The widely anticipated Taiwanese film Seediq Bale will premiere at the Presidential Office plaza on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei City today, with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) expected to be guests of honor.
Only the film’s first part, titled Flags of the Sun, will be screened today.
The full premiere is scheduled to be held on a big screen at the Kaohsiung Arena on Sept. 12, which is the Mid-Autumn Festival. ARS Film Production, the company that produced the film, said it hopes to attract 10,000 people to the premiere.
Photo provided courtesy of ARS Film Production
The big-budget epic, which took director Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖) more than 10 years to develop and cost NT$700 million (US$24 million) to complete, is based on the Wushe Incident — an uprising in Taiwan that was led by Seediq Aboriginal hero Mona Rudao against occupying Japanese forces in the 1930s.
The film company said the movie had been sold in Britain and France and that talks about distribution in Japan, South Korea and Singapore were underway. Producer Jimmy Huang said that US dealers raised their copyright payment after watching the movie.
Wei said on Thursday that in addition to spotlighting Taiwan in the international community, he made the movie to help bring peace and harmony to all the different ethnic groups in Taiwan.
Seediq Bale is among the 22 films that have been nominated for the Golden Lion award at this year’s Venice Film Festival — the world’s oldest film competition.
The film will be released in Taiwan under the title Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale.
It will be released in two parts. The first part, titled Flags of the Sun, will open on Friday, and the second, Rainbow Bridge, will hit the big screen on Sept. 30.
More than 140,000 tickets have been sold in Taiwan, the film company said.
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