Taiwan's A Fish with a Smile (微笑的魚) garnered another international award, winning the Special Prize of the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk for best short film at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival, which was held from Feb. 9 to 19.
Directed by Jay Shih (
A Fish with a Smile is based on renowned Taiwanese illustrator Jimmy Liao's (
This short animation is a heart-warming story about a lonely man who finds solace and fulfilment in his pet fish. It explores the inner world of a character who is blessed with a tender and extraordinarily generous character.
The film was produced by a young animation company, Original Design and Development Incredible Inc, which was founded in May 2003.
Other Asian winners at the Berlin Festival included Hong Kong director Pang Ho-cheung's (
The only other East Asian film in the main competition, Invisible Waves, a Dutch, Thai and Hong Kong co-produced thriller, failed to garner any award during the ceremony in Berlin on Saturday.
The composer of Isabella, Peter Kam, said he took a minimalist approach in writing the score.
"I liked using a lot of music, very noisy music in my past movie scores ... because we wanted the atmosphere to be stronger and more obvious. What's different about this movie is, director Pang and I tried to use less music because we wanted to let the actors act," he told Sina.com in an interview on its Chinese-language news Web site.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
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