“What is Remembered… Is a Political Act that Can Be Weaponized”: Vicky Du on Light of the Setting Sun

Vicky Du’s Light of the Setting Sun is both intimate and expansive, tragic and hopeful. It’s a globetrotting look at the filmmaker’s own family across three generations and a trio of countries: the U.S., where Du grew up; Taiwan, where her parents hail from and where many of her relatives still reside; and China, where 95 percent of the clan was massacred during the Cultural Revolution. It’s also a delicate unearthing, and a piecing together of personal history through archival footage and interviews with family members – some more reluctant than others to address the inherited trauma forever looming like an unacknowledged shadow. That is until Du uses her camera to coax it into the light. A week prior to the April 18th DCTV premiere of Light of the Setting Sun, Filmmaker reached out to the queer, Taiwanese-American director, whose eclectic CV includes several years as a worker-owner of Meerkat Media and a BA in Biological Anthropology from Columbia.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.