ABSTRACT
Documentary works from Taiwan began to appear at Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF) in 1991, just when new Taiwan documentary was gaining momentum. The Voice of the People is a well-structured documentary that captures the vitality of the widespread environmental movement in Taiwan of the late 1980s and Moon Children was hailed as a milestone in Taiwan documentary history for its innovative aesthetic elements. Although many award-winning Taiwan documentaries are concerned with personal matters, psychological drama and performative subjectivities, social documentaries with a strong interventional agenda have continued to appear in Taiwan. As evident in the active participation of documentary filmmaking in recent social movements, the tradition of new Taiwan documentary as a voice of social justice is still very much alive. Still, part of the reason why Fengming is able to engage an international audience's interest is because the geopolitical importance of mainland China endows this episode of the anti-Rightist campaign global significance.
