The Vancouver Taiwanese Film Festival is celebrating its 10^th anniversary this year.

From today (May 16) to May 27, VTFF organizers UBC Literature Etecetera and the Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Society will be presenting Cinemarathon, a selection of 10 films from the previous nine years of the festival. The series will screen at the Taiwanese Canadian Cultural Society (8853 Selkirk Street).

Tonight, the series kicks off with an opening ceremony and a screening of Yu-Hsien Lin's 2011 film Jump Ashin!, about a gymnast training for the national team who drops out in order to help support his family's business but winds up falling in with the wrong crowd.

The lineup also includes the historical drama Blue Brave: The Legend of Formosa in 1895, about the Taiwanese resistance to the Japanese invasion after the First Sino-Japanese War.

Other selections include the 2010 gangster film Monga; the 2008 drama Winds of September about a group of teenage boys; and the 2010 drama When Love Comes, about intergenerational differences in attitudes towards partnerships.

The 2009 drama-romance Hear Me, about a delivery boy who falls for a deaf girl, closes the series.

After the retrospective, the film festival will be running from June 10 to 12 with the theme PastForward.

This lineup of eight feature films includes Li-Chou Yang's documentary The Moment, which compiles footage from 51 Taiwanese films. It'll be followed by panel discussion about the changes and growth the Taiwan film industry has undergone.

There's also Baby Steps, about an interracial gay male couple whose plans to have a baby are complicated by one of the men's Taiwanese mother.

Panay: Children of the Sun, based on a true story, addresses aboriginal rights in a tale about a woman who save her home village from being developed into resorts.

The festival will screen at Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour Street).

For full details and screening information, visit the VTFF or Vancouver International Film Festival websites.