Take a look at the musical films selected for the Music in Taiwan and Mandarin Films: A Companionship Film Festival and you will be surprised how much Taiwanese people love singing.
Starting today, the festival focuses on five film song writers: Zhi Lan-pin (
The Kingdom and the Beauty, The Dream of the Red Chamber, and The Love Eterne are three classical Hung-Mei opera films. This kind of folk musical comes from the central Chinese provinces. After they were made into movies, some of them became huge hits during the 1960's.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPOT 320 TAIPEI FILM HOUSE AND MAJESTIC CINEMA
The Chinese version of the Romeo and Juliet love story is told through sentimental folk songs and dance in The Love Eterne, which after its huge initial success has become a cult film in the past 40 years. The superstar Lin Ching-hsia (
Traditional music and theater were major sources for film making during the golden age of the Taiwanese film industry. Apart from Hung-Mei opera, Peking opera (
Fleeing by Night, Peony Pavilion and Breaking the Willow are films inspired by Kunqu -- the oldest Chinese traditional opera.
Yon Fan (
Unfortunately due to bad preservation, many prints of Chinese musical films have been lost, and among those that remain few are shown with English subtitles. So if you don't want to sit through and listen to indecipherable traditional Chinese songs without English subtitles, do verify the screening information in the festival program before you attend.
Music in Taiwan and Mandarin Films at Spot -- Taipei Film House and Majestic Cinema.
Until Aug. 26, tel: (02) 25117786
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
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Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located