12 Short Films you shouldn’t miss at the 13th Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival

By Asian Film Festival on May 4, 2022 • ( Leave a comment )

These are twelve short films you shouldn’t miss at the 13th Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival which will take place from May 6 – 15, 2022.

– Selected Films –

**Boxing in the Philippine Islands** by Raya Martin – Philippines | 2011 – 5 minutes

Boxing is a national pastime in the Philippines. During the course of a match, the crime rate is non-existent. The fight projected in movie theatres becomes an extension of the spectacle. (TIDF 2022)

**Cause of Death** by Jyoti Mistry – Austria, South Africa | 2020 – 20 minutes

Crush, beat, drown, hang, burn. Femicide. Women’s bodies are always at risk. Through archival film footage, animation and spoken word poetry, an experience of structural violence against women is exposed. (TIDF 2022)

**Count** by Adjani Arumpac – Philippines | 2020 – 13 minutes

Through the formal report of the Philippine Drug War and COVID-19 fatalities, this video essay explores data generated in a milieu of oppression, as the spectre of colonial history impinges on the daily life of a middle class family. (TIDF 2022)

**I Don’t Feel at Home Anywhere Anymore** by Viv Li – Belgium, China | 2020 – 16 minutes

A wistful but witty account of a trip to Beijing by director Viv LI, a Chinese art student who has been abroad for ten years. Her stay with her family mercilessly exposes how uprooted she has become by her life abroad. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**I’m Trying to Remember** by Pegah Ahangarani – Czech Republic, Iran | 2021 – 16 minutes

To the accompaniment of a powerful sound score, filmmaker Pegah AHANGARANI uses photographs, videos, and vivid recollections from her own childhood to evoke a collective memory of the Iranian revolution. (TIDF 2022)

**Letter to San Zaw Htway** by Petr Lom – Myanmar, Netherlands, Norway | 2021 – 26 minutes

Artist and political activist San Zaw Htway experienced the full force of military repression in Myanmar back in 1999, when he was sentenced to 36 years in prison for involvement in the re-establishment of the banned student union. Twelve years later, under a more lenient regime, he was released.

In 2021, an aggressive military regime seized power again in a coup, brutally crushing mass protests. Friends, relatives, and other former political prisoners write letters to San, in whom they find comfort, understanding, and good advice. Despite everything, he never lost his spirit during his years of imprisonment. (IDFA)

**Pink Mao** by Tang Han – China, Germany | 2020 – 23 minutes

Why do we see certain colours even when they aren’t there? The filmmaker meticulously analyzes the one hundred CNY bill, which carries a portrait of MAO Zedong, and finds that – despite official representations and general perception – the banknote is pink rather than red. In a serious tone and colourful images, she also casually challenges entrenched notions about digitalization, globalisation, capitalism and gender. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**Side by Side** by Ly Polen – Cambodia | 2021 – 21 minutes

It was estimated that hundreds and thousands of people were forced to marry between 1975 and 1979 during the Khmer Rouge rule. The film delves into the past through daily routines in a rural indigenous village, as an elder couple recall their strange marriage to their grand-daughter, and sometimes to each other, in the changing rhythm of nature around them. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**Still on My Mind** by Jittarin Wuthiphan – Thailand | 2020 – 3 minutes

In order to submit a school project to tell a story about myself in 10 pictures, I decided to reminisce about a traumatic event that happened after the 9th King of Thailand passed away. (TIDF 2022)

**The Making of Crime Scenes** by Hsu Che-yu – France, Taiwan | 2021 – 22 minutes

During the martial law period, a Taiwanese American writer Henry LIU was shot dead by assassin WU Dun. This case was later confirmed to be a political murder jointly committed by the Military Intelligence Bureau and United Bamboo Gang in Taiwan. After being released from prison, WU became a film producer and established a film company that produced ‘wuxia films’. In this film, the filmmaker revisited WU’s abandoned studio to restage the events with forensic scanning techniques. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**To Pick a Flower** by Shireen Seno – Philippines | 2021 – 17 minutes

A video essay explores the transformation and commodification of nature through archival photographs from the American colonial occupation of the Philippines in the first half of the 20th century. These images testify to what the voiceover calls ‘the sticky relationship between humans and nature and their entanglements with empire’, in the light of the concurrent processes of preservation, transmutation, and destruction. (TIDF 2022)

**Transparent, I Am** by Muraoka Yuri – Japan | 2020 – 12 minutes

In 2020, when the world was forced to ‘change’, I wanted to confirm what had changed and what hadn’t in me. The white mask I wore became the screen projecting my past. My family members sometimes suffer a lot, but support me nevertheless when I experience schizophrenia. We live today to the fullest while continuously looking for the answer to ‘who we are’. (TIDF 2022)

For more information please visit: https://www.tidf.org.tw/en