This week offers a unique opportunity, thanks to the Taipei City Government and the Taiwan Film Center, to watch the best Chinese-language films released in the past year for free at two locations in Taipei.
The Best Chinese Cinema of the Year festival, which ends Friday, features 20 films from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, several of which received major awards at film festivals around the world. Beijing Bicycle (十七歲的單車) and Betelnut Beauty (愛你愛我), two of the festival's most anticipated films, made a sensation by winning three major awards at the beginning of the year at the Berlin Film Festival. Their sweep, along with another entrant titled The Cabbie (運轉手之戀) at the Berlin festival set the tone for Chinese-language cinema's preeminence at festivals throughout the year.
Hsiao Ya-chuan's (蕭雅全) Mirror Image (命帶追逐), which won first place at both the Taipei Film Festival and the Fukuoka Film Festival, will be another highlight of the festival, with its story of youth and love in the so-called "e" era.
Another stand-out film is Lanyu (
Making this festival special, aside from its unimpeachable admission price, is the fact that many of these films see little or no screen time in Taiwan, despite the fact that many were made by Taiwanese directors. Several of the films, including Beijing Bicycle, are also being screened in Taiwan for the first time.
The films will be screened at Changchun Theater, located at 172 Changchun Rd., Taipei
Changchun Theater screenings
Today at 12pm, Blue August; 2:30pm Betelnut Beauty; 5pm The Cabbie; and 7:30 Mirror Image (English subtitles)
Tomorrow at 12pm Mirror Image (English subtitles); and 7:30 Betelnut Beauty
Thursday at 12pm The Cabbie; 2:30 Blue August; 5pm Lanyu; and 7:30pm Glass Tears (English subtitles)
Friday at 12pm Glass Tears (English subtitles); 2:30pm Betelnut Beauty (English subtitles); 5pm Glass Tears (English subtitles); 7:30 Beijing Bicycle (English subtitles)
KMT National Headquarters
Today at 10am Bundled; 12pm Xiao Shan Going Home; 2:30pm Ha Ha Shanghai; 5pm Go for Broke; 7:30pm Ge Ge
Tomorrow at 10am Grandma's Hairpin; 12pm Birdland (English subtitles), Fluffy Rhapsody; 2:30pm A Small Mirage (English subtitles) and West Island
Thursday at 2:30pm Grandma's Hairpin; 5pm Birdland (English subtitles); 7:30pm A Small Miracle (English subtitles) and West Island
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ!). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a