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.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported