Face (臉), the latest work by director Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮), which premiered on Tuesday night, is the first Taiwanese movie funded by the EU and a prime example of cultural cooperation between the EU and Taiwan, Europe’s top envoy to Taiwan said recently.
The film is not only the first Chinese-language movie to receive funding from the European Commission’s MEDIA program, but is also the biggest EU-Taiwan cooperative film venture ever, Guy Ledoux said in an interview.
“The fact that cultural cooperation between Taiwan and the EU at such a level is possible is because Taiwan has a very dynamic and advanced cultural industry,” Ledoux said.
“Taiwan has a comparative advantage in the field of culture and the freedom of expression that exists in Taiwan has enabled Taiwan’s cultural industry to flourish and become very attractive,” he said.
Describing Face as “a very beautiful project” because it intertwines scenes in Europe and Taiwan and features iconic actors from both places, Ledoux said he hoped there will be more culturally oriented cooperation projects between the EU and Taiwan.
Face is a narrative feature film commissioned by the Louvre in Paris and directed by Malaysian-born, Taiwan-based Tsai. The production, which features noted French stars Laetitia Casta, Fanny Ardant and Jean-Pierre Leaud, as well as Taiwanese actors Lee Kang-sheng (李康生) and Lu Yi-ching (陸奕靜), will be the first movie that the Louvre will add to its collection of some of the world’s finest art.
Known as Visage in French, it is described as a film within a film, telling the story of a Chinese filmmaker who heads to the Louvre to shoot a film revolving around the myth of Salome and her request to her father Herod that St John the Baptist be beheaded.
The film cost NT$178.6 million (US$5.5 million) to make and in addition to funds from Taiwan, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, the EU’s MEDIA program contributed 50,000 euros (US$73,000) to help with production.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
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