On the way back from the Earthquake Museum in Wufeng, our tour guide took us all five documentary directors from as far a field as Israel & Holland to eat at his favourite roadside pig organ soup stall. Some of us, inspired by his recommendation, tried congealed pig’s blood for the first time. This is, as you can imagine one of the more intimate and personal film festivals I have been to to date. The programme is small, but very well chosen, as are the guests. An interesting factoid, the two top grossing Taiwan films in Taiwan last year (theatrical) were documentaries! One was about the effects of the earthquake on the townsfolk and another about an old farming couple. Taiwan’s equivalient of the media development authority is catching on to the fact that there is a hunger for taiwanese documentaries (not the travel and living kind) and are throwing their full weight behind this documentary festival
