Director Winson Chang’s (張志宏) latest short film aims to raise awareness of the importance of seeking counseling and professional help when dealing with family conflicts and domestic violence.
In Accompany You Home (陪你回家), which premiered on Monday last week, Chang — who has a counseling background — recounts the real-life stories of two men, surnamed Ou (歐) and Chin (金), who sought help at the White Ribbon Anti-violence Learning Center in New Taipei City.
Ou had been taking care of his sister, who has cerebral palsy, since he was in elementary school. With with no one else to share the responsibility as the siblings grow older, he realized that he had neglected his own family as he cared for his sister.
Photo courtesy of Winson Chang
Filled with guilt, Ou tells how at one point he had become so frustrated that he thought about ending his sister’s life.
Chin’s story is one of how marital conflicts led to domestic violence and divorce.
With the help of the center’s professionals, Ou learned how to relieve stress and Chin is now able to peacefully interact with his ex-wife. He also resumed his hobby of playing the harmonica and became a beach cleanup volunteer.
It has been 20 years since the Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法) was enacted, said Hsu Chih-chi (許芝綺), the director of New Taipei City’s Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Center.
Awareness of domestic violence and emergency services is improving daily, she said.
In 2011, the city government commissioned the Shiuh-li Cultural and Educational Foundation to establish the White Ribbon center, she said.
She hopes Chang’s film can help change stereotypes about domestic violence and encourage abusers to accept help.
Society needs more listeners. so that those under pressure have channels to relieve their stress, New Taipei City Social Welfare Department Commissioner Chang Ching-li (張錦麗) said.
TENSE SITUATION: If the storm does not bring rain, Taiwan might have to wait until next month amid water scarcity in the center and south, an expert said Typhoon Surigae is to bring rain to the nation’s east coast and mountainous areas in central and southern Taiwan from Wednesday to Friday, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the typhoon’s center was 1,170km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The radius of the storm was 280km, and it was moving northwest at 9kph, with a maximum wind speed of 198kph. The bureau forecasts that the storm would switch to a northerly direction when approaching the east coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines on Wednesday, CWB forecaster Lin Ding-yi (林定宜) said, adding that Surigae would
SEEKING CLARITY: Some members of the US delegation asked KMT legislators in a meeting to address their party’s position on the so-called ‘1992 consensus,’ sources said A US delegation tasked by US President Joe Biden to reaffirm the country’s commitment to its partnership with Taiwan yesterday wrapped up a three-day visit to Taipei. Former US senator Chris Dodd, former US deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, and US Department of State Office of Taiwan Coordination Director Dan Biers departed at 11:20am on a private jet. The members of the delegation, all friends of Biden, arrived on Wednesday and met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and other government officials. During the three-day visit, the delegation also met with six members of the Legislative
Taipei’s street names should reflect a “Taiwanese spirit,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said in an online video released yesterday, in which he asked why many of them are named after locations in China. In a three-minute video uploaded to a Facebook page called “Taiwanese Uncle Ko Wen-je” (台灣阿北柯文哲), the mayor suggested changing the names of Taipei streets. The page’s banner was a photograph of Ko on Jade Mountain’s (玉山) main peak. The page was closed at about noon, about four hours after it was made public. Ko said that street names in the capital named “Ningxia,” “Tibet,” “Beiping” — an old name for
‘AN EXCUSE’: The intent of Beijing’s incursions was ‘intimidation and coercion,’ a senior US official said, adding that China was using the US to justify its actions Chinese carrier drills and stepped-up incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the past few weeks are meant to send a message to Washington to stand down and back off, security sources in Taipei said. The increased activity — which China, unusually, described as “combat drills” on Wednesday — has raised alarm in both Taipei and Washington, although security officials do not see it as a sign of an imminent attack. Rather, at least some of the exercises are practicing “access denial” maneuvers to prevent foreign forces from coming to Taipei’s defense in a war, one official familiar with Taiwan’s security
RSS