A biennial film festival showing nearly 140 short and long-form documentaries opened in New Taipei City on Friday, offering a glimpse of the world through the lenses of filmmakers from Taiwan, other parts of Asia and Europe.
The 14th edition of the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) opened with two works from the 1970s made by late photographer and filmmaker Chang Chao-tang (張照堂) — Homage to Chen Da and The Boat-burning Festival.
In the two films, Chang used images to depict the people of Taiwan and the land they lived on, said Arthur Chu (褚明仁), chairman of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI), the main organizer of the festival that runs through May 19.
Describing Chang as his “mentor,” the festival’s curator Wood Lin (林木材) said the selection of the two films for the opening was “a tribute” to the renowned photographer, who died last month aged 80.
Aside from documentaries by Chang and many other Taiwanese filmmakers, the TIDF is to also showcase 10 Ukrainian works that portray the struggles of Ukrainians in the face of Russia’s invasions in 2014 and 2022, Chu said.
The selections were the result of the collaboration, for the first time, between the TIDF and the Ukraine-based Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.
The TIDF also features 26 Burmese short films and documentaries, highlighting the independent documentary scene in Myanmar amid political volatility, Chu said.
In the “Filmmakers in Focus” section, the festival is to screen 13 works by two Slovak directors — Peter Kerekes and Viera Cakanyova — who experienced the transition from Czechslovakian communism to present-day democratic Slovakia, the TFAI said.
The selected works include Kerekes’ Cooking History that delves into European wars through the accounts of wartime cooks and Cakanyova’s Alda, which draws inspiration from the diary and video footage of an Alzheimer’s patient.
The nine-day festival is also to feature more than 100 talks, some of which would be attended by directors, and six performances inspired by documentaries, as well as an exhibition featuring government archives and footage, the TFAI said.
As part of the festival, more than 40 of the selected documentaries have been shortlisted for the Asian Vision Competition, the International Competition and the Taiwan Competition.
The winner of each category, as well as the recipient of an additional TIDF Visionary Award, would be announced on Friday, the organizer said.
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