The first Experimental Media Art Festival in Taiwan (EXIT) opened in Taipei yesterday featuring a wide range of avant-garde films from Asia and Canada that are rarely exhibited in museum galleries or screened in local film festivals.
The four-day festival will run simultaneously with the Asia Forum, during which film curators, researchers and artists will gather and share their views on how to integrate the resources and set up a transnational platform to market the experimental films made by Asian artists.
The first Asia Forum was held in Seoul last year. It will be the first time that movie lovers in Taiwan will be able to see experimental media works from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea and Canada in a single festival.
Tony Wu (吳俊輝), EXIT organizer, said that experimental films, unlike commercial features that provide fixed narrative styles and storylines, seek to engage in dialogue with viewers in a more direct way.
“Many of my students ask me how to understand experimental films, and I always tell them: ‘Just make some personal connections with the works and you will find that the filmmakers speak to you loudly,’” he said, adding that experimental films have actually played a vital part in making some of Taiwan’s most successful or award winning films.
An experimental artist himself, he said experimental films are often excluded from Taiwan’s contemporary art scene, making it difficult for the works be known to the public. Receiving only a NT$300,000 (US$10,000) grant from the Taipei City Government, Wu said he has borrowed NT$700,000 from family and friends to make EXIT happen.
Yangmingshan National Park authorities yesterday urged visitors to respect public spaces and obey the law after a couple was caught on a camera livestream having sex at the park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) earlier in the day. The Shilin Police Precinct in Taipei said it has identified a suspect and his vehicle registration number, and would summon him for questioning. The case would be handled in accordance with public indecency charges, it added. The couple entered the park at about 11pm on Thursday and began fooling around by 1am yesterday, the police said, adding that the two were unaware of the park’s all-day live
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
A former soldier and an active-duty army officer were yesterday indicted for allegedly selling classified military training materials to a Chinese intelligence operative for a total of NT$79,440. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office indicted Chen Tai-yin (陳泰尹) and Lee Chun-ta (李俊達) for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法) and the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例). Chen left the military in September 2013 after serving alongside then-staff sergeant Lee, now an army lieutenant, at the 21st Artillery Command of the army’s Sixth Corps from 2011 to 2013, according to the indictment. Chen met a Chinese intelligence operative identified as “Wang” (王) through a friend in November
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
RSS