Festival Film Dokumenter (FFD) Overseas Project

In an attempt to reach out and interact with the film industry of Southeast Asia, the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (Taiwan Film Institute, now the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute) collaborated with the Festival Film Dokumenter (FFD) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The FFD screened four documentaries from Taiwan and also invited Director Lau Kek-Huat for two panel discussions.

In recent years, Taiwan's documentaries have had limited exposure in Southeast Asian countries, especially when compared to the exposure that Japanese or South Korean documentaries have enjoyed. Southeast Asian audiences, therefore, are fairly unfamiliar with video works from Taiwan or Taiwan's society in general. To share the aesthetics of Taiwan’s documentaries, the 2019 FFD screened four Taiwanese documentaries that spotlight issues resonating strongly with Indonesia. Documentaries selected were Ho Chao-Ti's Turning 18, Fu Yue's Our Youth in Taiwan, Lau Kek-Huat's The Tree Remembers, and Shen Ko-Shang's LOVE Talk. Director Lau Kek- huat was also invited for two panel discussions: one with Faculty of Recording Media Arts at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts of Yogyakarta and the second with public audiences at the screening. In addition to film screenings, the TIDF team also took the opportunity to observe the development of documentaries in Southeast Asia and reach out to Southeast Asian film directors/producers for potential collaboration in the future.