Supported by Ministry of Culture with cooperation from Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, Sheffield DocFest 2021 will kick off from June 4 through June 13, presenting a special focus on 7 Taiwan films for the first time, as part of the "Ghosts and Apparitions" series.
Curated by Wood Lin(林木材), four short films that are recreated by using news video data will be showcased at the festival under the theme "Memory Revisited: Focus Taiwan (台灣專題：翻／返記憶)," including Chung Chuan's(鍾權) "One World One Dream (一中)," Lin Shih-Chieh(林仕杰)'s "A Short History of Decay (解體概要)," Marco Wilms’s "Resampling the Past (昔日拼貼)," and Huang Pang-chuan's (黃邦銓) "Return (回程列車)".
In addition, two films that explore family history through poetic and experimental methods will be screened during the festival. That includes Hsiao Mei-ling's (蕭美玲) "The Falling Kite (斷線風箏)" and Wu Tzu-an's (吳梓安) "This Shore: A Family Story (此岸：一個家族故事)."
To present a comprehensive view of the theme, the festival will also screen the 1985 masterpiece The Time To Live And The Time To Die(童年往事)" by director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢).
According to the festival's website, it points out that in the historic context of Taiwan, "Memory Revisited" also means "History Revisited." This program emphasizes personal and artistic perspectives that use archive footage to challenge the ideologies that were instilled into Taiwan’s citizens in the past, as well as showing how diverse Taiwan society and Taiwan cinema is through these films.
Sheffield Doc/Fest, short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England. Since beginning in 1994, it has become the UK's biggest documentary festival and the third largest in the world. The festival organizers plan large-scale exhibition, forums and other activities in June every year.