The Ministry of National Defense (MND) has agreed to help an award-wining Taiwanese director by allowing several Aboriginal servicemen to take time away from their military duties to work as actors in his new film, a lawmaker said on Tuesday.
Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖), director of Taiwan’s biggest-grossing locally produced film, Cape No. 7, needs several Aborigines to be key actors or extras on his next project titled Seediq Bale, which is an epic account of an uprising by indigenous Sediq tribesmen against Japanese colonialists during Japan’s occupation of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945.
“The film will require a lot of Aboriginal extras, not to mention about 20 or 30 Aborigines who will actually play more than a cameo part in the film,” said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Justin Chou (周守訓).
However, the people who meet the roles’ requirements are almost all doing their military service, so the casting of the film is “not running smoothly,” Chou said.
Chou asked the defense ministry to support the casting of the film, and has received a promise from Minister of National Defense Chen Chao-min (陳肇敏) that the servicemen can take time off.
Wei said Seediq Bale will cost more than US$10 million to produce, with release projected for in the middle of next year.
The uprising of the Sediq tribesmen, called the Wushe Incident, took place in 1930 when Japanese soldiers massacred members of the Sediq tribe.
Considered the most famous and most violent of all the anti-Japanese uprisings in Taiwan, the incident occurred in the Aboriginal region of Wushe in present-day Nantou County.
After a Japanese police officer insulted a tribesman, hundreds of Sediq tribesmen, under the leadership of tribal chief Mona Rudao, massacred Japanese residents in the area. During the violence, Japanese residents were killed.
The Japanese colonial government then sent in troops and during the military crackdown, most of the tribal insurgents were either killed or committed suicide, along with their family members or fellow tribesmen. Several hundred tribesmen were killed.
The Sediq are Aboriginal tribe living primarily in Nantou County and Hualien County. They were officially recognized as Taiwan’s 14th indigenous group in April last year.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS