The Asian Pacific Film Festival is celebrating its 50th anniversary from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, and has invited member countries to Kuala Lumpur to showcase their best productions in honor of one of Asia's oldest movie festivals.
Four Taiwanese productions, Tsai Ming-liang's (
Hong Kong has selected box office hit Initial D (頭文字D), Jackie Chan's (成龍) New Police Story (新警察故事) and lesbian romance Butterfly (蝴蝶) for its entries to the festival competition, pitting big-screen first-timer Jay Chou (周杰倫) against veteran actor Jackie Chan both candidates for the title of Best Male Actor.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ARTISTS N
This week local audiences will have the chance to scare the hell out of themselves by watching the Taiwan-made ghost movie The Heirloom (
Having produced last year's box office hit Formula 17 (十七歲的天空), Three Dots Entertainment (三和娛樂) is a young, energetic local company that aims to boost sagging ticket sales for local films by making high-quality commercial movies that appeal to wider sections of the general public. The Heirloom is its latest project teaming up young talents to make a movie from a popular genre starring fast-rising teen-idols. Terri Kwan (關穎), who starred in Turn Left, Turn Right (向左走 向右走) and Jason Chang (張大鏞), who starred in Formula 17. They will play a couple that inherits a haunted house in this horror flick.
The story develops from a group suicide that took place in the rich Yang household. The whole family was found hanged without any explanation, and the case remains unsolved. Twenty years later, distant relative James (played by Jason Chang) inherits the Yang house, and moves in with his girlfriend Yo (played by Terri Kwan). The couple invites two friends over for a house-warming party and to stay the night. This is when a series of supernatural phenomena begin to disturb the four.
As James and Yo dig deeper into the family's history, they find out that the Yang family's great fortune was made by "child ghosts," dead babies that feed on blood and can bring both great luck and doom to their hosts. The young couple discovers more and more of the mansion's dark secrets, and inevitably has to confront the unwelcome dwellers ready to bury anyone who comes too close to the truth.
The Heirloom is 24-year-old director Leste Chen's (陳正道) first feature film. Despite his youth, Chen already has an impressive portfolio of work. He has directed several music videos and his short films have gained lots of exposure at international film festivals such as the Taipei Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival and the Venice International Film Festival. As a young creative talent, Chen has made a perfect match with the innovative production company. And together, they have created a visually stylish and well-narrated film that should appeal local audiences.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated