After a string of strong showings at international film festivals over the past several years, Taiwanese movies are some of the most anticipated entries at this year's Cannes festival.
Both Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) and Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) have new works in this year's competition list, as they both did in 1998. This year, the two are accompanied by a youngblood of Taiwanese filmmaking, Hsiao Ya-chuan (蕭雅全), whose film Mirror Image (命帶追逐) will run in the Director's Fortnight portion of the festival, a separate competition intended to honor and encourage young filmmakers and which issues an International Critics Award.
Tsai's film What Time Is It There? (你那邊幾點) will premiere May 15 and Hou's Millennium Mambo (千禧曼波) will run on May 19. Hsiao's film will be shown May 11.
The screenings of Tsai's and Hou's films during the final days of the festival bode well for their chances at winning an award, as the best contenders have traditionally had late slots at Cannes.
Since their leader Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and others were jailed as part of several ongoing bribery investigations, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has risen in the polls. Additionally, despite all the many and varied allegations against Ko and most of the top people in the party, it has held together with only a tiny number of minor figures exiting. The TPP has taken some damage, but vastly less than the New Power Party (NPP) did after it was caught up in a bribery scandal in 2020. The TPP has for years registered favorability in the thirties, and a Formosa poll
Chiayi County is blessed with several worthwhile upland trails, not all of which I’ve hiked. A few weeks ago, I finally got around to tackling Tanghu Historic Trail (塘湖古道), a short but unusually steep route in Jhuci Township (竹崎). According to the Web site of the Alishan National Scenic Area (阿里山國家風景區), the path climbs from 308m above sea level to an elevation of 770m in just 1.58km, an average gradient of 29 percent. And unless you arrange for someone to bring you to the starting point and collect you at the other end, there’s no way to avoid a significant amount
Nov. 4 to Nov. 10 Apollo magazine (文星) vowed that it wouldn’t play by the rules in its first issue — a bold statement to make in 1957, when anyone could be jailed for saying the wrong thing. However, the introduction to the inaugural Nov. 5 issue also defined the magazine as a “lifestyle, literature and art” publication, and the contents were relatively tame for the first four years, writes Tao Heng-sheng (陶恒生) in “The Apollo magazine that wouldn’t play by the rules” (不按牌理出牌的文星雜誌). In 1961, the magazine changed its mission to “thought, lifestyle and art” and adopted a more critical tone with
While global attention is finally being focused on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) gray zone aggression against Philippine territory in the South China Sea, at the other end of the PRC’s infamous 9 dash line map, PRC vessels are conducting an identical campaign against Indonesia, most importantly in the Natuna Islands. The Natunas fall into a gray area: do the dashes at the end of the PRC “cow’s tongue” map include the islands? It’s not clear. Less well known is that they also fall into another gray area. Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claim and continental shelf claim are not
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