Taiwan documentary festival to spotlight Palestinian cinema

Taipei, April 10 (CNA) More than a dozen films centered on the fraught history of Palestine and the displacement of its people will be featured at a major Taiwanese documentary film festival slated for early May.

For "Palestine and Its Archiveless Archive," 14 documentaries by filmmakers who have charted the development of Palestine will be screened at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) from May 1-10.

TIDF programmer Chen Wan-ling (陳婉伶) told CNA that many of the directors in the program drew on archives capturing Palestine's turbulent history.

As a national film archive, the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI) -- the main organizer of the biennial event -- focuses on the presence and absence of "a nation's visual records" and how such status is tied to the memories of the people, she said.

While Chen said the program was inspired by similar art initiatives overseas against the backdrop of "international circumstances," she stressed that the TFAI had no intention of weighing in on geopolitics, but instead aimed to showcase Palestinian cinema.

Chen said the directors had reworked the archival material by disrupting its original narrative, painting over the film, repeating certain segments, or altering the speed of footage.

They then wove the treated archives into their own works and layered the visuals with other sounds, she said.

Through "reconstructing" and "reimagining" the archives imbued with memories, the filmmakers "resisted oblivion" and "reclaimed their agency" through their documentaries, she added.

Mohanad Yaqubi's "R21 aka Restoring Solidarity," which examines how 20 copies of Palestinian films and archives made their way to Japan and were later obtained by the Palestinian filmmaker when the originals were long believed lost, is a prime example.

Meanwhile, director and anthropologist Diana Allan's "Partition" revisits the watershed moments of British rule in the region between 1920 and 1948, as well as the "Nakba," Chen said, referring to the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Frustrated by high licensing fees for Palestine-related archives held by British institutions, Allan "reconstructed the images in her own way" using low-resolution clips found online, interview excerpts from Nakba survivors, and footage from Lebanese refugee camps, Chen said.

Chen added that "Dancing Palestine" by filmmaker Lamees Almakkawy follows three young Palestinians in the U.K. as they learn the traditional dance through online videos, seeking to "use their bodies as a vessel and restore culture to themselves."

The 10-day festival will show 134 documentaries from over 40 countries at the TFAI headquarters in New Taipei, and Shin Kong Cinemas Taipei Lion's, SPOT-Huashan and C-Lab in Taipei, along with director talks and forums on Palestinian cinema.