It has been a year to the day since we reopened our new premises in Heping W. Road with an open-house party. Since then there has been a flurry of activities to promote cultural exchange between Taiwan and Germany. Some of the highlights were the 40th anniversary party on 6 December 2003, which was attended by a large number of VIP from both Germany and Taiwan, the most prominent of which was perhaps the mayor of Taipei City, Dr. Ma Ying-jeou, who graced the event with a witty speech part of which he delivered in German; the Golden Horse Film Festival with a strong German contingent led by "Good-bye Lenin", the first international children's film festival, also with numerous German titles and the director and main actors of "Four Paws and Four Friends" present, as well as various exhibitions in the event venue of our new premises. One that more than others, perhaps, documented our mission was "Points of View", a photo exhibition by a Taiwanese photographer, Mr. Yang Chih-hsin, who displayed his photos of Europe, and Bernhard Goschin who exhibited part of his collection of photos shot in Taiwan.
We will continue in this vein in the coming year, and more actively so. Our event venue has been booked solid until the end of 2005 for exhibitions - holographic works by Dieter Jung and pages from the hand crafted, oversized book "Graphein" by Gunther Uecker, to name just two - concerts, lectures, and "open houses" like the one on 2 October which will feature a variety of programmes from early afternoon until late evening, and which will be our contribution to the festivities marking German National Day.
The bigger projects will be co-organized with renowned partners all over Taipei: the animation, documentary, Women Make Waves"- and "Golden Horse"- film festivals, with the respective organizing committees consisting of experts from the film industry; the television production festival Mini-INPUT, in preparation for the big international INPUT in 2006 that will bring together more than 1.000 delegates from public television stations wide, with PTS; the large scale Dieter Jung exhibition in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and, last but not least, the continuation of the European Forum-lecture-series with a new emphasis on film, with the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Taipei. Visit our website at www.dk-taipei.org.tw for details. Of course, the German Cultural Center has more on offer than just cultural exchange activities. As the local representative of the Goethe-Institut with its headquarters in Munich, Germany, it is first and foremost a provider of language courses on beginners and intermediate levels. With an annual enrollment figure of more than 3.500, it is also by far the biggest German language center in Taiwan.
This number is expected to rise in the months ahead as efforts are under way to diversify the program and offer special language courses -- business and legal German, for instance - as well as courses on an advanced level which will lead to the new language exam for university admission, called TESTDaF. This then completes the full set of exams offered by the Goethe-Institut to its course participants on various levels.
No Goethe-Institut would be complete without a library or, as it is called nowadays, an information center. We are very proud to have a spacious, airy and bright one in our new premises (11th floor) with a view of the relaxingly green balcony garden just outside. There are newspapers, magazines, books, old (Video) and new (CD, DVD) media, offering all sorts of information about Germany.
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