A subtitled whisper

Hidden Whisper (小百無禁忌), Vivian Chang's (章蕙蘭) feature film debut, which will open at the Majestic Theater tomorrow, will be given two screenings with English subtitles on Nov. 16 and Nov. 17.

Foreign residents in Taiwan have long complained that they are not able to enjoy local films unless they have advanced Chinese language skills. In July, the Central Motion Picture Corporation (中央電影事業, CMPC) screened Lament of the Sand River (沙河悲歌), a film by local filmmaker Chang Chih-yung (張志勇), in its English subtitled version. The screening drew considerable interest from the foreign community, among whom are many ardent supporters of the local film industry.

According to Mingson Chou (周明孫) of the CMPC, the subtitled screening of Hidden Whisper is a second step in releasing more local films in their English subtitled versions in Taiwan. This effort that has received a significant boost from the success of Taiwan films at festivals abroad, giving local production companies an incentive to produce subtitled versions.

Hidden Whispers is divided into three segments that present a child of five years old, an adolescent of 17, and a woman of 30. The movie avoids answering whether these characters are the same person or different people, whether one segment affects another, and which elements are fantasy or reality.

Vivian Chang has considerable experience as a producer of short films, and received her leg up into features working on Sylvia Chang's Tonight Nobody Goes Home and Tsai Ming-liang's The Hole. She will be present for a 20-minute Q&A session at the end of the two special screenings.

The film was nominated for the Camera d'Or award for cinematography at the Cannes Film Festival in May this year and has since received mention at the Edinburgh Film Festival and at the Pusan International Film Festival.

The English language subtitled version will be shown at the 8pm screening on Thursday Nov. 16 and Friday Nov. 17 at the Majestic Theater.

The film with regular Chinese subtitles will be shown at the Majestic Theater from tomorrow until Nov. 24.

INFO: For more information, contact Mingson Chou at tel: (02) 2381-2742 or check out additional information at url: http://www.oriented.org/index.shtml.

WHERE: The Majestic Theater is located at 7F, 116 Hanchung Street, Taipei (台北市漢中街116號).