The Kaohsiung City Government is filing charges against a film crew for alleged violation of the Cultural Heritage Protection Act (文化資產保存法) after they damaged several walls in one of the city’s historic buildings, the city government’s Department of Cultural Affairs said.
The crew, who are working on a film by Taiwanese director Doze Niu (鈕承澤), could face a five-year jail sentence or a fine of NT$1 million (US$30,996) if convicted of breaching the act.
The department’s inspection team on Tuesday found several walls were damaged after the crew completed the day’s shooting and immediately demanded that the crew cease all filming activities.
Photocopied by Huang Chia-lin, Taipei Times
According to the department, the crew said that the walls of the Ming-teh Training Center were damaged during the filming of fighting scenes.
The historic building, which was completed in 1919, was used as a radio station for the Imperial Japanese Navy and then as a training camp by the Republic of China Navy after 1945 before coming under the supervision of the Kaohsiung Veterans’ Village Culture and Development Association in 2007.
Atom Cinema, the liaison between the film crew and the city government, said the crew had followed all regulations and the damage was accidental, adding that after conferring with experts, the company was willing to pay between NT$200,000 and NT$300,000 to repair the damage.
The film, set during the Japanese occupation of China’s northeastern territories and its support of Manchuria (1931-1945), is mainly about Japanese oppression of Chinese in the northeastern territories.
Niu is reportedly also the film’s producer.
The incident is not the first time Niu has had brushes the law when filming. In 2014, he was charged with violation of the Vital Area Act (要塞堡壘地帶法) when he brought Chinese citizen Tsao Yu (曹郁) into the Zuoying (左營) Military Harbor to shoot a scene for the film Paradise in Service (軍中樂園), despite previously being told that it was not permitted.
Niu was handed a five-month prison sentence that could be commuted to an NT$150,000 fine and was suspended for two years. He also paid an additional NT$600,000 in fines.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater