The Taiwanese animated film On Happiness Road (幸福路上) on Monday was awarded the grand prize in the featured film category at the Tokyo Anime Award Festival at AnimeJapan.
AnimeJapan, called the Tokyo International Animation Fair before it merged with the Anime Contents Expo, is one of the largest anime expos in the world.
On Happiness Road explores Taiwanese history from 1975 to the present through the lens of its protagonist, Lin Shu-chi (林淑琪), or Chi, who was born on the day Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) died.
Photo: CNA
The theme and setting of the film mirrors that of its creator and director, Sung Hsin-ying (宋欣穎), a child of the 1970s who studied political science in college and briefly worked as a journalist before studying film in Japan and the US.
At the ceremony, Sung received the award from Doug Sweetland, director of the animated film Storks.
After thanking the cast and the production team, Sung said she hopes On Happiness Road will be screened in more countries to show Taiwan’s story to the world.
Photo courtesy of ifilm
“On Happiness Road realized animation’s full potential. It is imaginative, spans many eras and inspires reflection on the meaning of life,” Sweetland said.
Sung said previously in an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) that Chi’s story is inspired by her own experiences during Taiwan’s democratization.
Like herself, Chi witnessed the end of Chiang’s public adoration and the rise of Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) from a banned language to that of the cultural mainstream, Sung said.
Animation was the appropriate medium to portray the magic realism that has overtaken the reality of that period, she said.
When On Happiness Road premiered in January in Taiwan, Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said: “Everyone in the audience fell into a reverie of their past and was reminded of the Lin Shu-chi within themselves that they have forgotten in the bustle of daily life.”
The film began as an animated short, which Sung remade into a feature after it won the grand prize at the Taipei Film Festival in 2013 and received more than NT$1 million (US$34,180) in funding from the Golden Horse Film Project Promotion program and the Ministry of Culture.
Actress Gwei Lun-mei (桂綸鎂) and director Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖) contributed their voices for the characters free of charge, while pop star Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) performed for the soundtrack.
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