Malaysian-born Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang (
The premier of his acclaimed film What time is it there? (
PHOTO: WEI CHIA-CHIH, TAIPEI TIMES
"We are set to promote a campaign to encourage everyone to love watching our own films," said Tchen Yu-chiou, (
PHOTO: WEI CHIA-CHIH, TAIPEI TIMES
Tchen then announced that the government will select four theaters in Taiwan's major cities to be "local film theaters" (
Tchen and Su Tseng-chang (
"This is symbolic," Su said. "We hope audiences will actually pay to come and see the film."
Last night's premiere at the Fu-ho theater was the first to take place in a Taipei County theater. Su said he hoped the premiere would help movie theaters in his constituency.
"You have provided a lot of encouragement and excitement for the film business in Taipei County," Su said.
Tsai's film company, Homegreen, is also based in the county.
Lo Wen-chia (
"The reason Taiwan's film industry is facing such a depression is because the government has surrendered in the face of an all-out advance by Hollywood films," Lo said.
According to statistics from the Government Information Office, the market share of Hollywood films in Taiwan has risen to over 99 percent.
Yesterday's audience, comprised of mainly college students and middle-class Taipei citizens, was the result of a month-long campaign that Tsai conducted himself.
Tsai began with a series of lectures at university campuses around Taiwan. The actors and crew of the film traveled with Tsai to more than a dozen cities in Taiwan. He even showed up at the Taipei International Book Exhibition last month, giving away autographs to attract interest in the film.
"It's an experiment to find out where my market is," Tsai said. Sales of advance tickets for the film have reached more than NT$1 million, a huge amount for a local film.
What time is it there?, Tsai's fourth film, won the technical prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival. It also won the jury's grand prize for best director and best cinematography at the prestigious Chicago Film Festival.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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