Following the two-week marketing campaign for The Wayward Cloud (
Apart from the box office sales, Tsai is receiving other cash rewards. Last Thursday before the film's premiere, Kaohsiung City presented Tsai with NT$10 million because most of the film's scenes were shot in Kaohsiung.
Kaohsiung City set up the prize during Frank Hsieh's (
PHOTO COURTESY OF URBAN NOMAD
But the film's controversial content has led some Kaohsiung city citizens to begin questioning the policy. Last weekend at one Kaohsiung screening, a movie-goer walked out of the theater with angry sentiments: "Is it right to use us taxpayer's money to give to a film like this?"
This weekend, two mini film festivals will showcase more than 60 non-mainstream films.
Canadian Spring is a showcase of new and classic films from Canada (
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPOT
The Urban Nomad Film Fest (城市游牧影展), a showcase of independent shorts and animations will take place from tonight until Sunday night at Treasure Hill (寶藏巖), a community in south Taipei that has been revamped to be an open-air public space for contemporary arts events.
Two feature-length dramas by renowned director Denys Arcand will be the main focus at the Canadian Spring showcase. These include The Barbarian Invasion, which won the 2004 Oscar for best foreign language film, and the 1986 work The Decline of American Empire, which brought Arcand international fame.
Barbarian is a tragicomedy which has intense drama and vivid illustrations to tell the story of a free-spirited liberal professor facing the last days of his life and then looks at the different reactions and treatments from his friends and family.
PHOTO COURTESY OF URBAN NOMAD
Decline is an intriguing drama about four men and four women talking about sex, the female body and love affairs at one dinner party.
Besides the two dramas from Arcand, the opening film of Canadian Spring is worth checking out for its highly controversial topic. Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat scratches its way beneath the surface of an infamous Toronto animal cruelty case and deftly explores the opaque logic surrounding this macabre act, according to the Spot and e.bell Web sites.
Jesse Power, ex-vegetarian, was an art student when he conceived the act that inspired the film. In May 2001, he enlisted two friends, Anthony Wennekers and Matthew Kaczorowski, to help him kill a cat. The intention was to make a video that protested the unthinking consumption of factory-slaughtered animals by killing, cooking and eating a cherished domestic pet -- a feline posthumously named "Kensington" by animal-rights activists. Alerted by an outraged roommate, the police found the skinned and decapitated cat in the beer fridge. Kaczorowski fled and was apprehended in Vancouver two years later. All three eventually pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and mischief charges.
Coming into its fourth year, the Urban Nomad Film Festival presents a larger showcase this time with 50 short films. The event was organized by two expat journalists David Frazier and Sean Scanlan, and it looks to become a rare-find film festival in Taipei that preserves an underground spirit and a sense of raw creativity.
The independent films selected in the showcase are a mixture from four sources: US underground film scenes, Taiwanese film schools, overseas Taiwanese filmmakers and films made by expats in Taiwan. Genres include narrative, CG animation, experimental, surf videos, comedy, absurdity, documentary.
Nineteen-seventy-four is a 23-minute film that gives an amazing look at the seduction between a Taiwanese girl student and her English teacher. TC Lin (
There are also two documentaries that record ongoing international tragedies. The film Boom documents the civil war in Liberia and shows the heavy mortar shells and innocent people murdered. Those Left Behind looks at relief work in Sri Lanka one month after the devastating tsunami, as well as the political turmoil of the island nation.
There is also a CG animation about an innocent blow-up doll who gets abused by her new owner, titled Innocent Life.
The location of Urban Nomad also highlights an underground creativity. Finnish architect/designer Marco Cassagrande will help build an outdoor theater by the river by using bamboo and plastic sheets to make a tunnel above a short bridge. The audience will view the films sitting on the bridge. There will also be cases of Heineken provided.
For more program information check out the Urban Nomad blogsite, http://urbannomadfilmfest.blogspot.com.
On Jan. 17, Beijing announced that it would allow residents of Shanghai and Fujian Province to visit Taiwan. The two sides are still working out the details. President William Lai (賴清德) has been promoting cross-strait tourism, perhaps to soften the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) attitudes, perhaps as a sop to international and local opinion leaders. Likely the latter, since many observers understand that the twin drivers of cross-strait tourism — the belief that Chinese tourists will bring money into Taiwan, and the belief that tourism will create better relations — are both false. CHINESE TOURISM PIPE DREAM Back in July
Could Taiwan’s democracy be at risk? There is a lot of apocalyptic commentary right now suggesting that this is the case, but it is always a conspiracy by the other guys — our side is firmly on the side of protecting democracy and always has been, unlike them! The situation is nowhere near that bleak — yet. The concern is that the power struggle between the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and their now effectively pan-blue allies the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) intensifies to the point where democratic functions start to break down. Both
This was not supposed to be an election year. The local media is billing it as the “2025 great recall era” (2025大罷免時代) or the “2025 great recall wave” (2025大罷免潮), with many now just shortening it to “great recall.” As of this writing the number of campaigns that have submitted the requisite one percent of eligible voters signatures in legislative districts is 51 — 35 targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus lawmakers and 16 targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The pan-green side has more as they started earlier. Many recall campaigns are billing themselves as “Winter Bluebirds” after the “Bluebird Action”
Taiwan doesn’t have a lot of railways, but its network has plenty of history. The government-owned entity that last year became the Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) has been operating trains since 1891. During the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule, the colonial government made huge investments in rail infrastructure. The northern port city of Keelung was connected to Kaohsiung in the south. New lines appeared in Pingtung, Yilan and the Hualien-Taitung region. Railway enthusiasts exploring Taiwan will find plenty to amuse themselves. Taipei will soon gain its second rail-themed museum. Elsewhere there’s a number of endearing branch lines and rolling-stock collections, some
RSS