A Japanese film that focuses on transgender issues sparked controversy after Taipei Rapid Transit Corp refused to place its advertisements in the city’s MRT stations.
The film, titled Close Knit, stars Japanese actor Toma Ikuta from the Johnny and Associates talent agency, and was featured at the Berlin International Film Festival which finished on Saturday.
Ikuta plays Rinko, a transgender woman who looks after an 11-year-old orphaned girl named Tomo.
Critics said the film is mild-mannered in broaching its subject matter, but lauded its open discussion of transgender issues.
The film’s distributor in Taiwan, Fanciful International Co, said that the transit operator has refused to display the film’s advertising.
The transit company on Sunday said that it did not entirely reject the ads, saying changes need to be made before they could be approved.
The operator said it has requested the removal of two sentences that read: “The most controversial topic facing diverse households,” and “On March 10, come and educate your children.”
The transit company, which has a committee that decides whether to accept submitted ads, said that it does not accept advertisements that are political, related to elections, in violation of laws or social customs, or controversial.
“The committee members respect the content of the film. We hope the distributor can make changes to the wording on the advertisement to prevent disputes,” the transit company said.
Fanciful said the film is touching, adding that it hopes the film will help do away with labels used against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The distributor said it hopes people will learn to treat everyone the same, adding that this was the reason they called on the public to educate their children.
If the sentence is removed, the spirit of the film would be absent in the ad, Fanciful said.
“We feel that this film can have educational value here as it does in Japan. We could promote it among elementary and junior-high schools to improve gender equality education in the nation,” it said, adding that it would respect the committee’s decision.
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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