2026

2026 Festival Brochure

Language EN

Mujō (The Heartless)

Released circa 1942-1943, Kokumin Dojo (Civilian Training Centre) was a Japanese state-sponsored propaganda film documenting rituals used to convert Taiwanese people into 'imperial' Japanese subjects. This work offers a contemporary critical re-enactment of selfhood and emotional erasure as colonial policy, staging four young immigrants in Japan under off-camera command, synchronised with the original film.

A Taiwanese Teikoku Kunjin

A Taiwanese Teikoku Kunjin revisits the wartime mobilisation of Taiwanese youth. Through the testimonies of five young men drafted in their twenties as volunteers, medics, or kamikaze trainees, and sent to the South Pacific, the film blends first-person narration with archival footage to trace survival, trauma, and the enduring human cost of imperial war.

Heat Sun

Following the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, Taiwanese men were mobilised as guards in prisoner-of-war camps in northern Borneo. Tried and punished after the war, survivors carried stigma, imprisonment, and lasting trauma. Through conversations and images, the film traces fading lives shaped by displacement, identity loss, and the enduring violence of wartime systems.

From Island to Island

During the Second World War, Taiwan was part of the Japanese Empire. This documentary traces the lives and experiences of Taiwanese soldiers, doctors, and overseas residents in Southeast Asia during that era, using family letters, diaries, and cross-generational dialogues to reveal the complexities and diverse identities of Taiwan's historical memory.

Asia Is One

Opening with the Japanese national anthem, the film traces Taiwanese labourers in Okinawa, mass student labour in the Sakishima Islands, and Shōwa-era (1926–1989) coal mining on Iriomote. Travelling from Yonaguni to Taiwan, it reaches a Tayal village shaped by the Musha Incident (1930), where the noontime bell was replaced by the Imperial Japanese military song, 'Umi Yukaba'.

Archive: Li Guang-hui

Suniuo (1919-1979), also known as Li Guang-hui, was an Indigenous Taiwanese soldier for Japan. Unaware of Japan's WWII surrender, he remained hidden in the jungle for thirty years. The film follows his life from 1975 to 1979, tracing his emergence from the Indonesian jungle, return to Taiwan and the Amis community, ensuing media frenzy, and death from lung cancer.

Military Drill for Student Soldiers, Shinto Matsuri

Digitised in 2025, two 16mm films from Taiwan's Japanese colonial period are presented together. The first captures a national mobilisation rally in Taichung and the fervour surrounding a troops' send-off. The second observes a Shinto festival procession, student soldiers drilling with rifles, and female students forming rice balls for wartime logistics.

Beyond the Anti-DuPont Movement: Portraits of Some Social Activists

Following the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan entered democratisation as grassroots movements flourished. Proposed by director Lee Daw-ming and funded by the Public Television Service, the film interviews key figures shaped by the Lukang Anti-DuPont Movement. Intended for broadcast, the film was suppressed by authorities and finally screened at the 2002 Taiwan International Documentary Festival.

Tuktuit: Caribou

An experimental documentary made with handmade and industrial emulsions, exploring enduring relations between Inuit, caribou, lichens and land. Lichen-based developers animate the images, while caribou hide becomes gelatin for hand-crafted emulsion. Filmed largely on Nunavut land, the film bears witness to caribou lifeways under ecological strain.

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