Taiwanese director Fu Changfeng’s (符昌鋒) The Shooting of 319 (幻術, “Deception”), which revisits the shooting of then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on March 19, 2004, the eve of the 2004 presidential election, opens in theaters on Friday.
The movie trailer bills it as “the nation’s first political thriller” and promises to “blow the minds” of audiences.
The film is not allegorical. Actors portray the politicians central to the 2004 presidential election, including Chen, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Lu, former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜).
Photo: Wu Wan-ting, Taipei Times
The trailer shows a recreated scene of the shooting, as well as a scene portraying Lee, lying on a bed surrounded by men in suits and raising an index finger to indicate his support for Chen, who had come out on top in the Central Election Commission’s raffle that year and was candidate No. 1 on the ballot.
While the story of alleged shooter Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄) is recounted in the movie, the plot includes a “mysterious shooter” named “A-Bu” (阿布), the trailer shows.
The trailer, which juxtaposes footage of an actor playing former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) with what appears to be the office of former premier Lee Huan (李煥), promises that the movie’s viewers will be taken on a journey through “30 years of Taiwanese politics.”
Several questions surrounding the “319 shooting” remain unanswered to this day, even though Taiwanese-American forensic scientist Henry Lee (李昌鈺) was brought in to investigate the incident.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) believes it was a case of attempted assassination, while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) believes it was a ruse orchestrated by the DPP to influence the election.
Although the film has been promoted as an “experimental” approach and “a marriage between fiction and facts,” the trailer contains slogans such as: “Police say Chen Yi-hsiung alone did it... Do you believe that?” and “Many magic tricks could not be debunked ... until now.”
Lee Teng-hui is portrayed by veteran actor Shih Feng (石峰), while Bobby Dou (竇智孔) plays Soong and Husky (陳家逵) plays Chen.
Wang Yan-chun (王燕軍), Lee Teng-hui’s office director, has threatened legal action if the film implies that Lee participated in planning the shooting.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
RSS