July 3, 2023 (Toronto, Canada) - Toronto Film magazine interviews Toronto-raised director MAO Yu Lynn Yuan about MAO’s award-winning independent film that champions gender equality. The film, Mermaid in the Garden of Escapism (2023), is recognized in international film festivals for two wins and nine nominations, winning Best First Time Director (Short) in the Vancouver Independent Film Festival and Best Canadian Film in the Canadian Cinematography Awards.
"Mermaid in the Garden of Escapism (2023) is my first attempt to reevaluate the values of women." MAO Yu Lynn Yuan expressed in the interview, "Being a female film director can also be a challenge. If one were to name the greatest film directors, you would barely get a female director’s name. There is a gap in the film industry around gender equality as well. Females are commonly seen in actress roles as the subject of sexual fantasy in films. In my film, Mermaid in the Garden of Escapism (2023), attention is drawn to such male gazes around women’s values in gender equality. It’s not about how women look as sexual fantasy subjects or function in roles like daughter, wife, mother, or grandmother, but rather about how a woman thinks, speaks, and does as an individual. A lack of women’s voices in our society is widely seen. Either in the east or in the west, rich or poor, It’s like a recurring negative cycle in a patriarchal social system for a long time. The use of female AI voices is also an ironic reflection of that in my film."
The web version of this interview story can be read at
https://www.torontofilmmagazine.com/post/mermaidgarden.
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Toronto Film magazine is an independent publication featuring independent films, indie artists, festivals and cinema news.
Website: www.torontofilmmagazine.com
About the Mermaid in the Garden of Escapism
The director MAO Yu Lynn Yuan introduces her very first award-winning short film, Mermaid in the Garden of Escapism (2023), to support gender equality. This experimental film pioneers the use of AI (artificial intelligence) in the voiceover to draw attention to gender equality as a reflection of the lack of women's voices in reality.
IMDb Film Page: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt27544196
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