Pointing out the rundown state of the National Film Archive, which has been described as "obsolete" and a threat to an important part of Taiwan's national heritage, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) yesterday urged that the archive be moved to a new site as soon as possible.
Situated in an industrial site in Shulin (
"The wall of the bread factory is directly next to where the film reels are stored. This can cause the temperature in the archive to rise, which is very bad for the stored films," Lin said, adding that if a fire broke out in any of the neighboring factories, there would be no way of saving the films.
"The accumulation of culture is not something we can start over and the protection of it is not something we can afford to risk," she said at a press conference held to address the issue.
Lin further pointed to pictures showing posters on the floor, equipment overflowing onto a patio area, and material categorized using cardboard boxes.
DPP Legislator, Lin Cho-shui (
Compared to China, which spends the equivalent of over NT$80.5 million (US$2.4 million) on film archive expenses, and Japan, which spends over NT$176 million, Taiwan only has a budget of NT$30 million per year, said Lin Co-shui.
Although a rough draft of a bill for the budgeting of the national archive has been in place since 1991, the Government Information Office (GIO) has yet to deal with it further, drastically reducing the annual budget for the archive.
Lin Shu-fen revealed that a documentary showing the surrender of Japanese soldiers in 1945 had already been lost.
"Once you have lost something, that piece of the puzzle will forever be missing from a country's history," she said, reiterating her request for the GIO to find a new home for these documentaries.
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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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching