The Taiwan International Documentary Festival ended yesterday with an award ceremony handing out prizes for outstanding film and video documentary works.
German filmmaker Stefan Tolz took away the top prize, the Grand Prize, in the international film competition category, with his film, On the Edge of Time: Male Domains in the Caucasus, winning a cash prize of NT$300,000.
PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES
The two second prize awards were given to Israeli director David Fisher's Love Inventory and Danish film Family by Phie Ambo-Nielson and Sami Martin Saif, each winning a cash prize of NT$100,000.
Taiwanese director Tang Shiang-chu's (
"In this film festival, we seem to have walked through the Caucasus, Siberia, temples in Taipei and an island in Bolivia. And we have learned how to fish in Norway, to lead a life as a homeless person in Buenos Aires and to climb the mountains of Hsinchu. ? This is the great thing about this festival," said jury member Alan Rosenthal referring to the films in the international film competition.
"We had a very smooth meeting. All the awards were decided without much disagreement," added Lee Daw-ming (
The winning film, On the Edge of Time: Male Domains in the Caucasus depicts a multi-ethic male-dominated culture and a simple lifestyle that seems to have been forgotten by time.
The jury gave this film the top award because of the enormous difficulties that had been overcome while shooting in the remote Caucasus region.
Tolz expressed great excitement at receiving the award for a film he said had previously been rejected by a German TV station. He was now able to prove them wrong.
"I have to thank the people of the Caucasus for opening their hearts to my camera," Tolz said as he got ready to celebrate his victory.
"My original idea was inspired by the millennium. I wanted to find a place where people live in a different time, without mobile phones or computers."
David Fisher's Love Inventory, a film digging into the filmmaker's own family secrets, took a second place Merit Award. Although the film has already picked up prizes in Berlin and at the Israeli Academy Awards, Fisher said this award was special to him. "I remember the warm reception I received here and the good questions from the audience. Also, I'm happy to show an Israeli film that is not about war or national historical problems," said Fisher.
In fact, the filmmakers found more than just a passionate audience for their films. They also found a market, with PTS, Taiwan's public TV network, expressing interest in some of the works.
In the international video competition category, the Grand Prize was given to Katorga by Russian filmmaker Evgeny Solomin, winning NT$100,000.
The two Merit Prizes are given to Zhao Liang (
Taiwanese filmmaker Zero Chou's (周美玲) Poles Extremity (極端寶島) and Finnish filmmaker Maria Lappalainen's On Edge were given Special Mention prizes in the video awards.
The two Taiwan Awards, designed to recognize local filmmakers, were given to Tseng Wen-chen (
The NETPAC Award, an award given by the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema, was given to Korean film Sky-blue Hometown by Kim So-young, about a Russian Korean painter in Uzbekistan. The film also won Best Documentary at the Pusan International Film Festival in 2000 and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in 2001.
Under pressure, President William Lai (賴清德) has enacted his first cabinet reshuffle. Whether it will be enough to staunch the bleeding remains to be seen. Cabinet members in the Executive Yuan almost always end up as sacrificial lambs, especially those appointed early in a president’s term. When presidents are under pressure, the cabinet is reshuffled. This is not unique to any party or president; this is the custom. This is the case in many democracies, especially parliamentary ones. In Taiwan, constitutionally the president presides over the heads of the five branches of government, each of which is confusingly translated as “president”
By 1971, heroin and opium use among US troops fighting in Vietnam had reached epidemic proportions, with 42 percent of American servicemen saying they’d tried opioids at least once and around 20 percent claiming some level of addiction, according to the US Department of Defense. Though heroin use by US troops has been little discussed in the context of Taiwan, these and other drugs — produced in part by rogue Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies then in Thailand and Myanmar — also spread to US military bases on the island, where soldiers were often stoned or high. American military policeman
An attempt to promote friendship between Japan and countries in Africa has transformed into a xenophobic row about migration after inaccurate media reports suggested the scheme would lead to a “flood of immigrants.” The controversy erupted after the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, said this month it had designated four Japanese cities as “Africa hometowns” for partner countries in Africa: Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. The program, announced at the end of an international conference on African development in Yokohama, will involve personnel exchanges and events to foster closer ties between the four regional Japanese cities — Imabari, Kisarazu, Sanjo and
The Venice Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia Wednesday night on the Lido. The opening ceremony of the festival also saw Francis Ford Coppola presenting filmmaker Werner Herzog with a lifetime achievement prize. The 82nd edition of the glamorous international film festival is playing host to many Hollywood stars, including George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Dwayne Johnson, and famed auteurs, from Guillermo del Toro to Kathryn Bigelow, who all have films debuting over the next 10 days. The conflict in Gaza has also already been an everpresent topic both outside the festival’s walls, where