Singing Chen (陳芯宜), director of Taiwanese film God Man Dog (流浪神狗人) returned to Taipei Tuesday after winning an award in Berlin for her allegorical tragicomedy about the crisis of faith in contemporary Taiwan.
Chen said upon her return that she was jubilant and excited to win the Tagesspiegel Readers' Prize affiliated with the annual Berlin International Film Festival.
The prize was sponsored by the Berlin-based national daily Der Tagesspiegel to honor young filmmakers whose movies have been selected for screening in the Berlin Film Festival's Forum for New Cinema.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Noting that the film depicts some of the phenomena and problems in Taiwan, Chen said she wanted to introduce Taiwan to the international community through the film.
"It is a great honor and encouragement to win this prize," Chen said, adding that she was almost moved to tears when the German audience gave her a standing ovation at the end of the film.
The movie will be screened in Taiwan from the second half of March, Chen said, adding that she is hopeful the film will win critical acclaim and become a local box-office success.
Saudi Arabia, despite not having any cinemas, will hold its first-ever government-approved film festival on May 20, a local newspaper announced Tuesday.
The five-day festival will screen Arabic films from the region and is being organized by the state-sponsored literary club in the eastern city of Dammam and the Saudi Society of Arts and Culture.
Saudi Arabia banned the screening of movies in the early 1980s and the country's conservative clergy views them as a waste of time and a sign of impiety.
The competition is meant to boost the local film industry, which is practically nonexistent, and will award a prize for best short narrative and documentary as well as select the best screenplay and raise funds for it to be turned into a film.
In May's festival, men and women will be seated in different halls during the screenings, according to organizers.
Australian actress Nicole Kidman wants to improve her work-life balance - by making films that her children can enjoy.
The five-month pregnant Kidman, a mother of two, was in Japan to promote her latest big-budget fantasy film, The Golden Compass, and said she had deliberately chosen the child-friendly script.
"My Bella and Connor are 13 and 15, so they have seen the film and they loved it ... my child inside won't see the film for a long time," she told a news conference.
Actor Jude Law will appear as Heath Ledger's character, along with Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell , in the unfinished film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Law's spokeswoman said Monday.
They will all play the role of Tony in the fantasy film, which Ledger had been filming before his death.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is described as a fantastical morality tale about a traveling theater company which can control the imaginations of others.
New York state health authorities launched a campaign Tuesday urging major film studio owners to protect children from seeing movies with smoking scenes.
In full page advertisements in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Health Commissioner Richard Daines said films showing tobacco use should get an "R" rating, which requires children under 17 to be accompanied by an adult.
But he did suggest an exception for films that show the dangers of tobacco use or depict the smoking habit of a historical figure.
"Exposure to smoking in movies is the single most powerful pro-tobacco influence on children today, accounting for the recruitment of half of all new adolescent smokers," Daines said in the ad.
Owen Wilson is going back to work for the first time since his alleged suicide attempt last summer.
Wilson, 39, and co-star Jennifer Aniston begin shooting March 10 on 20th Century Fox's Marley & Me, the studio said. It tells the tale of a couple who adopt a dog to give parenthood a trial run, then find the mischievous pooch more than they bargained for.
Due out Christmas Day, Marley & Me is directed by David Frankel and based on the book by John Grogan .
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
The Taipei Times last week reported that the Control Yuan said it had been “left with no choice” but to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the central government budget, which left it without a budget. Lost in the outrage over the cuts to defense and to the Constitutional Court were the cuts to the Control Yuan, whose operating budget was slashed by 96 percent. It is unable even to pay its utility bills, and in the press conference it convened on the issue, said that its department directors were paying out of pocket for gasoline
On March 13 President William Lai (賴清德) gave a national security speech noting the 20th year since the passing of China’s Anti-Secession Law (反分裂國家法) in March 2005 that laid the legal groundwork for an invasion of Taiwan. That law, and other subsequent ones, are merely political theater created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have something to point to so they can claim “we have to do it, it is the law.” The president’s speech was somber and said: “By its actions, China already satisfies the definition of a ‘foreign hostile force’ as provided in the Anti-Infiltration Act, which unlike
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