Cape No. 7, the hit romance movie that highlights Japan’s 50-year colonial rule of Taiwan, has been given a Valentine’s Day release in China, a film company official said yesterday.
The release of Cape No. 7 had been in doubt amid earlier news reports that Chinese officials were worried it may be offensive to many in China.
But China’s state-run China Film Group has decided to release the movie in China on Feb. 14, a marketing official at Taiwan’s ARS Film Production said.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Chinese censors have demanded that filmmakers edit the movie.
Calls to China Film Group spokesman went unanswered.
Taiwan’s most successful movie in years, Cape No. 7 is about a failed Taiwanese rock musician who returns to his small coastal hometown and is forced to play in a hastily assembled amateur band that will open for a Japanese pop star. He falls in love with the Japanese publicist overseeing the show.
The movie is also interspersed with a voiceover that reads from love letters written by a Japanese man to his Taiwanese love interest just after the colonial era ended.
Many elderly Taiwanese speak fluent Japanese and are nostalgic toward Japanese culture, while many Chinese are still upset about atrocities the Japanese army committed in China during World War II.
In a radio interview last month, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) urged China to screen Cape No. 7, saying it would help Chinese viewers understand their Taiwanese neighbors better.
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
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