Taiwan's A Fish with a Smile (微笑的魚) garnered another international award, winning the Special Prize of the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk for best short film at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival, which was held from Feb. 9 to 19.
Directed by Jay Shih (
A Fish with a Smile is based on renowned Taiwanese illustrator Jimmy Liao's (
This short animation is a heart-warming story about a lonely man who finds solace and fulfilment in his pet fish. It explores the inner world of a character who is blessed with a tender and extraordinarily generous character.
The film was produced by a young animation company, Original Design and Development Incredible Inc, which was founded in May 2003.
Other Asian winners at the Berlin Festival included Hong Kong director Pang Ho-cheung's (
The only other East Asian film in the main competition, Invisible Waves, a Dutch, Thai and Hong Kong co-produced thriller, failed to garner any award during the ceremony in Berlin on Saturday.
The composer of Isabella, Peter Kam, said he took a minimalist approach in writing the score.
"I liked using a lot of music, very noisy music in my past movie scores ... because we wanted the atmosphere to be stronger and more obvious. What's different about this movie is, director Pang and I tried to use less music because we wanted to let the actors act," he told Sina.com in an interview on its Chinese-language news Web site.
The first of 10 new high-capacity trains purchased from South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem arrived at the Port of Taipei yesterday to meet the demands of an expanding metro network, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. The train completed a three-day, 1,200km voyage from the Port of Masan in South Korea, the company said. Costing NT$590 million (US$18.79 million) each, the new six-carriage trains feature a redesigned interior based on "human-centric" transportation concepts, TRTC said. The design utilizes continuous longitudinal seating to widen the aisles and optimize passenger flow, while also upgrading passenger information displays and driving control systems for a more comfortable
Taiwan's first indigenous defense submarine, the SS-711 Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), departed for its 13th sea trial at 7am today, marking its seventh submerged test, with delivery to the navy scheduled for July. The outing also marked its first sea deployment since President William Lai (賴清德) boarded the submarine for an inspection on March 19, drawing a crowd of military enthusiasts who gathered to show support. The submarine this morning departed port accompanied by CSBC Corp’s Endeavor Manta (奮進魔鬼魚號) uncrewed surface vessel and a navy M109 assault boat. Amid public interest in key milestones such as torpedo-launching operations and overnight submerged trials,
Quarantine awareness posters at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport have gone viral for their use of wordplay. Issued by the airport branch of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency, the posters feature sniffer dogs making a range of facial expressions, paired with advisory messages built around homophones. “We update the messages for holidays and campaign needs, periodically refreshing materials to attract people’s attention,” quarantine officials said. “The aim is to use the dogs’ appeal to draw focus to quarantine regulations.” A Japanese traveler visiting Taiwan has posted a photo on X of a poster showing a quarantine dog with a
Taiwan’s coffee community has launched a “one-person-one-e-mail” campaign, calling for people to send a protest-e-mail to the World Coffee Championships (WCC) urging it to redesignate Taiwanese competitors as from “Taiwan,” rather than “Chinese Taipei.” The call followed sudden action last week after the WCC changed all references to Taiwanese competitors from “Taiwan” to “Chinese Taipei,” including recent World Latte Art champion Bala (林紹興), who won the World Latte Art Championship in San Diego earlier this month. When Bala received the trophy, he was referred to as representing Taiwan, as well as in the announcement on the WCC’s Web site, until it
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