The Taiwan Creative Content Agency is to make its international trade fair debut at the European Film Market in Berlin next week, the agency said yesterday.
Founded last year to promote Taiwanese cultural content, the agency would be taking three Taiwanese films — including Chi: The Method of Breathing (氣) by director Liu Yi (劉易) — to the event as part of its IP Showcase initiative, it said.
Last year, the Golden Horse Film Project Promotion platform presented Chi with the MM2 Creative Award and the Content Digital Film Award.
The agency is expected to participate in 20 international trade fairs this year, its president, Hu Ching-fang (胡晴舫), said at a news conference in Taipei.
The European Film Market opens on Thursday next week, alongside the 70th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, also known as the Berlinale.
Director Tsai Ming-liang’s (蔡明亮) new film, Rizi (Days) (日子), has been nominated for the Golden Bear, the festival’s top award, the agency said.
Rizi (Days) will be competing with 17 other films, including South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s The Woman Who Ran and British filmmaker Sally Potter’s The Roads Not Taken, it said.
The film, which stars Golden Horse Award-winning actor Lee Kang-sheng (李康生) and Laotian actor Anong Houngheuangsy, is to premiere at the festival, the agency said.
Tsai previously received a Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution at the festival in 2005 for his film The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲), it said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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