Director Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖) yesterday said that filming of the much-anticipated baseball movie Kano was recently completed, and he is currently undertaking post-production work ahead of its planned release in theaters at the start of next year’s Lunar New Year holidays.
In his capacity as executive producer, the 43-year-old discussed the film’s progress during a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
“It’s about the passion and commitment of Taiwanese youth for baseball. We want to capture their spirit and love of the game in this film. I’m quite satisfied with the footage we’ve shot so far,” he said.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
The Tainan-born director revealed that he currently has three-and-a-half hours of footage that he is working hard to process, edit and trim down to a three-hour long movie.
Wei also announced that he is putting together a 30-second trailer for Kano to whet the appetite of film-goers and drum up publicity for the movie.
He said the trailer will be shown for the first time on June 2 at Sinchuang Stadium in New Taipei City (新北市) as part of the pre-game program for the finals of this year’s E. Sun Cup tournament, the nation’s annual high school baseball championship competition.
The director gained prominence for his popular blockbusters Cape No. 7 (海角七號) and Seediq Bale (賽德克.巴萊).
“Competitions such as the E. Sun Cup have provided a springboard for many young Taiwanese to get noticed and play abroad. For others, they could be playing their last baseball game. All players go into these games fully committed and give everything they have,” Wei said.
‘fighting spirit’
“This fighting spirit to win for the honor of their teams and schools is the pure and simple power of baseball. It is about the simple and pure actions of hitting the ball [as a batter] and catching the ball [as a fielder],” he said.
Wei said the young players at the forthcoming E. Sun Cup tourney will be carrying on the tradition and spirit of the “Kano” team of the 1930s.
“The players work hard to pursue their dream of baseball honor and glory on the diamond. They are showing the world the Taiwanese enthusiasm and passion for baseball,” he said.
Wei said Kano was mostly shot on location in Chiayi, Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung, with some scenes also shot in Greater Taichung.
Ballparks, schools and reconstructed street scenes depicting Taiwanese towns and villages of the 1930s will form the backdrop to the movie.
Wei thanked the high-school players at the event yesterday, as many of them had roles as extras during the shooting of the movie.
The film is set during the Japanese colonial era and charts the achievements of the “Kano” team from the then-Chiayi Agriculture and Forestry High School, which was upgraded to become National Chiayi University in 2000, after the city’s technical college and teacher training colleges were combined.
Led by their Japanese head coach, Kondo Hyotaro, the team overcame the odds to advance to the finals of the 17th annual Koshien tournament in 1931.
teamwork
The team was said to have embodied diligence, teamwork and harmony among ethnic groups during the era, as the squad was composed of players with Taiwanese, Japanese, Aboriginal and Pingpu (Plains Aboriginal) ethnic backgrounds.
The top 18 high-school teams from around the nation will compete in the current E. Sun Cup tournament, which begins in Chiayi City today, and will go on for two weeks, with the semi-finals and final on the weekend of June 1 and June 2.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods