Chiayi City International Art Documentary Film Festival
Preface
TU Xing-zhe, Mayor of Chiayi City
Chiayi has been a renowned city that lasts over 300 years. It is known not only by its reputation of being a "city of paintings" due to numerous distinct artists were produced since 17th century, but also brought to the world music stage through its current Chiayi City International Band Festival that had taken place consecutively for 23 years.
Since "The Great South Spirit – 2014 Chiayi City International Art Documentary Film Festival" - the first Asian art documentary festival - had debuted successfully last year, the city sought more to combine both elements of "city of paintings" and " international perspective", along with "arts" and "film", to create a new genre of festival by gathering various kinds of cultural stories from around the world, and will present to the audience as well as the international society a new dimension.
In this Spring, the 2nd "Art for Everyone - 2015 Chiayi City International Art Documentary Film Festival" stands firmly on such status, accumulating even higher energy from all around into the city. What the festival conveys is simply connecting hearts for arts believers together and beyond. And fortunately, the self-generated event plays a strong link between the audience locally and filmmakers abroad. It is a well-functioning platform for documentary fans and story makers.
We proudly present a program of 32 films this March with which 13 international documentaries are included. For those new artists and stories that are rarely known to Taiwanese, the festival discovers and establishes dialogues between true lives and aesthetics that seldom meet. Art documentaries are surely a great wing to people who only used to experience masterpieces in museums and galleries with no additional close true contacts of vivid lives relating to art. Please enjoy the festival through appreciation of different aesthetics. The Chiayi City International Art Documentary Film Festival is bringing a brand new experience with more inside, details and spirit. No matter how the festival is appreciated as archives, cultural revisiting or education, it already opens a wide window for all.
Deep into the heart of South
HUANG Mingchuan, Supervisor
In 2014, the first CIADFF (Chiayi City International Art Documentary Film Festival), no doubt dragged great attention from local audience and Taiwan’s art communities. By the abundant culture heritage and human experience, documentary films were no longer instruments playing tragedies, conflicts and injustice, but revealing the various dimensions of human spectacle.
Comparing with many “traditional topic aimed”, “generalized type oriented” documentary festivals, the CIADFF’s debut of 2014 focused on “Art”- based on the spirit of "The Great South" has stretched out to geographical margins and embraced the world of neglected cultures with humanity. It defined a festival’s core value with respect to different cultures and their perspectives to the future. As such, the CIADFF was considered a great progress of Taiwan documentary’s evolution. This year, a brand new program will be shown by the new wind of “Art for Everyone” which of course based on the rooted spirit of “the Great South” again, accommodates more of the less seen documentaries from south and central Asia, and other regions. The CIADFF concerns a geometry south, as well as society and even mental south in a diversified sense; moreover, in the realm of American and European documentary arenas, there are numerous magnificent yet rarely seen documentaries selected to the CIADFF. Chiayi City cares for those forgotten souls who made the legends.
The 2015 CIADFF, meanwhile, would like to connect the city with the world in seeding its care for untold stories in expectation of great harvests in the years to come. The essence of “Art for Everyone”, therefore, points to the hidden issues hardly to be exposed, such as “Literature on the Rise”, “Rear Mirror of Cinema”, “Open History” and experimental oriented short films’ “Art for Everyone”. In addition, by presenting both old and new archives, the CIADFF tends to reinterpret and reveal profound insides within our own past as well as cultures of the southern hemisphere.