Monga (艋舺), the Taiwanese gangster movie that depicts the evolution of Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), will receive at least NT$40 million (US$1.3 million) in subsidies from the government in recognition of the movie’s remarkable performance at the box office.
Monga grossed more than NT$200 million at the box office during its first two weeks of release in Taiwan, entitling its producers to hefty incentives, said Chen Chih-kuan (陳志寬), director of the Government Information Office’s (GIO’s) Department of Motion Pictures, at a GIO reception in Berlin.
Chen said that under the government’s program of special incentives for the film industry, any locally produced movie with box office receipts exceeding NT$50 million entitles its makers to receive 20 percent of its revenues as a subsidy for the company’s next production.
Taiwan is also encouraging international movie producers to shoot their films in Taiwan, he said, noting that subsidies for such projects can reach as high as 30 percent of the production costs.
The GIO office in Berlin held a “Taiwan Night” on Tuesday evening to introduce members of Taiwan’s delegation at the Feb. 11 to Feb. 21 Berlin International Film Festival to cultural and entertainment circles.
The actors playing the leading roles in Monga, Mark Chao (趙又廷) and Ethan Ruan (阮經天), were among the guests at the party, which was attended by film industry people from all over the world.
In other film news, Formosa Betrayed, a story about political intrigue and murder during the White Terror era, will open in selected cities in the US on Feb. 26.
The movie tells the fictional story of the murder of a Taiwanese-American professor on US soil, and is based on the deaths of two real-life people.
Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), a Carnegie Mellon University professor and critic of the Taiwan government, died under suspicious circumstances during a visit to Taiwan in 1981.
Journalist Henry Liu (劉宜良), whose pen name was Jiang Nan (江南), was killed by gangsters allegedly working for Taiwanese government security forces in Daly City, California, in 1984, after he wrote an unflattering biography of former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), the son of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
James Van Der Beek, of Dawson’s Creek fame, stars as an FBI agent investigating the murder.
Financiers of the film, largely from the Taiwanese-American community, hope the movie can give US audiences a different perspective on Taiwan.
“The only thing a lot of people know about Taiwan is, ‘Made in Taiwan.’ They don’t know the story behind it — the suffering and willpower of the people to form a democracy,” one of the financiers said in an interview with the Silicon Valley Mercury News.
The film’s makers are also negotiating a Taiwan release for the film sometime later this year.
Taiwan would benefit from more integrated military strategies and deployments if the US and its allies treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “single theater of operations,” a Taiwanese military expert said yesterday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said he made the assessment after two Japanese military experts warned of emerging threats from China based on a drill conducted this month by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command. Japan Institute for National Fundamentals researcher Maki Nakagawa said the drill differed from the
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A rally held by opposition parties yesterday demonstrates that Taiwan is a democratic country, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that if opposition parties really want to fight dictatorship, they should fight it on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) held a protest with the theme “against green communists and dictatorship,” and was joined by the Taiwan People’s Party. Lai said the opposition parties are against what they called the “green communists,” but do not fight against the “Chinese communists,” adding that if they really want to fight dictatorship, they should go to the right place and face
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