Taiwan is scheduled to launch a movie festival in Europe next week, featuring works by internationally renowned Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) and other Taiwanese directors, the Taiwan Cultural Center in Paris said.
The event, set to start on Tuesday, is to be the largest-ever movie festival held by Taiwan to showcase the nation’s achievements in the movie industry to audiences from around the world at a time when international movie critics have expressed admiration for Hou’s latest movie, The Assassin (聶隱娘).
A martial arts film set in the Tang Dynasty, starring Taiwanese actress Shu Qi (舒淇) and actor Chang Chen (張震), The Assassin is one of 19 entries in the main competition at the current Cannes Film Festival. Hou spent 10 years making the film.
The French newspaper Liberation said The Assassin has a great chance of winning the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, which started on May 12 and ends today. Le Figaro Magazine also selected The Assassin as one of the top 15 movies at this year’s festival.
Taking advantage of Hou’s fame in the film industry, the Taiwan Culture Center said its movie festival is slated to start in the Royal Belgian Film Archive in Brussels, Belgium, and then go on tour to Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, France, Spain and Portugal.
During the event, more than 50 Taiwanese films, including Hou’s works, are to be screened, covering several important stages of development in Taiwan’s movie industry, the Taiwan Culture Center said.
The movies introduced in the festival are to feature realistic 1960s films focusing on life in Taiwanese society; romantic stories, martial arts films and works emphasizing singing and dancing from the 1970s; and the 1980s’ “new wave,” which returned to realistic themes.
The European tour is also scheduled to introduce works created by emerging Taiwanese directors.
Hou’s The Assassin is to be screened at the UGC De Brouckere cinema in Brussels on Wednesday evening.
In Los Angeles, the Taiwan Academy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office has scheduled another event to honor Hou. Starting from Thursday, three of Hou’s movies are to be screened in the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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