The 15th Taiwan International Documentary Festival Opens with Lecture Performance by Saeed Taji FAROUKY Filmmakers from Taiwan and around the world gather for opening event highlighting Focus Programme on Palestine
The 15th Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) opened today, welcoming distinguished guests from the film and cultural sectors in Taiwan and around the world. Breaking with tradition, this year’s festival did not begin with a film screening, but with the lecture performance Death is Certain but not Final vo. IV by internationally renowned artist Saeed Taji FAROUKY. The performance highlights the Focus Programme “Palestine and Its Archiveless Archives”.
In his performance, UK-based FAROUKY responds to today’s turbulent world marked by ongoing conflicts with an earnest yet subtly humorous approach examining how Palestinians, within long Western-dominated artistic narratives, transform passivity into agency—turning ‘absence’ into creative energy.”
The opening ceremony was held at the premises of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Culture Center, the festival’s organizer. Chairman Arthur CHU welcomed competition jurors, filmmakers, and industry professionals from around the world to celebrate the launch of the festival. Also in attendance was one of the original founders of TIDF, Chang Chang-yen, with attendees welcoming him with a warm round of applause.
To help the audience get a sense of the evolution in Taiwan’s documentary scene, Chu told the story of the “Best Documentary” category at the 1985 Golden Horse Awards, a year when no film was selected as a winner of the award. This set the stage for a major shift in how Taiwanese documentary filmmakers defined the medium, leading to a shift toward the type of filmmaking on display in this year’s Reel Taiwan programme. Chu remarked, “I hope that through this year’s selection of restored and digitized films, everyone is able to look back on 1980s Taiwan, and I thank TFAI’s restoration team for their past effort.”
TIDF Programme Director Wood LIN shared that even though he has worked at the festival for more than a decade, he always feels a sense of the ‘surreal’ at the opening ceremony. He thanked the festival’s more than 200 workers as well as countless audience members for their support: ‘We are learning about the spirit of documentary together, putting it into practice through filmmaking and programming.’
Lin went on to explain the reasoning behind having a lecture performance as this year’s opening event: “Palestine does not have a national archive for preserving classic cinematic materials. Precious moving images might be scattered across the world or even seized by another country. Nonetheless, Palestinian are able to use even greater creativity to develop new cinematic forms that are deeply inspirational. Selecting Death is Certain but not Final vo. IV as an opening event is a sort of way of reflecting on cinema ‘without cinema’; we can use the flames of memory and narrative to give light where forgetting brings darkness, allowing the spirit of documentary to live on in our hearts.”
In the Death Is Not Certain But Final, Farouky forcefully constructs a local and unique Palestinian cinematic form that, like Palestine itself, takes‘absence’ and transforms it into a source of power. Following the conclusion of his performance, he was greeted by energetic, continuous applause from the audience, with some even shedding tears. In addition to the opening, Death is Certain but not Final vo. IV will be presented as a free public performance on the afternoon of May 3 at the Grand Theater of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Culture Center. Audiences are encouraged to seize this rare opportunity to engage with the artist in person.
Opening Weekend Lecture Performances: Reimagining Archives and Narration
Beyond film screenings, TIDF presents a wide range of activities exploring non-fiction art from multiple perspectives. During the opening weekend (May 2–3), the festival invites audiences to attend other lecture performances by three groups of local artists, engaging with archives and documentation through live narration, sound, and digital experimentation. All events are free of charge.
Actor, writer, and theatre director Joane DENG presents Unreliable i, a work that challenges the credibility of memory and visual perception. Using ChatGPT to analyze scenarios proposed by the live audience, she examines human emotions from an AI perspective. By constructing and deconstructing her own narrated experiences, she unsettles the viewer’s trust in the storyteller.
Beyond the Cold Sea, Every Cloud a Silver Lining, by AU Sow-yee and CHEN Yow-ruu (Her Lab Space), explores the creative reuse of archival footage. Taking the “heroes” of two 1960s Taiwanese-language Cold War films—Female Agent No. 7 and Tarzan and the Treasure—as a point of departure, the performance shifts focus to “empty time,” where landscapes emerge as protagonists and heroes disappear.
Mountains of Time: A Collection of 1930s 16mm Reversal Film centers on footage shot in the 1930s by CHIJIIWA Suketaro. Combining research by directors HUANG Pang-chuan and LIN Chunni, excerpts from the short story Mountains by writer WU Ming-yi, and a live sound performance by Yannick DAUBY, the work guides audiences across a “mountain of time,” evoking the atmosphere of a bygone era.
The 15th Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) will take place from May 1 to May 10 at the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, Shin Kong Cinemas Taipei Lion’s , SPOT Huashan, and Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB). Tickets can be purchased via OPENTIX, for more information and ticket bookings, please visit TIDF website, Facebook ,Instagram and Threads.
