Taiwanese director Liao Hsiang- hsiung (廖祥雄), who pioneered several policies to improve the film industry in Taiwan when he worked for the government, passed away on Saturday at the age of 89, the Taipei-based Chinese Society of Cinematographers said yesterday.
Born on Dec. 3, 1933, Liao worked as a filmmaker before entering the Executive Yuan’s now-defunct Government Information Office in the 1980s.
Liao initially served as a deputy chief at the Cabinet-level agency’s audiovisual department before heading the film regulator, where he pioneered several policies that benefited Taiwan’s film industry.
As a filmmaker, Liao pushed for broader inspection and rating procedures for films, and cemented regulations overseeing government funding for filmmakers.
He also tried to make the Golden Horse Awards, the world’s oldest annual celebration of film in the Chinese-speaking world, more internationally inclusive.
Having studied broadcasting in Japan and filmmaking in San Francisco in the early 1960s, Liao later headed the media section of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan.
Liao made a number of films, such as the 1971 movie Love Can Forgive and Forget (真假千金), which was the runner-up for Best Feature Film at the 10th Golden Horse Awards in 1972 following martial arts legend Bruce Lee’s (李小龍) kung-fu classic Fist of Fury (精武門).
Japan-based veteran actress Judy Ongg (翁倩玉) the same year won her only Golden Horse Best Actress award for her role in Love Can Forgive and Forget.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it