GagaOOLala held on February 12th a press conference to
announce is new original title for this year’s Saint Valentine’s: 5 Lessons
in Happiness, a collection of five queer comedy short dealing with the
different meanings of love. Among the short directors are Zero Chou (winner of
the Teddy Award for Spider Lilies, and director of the first Singaporean
lesbian series Handsome Stewardess), Adiamond (creator of the BL series Dark
Blue and Moonlight), and Fox (director of the controversial gay short Sodom’s
Cat). The cast includes local stars
like Ding Ning (丁寧), winner of the Golden Horse for Best
Supporting Actress in 2018, and international ones like Malaysian Kuang Tian (田士廣), who recently starred in the Netflix original series The Ghost
Bride. All 5 stories will be available for free on GagaOOLala this Friday
February 14th, just in time to celebrate queer love!
Director Zero Chou was the one in charge of developing the
masterplan and scripts for 5 Lessons in Happiness. Since same-sex
marriage was finally legalized last year in Taiwan, Chou said that she wanted
to tell these stories in a more relaxed, celebratory way, and she thought that
comedy felt closer to life: “Our writing team is quite diverse. We spent a
month discussing what topics we wanted to focus on, and ultimately decided on
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and family love.”
The Taiwanese director also confessed that she has been now shooting
queer films for a long time. In the past two years, in order to promote gay
marriage, she has been working intensively to produce as many films as
possible, series and MVs focused on queer topics. She is completely exhausted:
“My plan was to foster upcoming directors to join me in queer production. I
hope that I will not be the only one going down this road… I will drag other
people to hell with me!”
Jay Lin, founder of the streaming platform GagaOOLala, is also the
producer of 5 Lessons in Happiness. He was in responsible for inviting
other directors to join the project. When asked how was the selection process
he mentioned: “We particularly looked for directors with links to LGBTQ+
issues, either queer themselves or those who have directed titles with queer
characters, so they can more empathize with the topics. We were very happy with
our final selection.” Lin also said that after reading the 5 scripts he
shouted, “oh my god! This is so exciting, but they all are so short!”.
Therefore, GagaOOLala decided to release a survey together with the films where
viewers can vote how they would like the stories to continue. The stories with
more votes will be made into feature films incorporating the choices from the
audience.
A professional swimmer insecure about his “size” since he was young is
unable to land a boyfriend. During a race, his swimsuit comes off, and his
small secret is exposed to everyone there. After a month in isolation, Hsuan is
encouraged by a friend to go back to the pool again. He then runs into his
junior classmate, Fong, who he had a crush on. Will he overcome his shame and
finally find love?
A gay couple Even after same-sex marriage has been legalized in
Taiwan, Feng and Fong cannot still get married due to family pressures. When Fong’s student, Sayuri, seeks his help to
get an aborting, Fong comes up with a different plan… is this there chance to
start a family?
The five shorts in 5 Lessons in Happiness have an open
ending, leaving in the audiences’ hands to decide which happy ending they want
for the characters. All of the viewers that participate in the survey will also
have the chance to earn prizes, such as watches and professional hair products,
valued up to 250 USD. Also, the most watched of the five films will have a
feature film version. 5 Lessons in Happiness will be exclusively
available on GagaOOLala (www.gagaoolala.com)
for free on Valentine’s Day, February 14th.