Newsreel 670 - Red Forests. 2022. Slovenia. Directed by Nika Autor. In Slovenian; English subtitles. 16 min. US premiere
The Sojourn. 2023. USA/Taiwan. Directed by Tiffany Sia. In Mandarin; English subtitles with deliberate omission of subtitling in select parts. 32 min. World premiere
Artist and filmmaker Tiffany Sia (DF 2021) returns to Doc Fortnight with the world theatrical premiere of The Sojourn (2023). Her newest work, a restless road movie shot in Taiwan, forms the starting point for a conversation between Sia and Stanford University film scholar Pavle Levi. Sparked by the speakers’ shared interest in the minor histories of the Cold War, this program delves into the landscape film as a method for reconsidering notions of place and national imaginaries.
In The Sojourn, Sia retraces the steps of director King Hu through the locations of his breakthrough Dragon Inn (1967) accompanied by the film’s lead actor, Shih Chun. Born in Beijing, Hu left for Hong Kong in 1949 and never returned. In the mountain roads and misty landscapes where this wuxia swordplay picture was filmed, Sia locates the convergence of vernacular cinema and exilic memory. The Sojourn screens in a double bill with Newsreel 670 – Red Forests (2022), a different meditation on geopolitical terrain by the Slovenian filmmaker Nika Autor. In it, Autor surveys razor wire erected alongside the EU border, charting how the portable, deadly coils take over the landscape while bearing witness to “clandestine refuge [and] solidarity” across space and time.