The Taipei City Government plans to promote the domestic film industry with preferential treatment for moviemakers and encouragement for filming in Taipei.
Taipei City’s Cultural Affairs Department (CAD), which established a film commission in January to encourage cooperation with the film industry, in July started offering discounted rates at 96 municipal hotels for local filmmakers who film in the city.
The city government has stepped up efforts to encourage the local film industry following the phenomenal success of Cape No. 7 (海角七號).
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The locally made film, which was set in southern Taiwan, was a box office smash selling NT$200 million (US$6 million) in tickets after its Aug. 22 opening and attracted a wave of fans to Kenting (墾丁) and Hengchun (恆春), where the film was shot.
The movie opened the 2008 Taipei Film Festival in June, and won best picture.
CAD Commissioner Lee Yong-ping (李永萍) said the department would establish regulations on renting public space in order to make it easier for filmmakers to set action scenes in locations such as MRT stations. The city government will earmark NT$12 million in subsidies for filmmakers and TV producers who shoot in Taipei.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Wu Shih-cheng (吳世正), however, challenged the department over the poor box office results of this year’s Taipei Film Festival. He urged the department to improve the festival next year by finding a better location for screening films than Taipei Zhongshan Hall (中山堂), which is not a theater.
Lee acknowledged that ticket sales at this year’s festival were NT$1 million less than last year, and the number of participants dropped to about 50,000.
Lee said in the past the department had failed to persuade major theaters to provide space for 1,000 festival viewers, but promised to propose potential locations for next year’s festival in a month.
Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Lee Wen-ying (李文英) said the city government should follow the Kaohsiung City Government’s example in regulating subsidies given to local filmmakers and offering discounted ticket for movies shot in the city.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
RSS