A Taiwanese official visiting Paris said on Thursday that his film promotion department would try to persuade Taiwan’s Ministry of Education to include movie courses in elementary and junior high school curriculums.
Frank Chen (陳志寬), director of the Government Information Office’s Department of Motion Pictures, said that the initiative would hopefully raise awareness of the importance of film education and foster a greater interest in movies.
“Movie culture requires cultivation at an early age,” Chen said, adding that film classes begin at elementary school level in France.
Chen is currently heading a delegation of Taiwanese theater operators on a visit to France to learn more about the European country’s film industry development, as well as digital projection technology.
He said that the French government’s policy of support for its motion picture industry could serve as a model for Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the visit helped theater operators in Chen’s delegation better understand the French attitude toward culture and re-think their own social responsibilities and the social significance of movie theaters, said Shin Kong Cineplex manager Luo Min-wen (羅敏妏), one of the members of the delegation.
She said that Taiwan’s theater operators only take box office revenue into consideration and do not care about contributing to culture.
Taiwan’s movie theaters are restricted in the selection of films available by distributors, Kuo said, in contrast to France where a wide diversity of movies are shown in cinemas.
Members of the delegation expressed the view that digital projection would become the trend of the future and that an upgrading of facilities in Taiwanese theaters would be needed.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
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Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
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