At the closing ceremony of the Taipei Film Festival (TFF) last night, winners in the competition categories of the festival were announced and awarded their prizes. The main categories included local commercial releases, local independent releases, the Citizen Film and Video Competition and the Golden Lion International Student Film Festival.
The main event of the evening was the award of substantial cash prizes for the best achievements in independent film making -- films made without studio assistance and without commercial release. The Grand Prize of NT$1 million went to Birdland (
On receiving the prize, Huang told Taipei Times he would use the prize money to help repay debts accrued in the making of the NT$1.7 million feature about an illegal immigrant from China who first finds himself mistaken for another man and then finds an old lover while wandering about in Taipei.
Winners in other categories were awarded a cash prize of NT$200,000. Among the winners were Chen Hsin-yi (
And she wasn't (
In the commercial release category, the Best Film award went to Mirror Image (
The other winner of Most Promising Director this year was Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄) for his debut Sunny Doll (晴天娃), a film about high school life. Chen's most recent achievement was the script for Chang Chih-yung's (張志勇) Lament of Sand River (沙河悲歌), which was one of the dark horses to emerge from the Golden Horse this year.
The Citizen Film and Video Competition (
The Golden Lion Award for international student films went to Photographer by Alexander Kott, from Russia. The silver and bronze lion awards went to Night Course by Bui Thac Chuyen from Vietnam and The Magic Bell by Auriel Klimt from the Chech Republic, respectively.
This is the year that the demographic crisis will begin to impact people’s lives. This will create pressures on treatment and hiring of foreigners. Regardless of whatever technological breakthroughs happen, the real value will come from digesting and productively applying existing technologies in new and creative ways. INTRODUCING BASIC SERVICES BREAKDOWNS At some point soon, we will begin to witness a breakdown in basic services. Initially, it will be limited and sporadic, but the frequency and newsworthiness of the incidents will only continue to accelerate dramatically in the coming years. Here in central Taiwan, many basic services are severely understaffed, and
Jan. 5 to Jan. 11 Of the more than 3,000km of sugar railway that once criss-crossed central and southern Taiwan, just 16.1km remain in operation today. By the time Dafydd Fell began photographing the network in earnest in 1994, it was already well past its heyday. The system had been significantly cut back, leaving behind abandoned stations, rusting rolling stock and crumbling facilities. This reduction continued during the five years of his documentation, adding urgency to his task. As passenger services had already ceased by then, Fell had to wait for the sugarcane harvest season each year, which typically ran from
It is a soulful folk song, filled with feeling and history: A love-stricken young man tells God about his hopes and dreams of happiness. Generations of Uighurs, the Turkic ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang region, have played it at parties and weddings. But today, if they download it, play it or share it online, they risk ending up in prison. Besh pede, a popular Uighur folk ballad, is among dozens of Uighur-language songs that have been deemed “problematic” by Xinjiang authorities, according to a recording of a meeting held by police and other local officials in the historic city of Kashgar in
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was out in force in the Taiwan Strait this week, threatening Taiwan with live-fire exercises, aircraft incursions and tedious claims to ownership. The reaction to the PRC’s blockade and decapitation strike exercises offer numerous lessons, if only we are willing to be taught. Reading the commentary on PRC behavior is like reading Bible interpretation across a range of Christian denominations: the text is recast to mean what the interpreter wants it to mean. Many PRC believers contended that the drills, obviously scheduled in advance, were aimed at the recent arms offer to Taiwan by the
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