A group of environmentalists outside the Farglory Dome on Guangfu S Road in Taipei yesterday launched an open-air cinema to raise awareness of the environmental impact of land development.
The Songshan Tobacco Factory Tree Protection Volunteer Group set up a screen and a projector and prepared seating for the audience.
A selection of six films was scheduled for the event, including the Taiwanese documentaries Rock Me To The Moon (一首搖滾上月球) and No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (不能沒有你, “I can’t live without you”), the Japanese animated film Patema Inverted, and N+N by Hong Kong director Mo Lai Yan-chi (賴恩慈).
“The open-air cinema is to be held every Sunday at 7pm until we run out of films to play,” the event’s introductory speaker said.
N+N, the opening film of the event, depicts the experience of urban regeneration in Hong Kong, which the event organizers said resonated with that seen in Taiwan.
The movie centers on an old man and his granddaughter who travel from Choi Yuen Village to the city to start a new life after a high-speed railroad project leads to the obliteration of their village.
They befriend an artist who later suffers a similar fate when his house is seized by the authorities for planned urban renewal. However, under the territory’s law, they could do nothing except watch their homes fade into memory.
“The movie highlights the influence peddling between corporations and the government in the name of economic development, and caused much discussion when it was screened in Hong Kong,” Lai said.
Calling the rapid development seen in Taipei in recent years “brutal” and “barbaric,” event organizer Chang Yueh-mei (張岳梅) said that government and business magnates have no respect for residents and their living conditions.
Referencing a plan recently passed by the Taipei City Government to transform 60 percent of the site of the Taipei Railway Workshop into a commercial district, she said the decision has undermined the integrity of the cultural and historical site, established in the Japanese colonial era, in which a public bath for employees used to be a tourist attraction.
She also criticized a plan by the city government to build a 40m-by-80m emergency evacuation passageway connecting the Farglory Dome and Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.
A total of 37 old trees on the site of the memorial are to be relocated under the proposal. The plan was approved by the Taipei City Urban Regeneration Office last month.
The Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation originally planned to turn a portion of the reserved space into an underground shopping district, but the plan was axed by Urban Regeneration Committee members who resolved that the emergency evacuation passageway was not suitable for commercial activities.
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