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam and was nominated for the International New Talent Competition of the Taipei Film Festival. He also produced the series Fragrance of the First Flower, which was screened at the 2021 Tokyo International Film Festival.
Founded by the Los Angeles nonprofit organization, Film Independent, Film Independent Spirit Awards has been an important award for independent filmmakers in Hollywood. The 37th Film Independent Spirit Awards will be held on March 6, 2022, at Santa Monica beach, looking forward to cultivating the careers of emerging filmmakers and promoting diversity and inclusion in the industry.
For more information about the nomination, please visit the official website of Film Independent: https://www.filmindependent.org/press-releases/2022-film-independent-spirit-awards-nominations-announced/.