Monga (艋舺), the Taiwanese gangster movie that depicts the evolution of Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), will receive at least NT$40 million (US$1.3 million) in subsidies from the government in recognition of the movie’s remarkable performance at the box office.
Monga grossed more than NT$200 million at the box office during its first two weeks of release in Taiwan, entitling its producers to hefty incentives, said Chen Chih-kuan (陳志寬), director of the Government Information Office’s (GIO’s) Department of Motion Pictures, at a GIO reception in Berlin.
Chen said that under the government’s program of special incentives for the film industry, any locally produced movie with box office receipts exceeding NT$50 million entitles its makers to receive 20 percent of its revenues as a subsidy for the company’s next production.
Taiwan is also encouraging international movie producers to shoot their films in Taiwan, he said, noting that subsidies for such projects can reach as high as 30 percent of the production costs.
The GIO office in Berlin held a “Taiwan Night” on Tuesday evening to introduce members of Taiwan’s delegation at the Feb. 11 to Feb. 21 Berlin International Film Festival to cultural and entertainment circles.
The actors playing the leading roles in Monga, Mark Chao (趙又廷) and Ethan Ruan (阮經天), were among the guests at the party, which was attended by film industry people from all over the world.
In other film news, Formosa Betrayed, a story about political intrigue and murder during the White Terror era, will open in selected cities in the US on Feb. 26.
The movie tells the fictional story of the murder of a Taiwanese-American professor on US soil, and is based on the deaths of two real-life people.
Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), a Carnegie Mellon University professor and critic of the Taiwan government, died under suspicious circumstances during a visit to Taiwan in 1981.
Journalist Henry Liu (劉宜良), whose pen name was Jiang Nan (江南), was killed by gangsters allegedly working for Taiwanese government security forces in Daly City, California, in 1984, after he wrote an unflattering biography of former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), the son of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
James Van Der Beek, of Dawson’s Creek fame, stars as an FBI agent investigating the murder.
Financiers of the film, largely from the Taiwanese-American community, hope the movie can give US audiences a different perspective on Taiwan.
“The only thing a lot of people know about Taiwan is, ‘Made in Taiwan.’ They don’t know the story behind it — the suffering and willpower of the people to form a democracy,” one of the financiers said in an interview with the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
The film’s makers are also negotiating a Taiwan release for the film sometime later this year.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,