A Japanese director who has filmed several documentaries about Taiwan on Thursday said that recording the nation’s development has made her think about the direction in which Japan is going.
Atsuko Sakai, director of Taiwan Jinsei (2009), Taiwan Identity (2013) and Taiwan Banzai (2017), said that her films focus on historical events and attempt to capture the vitality of Taiwanese.
She focuses on elderly Taiwanese who are fluent in Japanese to better understand the major milestones in the nation’s history and record the deep connections between the two countries, she said.
Photo: CNA
In Taiwan Banzai, Sakai traveled to Chenggong Fishing Harbor in Taitung County to interview a retired captain of a fishing boat that specialized in catching swordfish.
She recorded him singing Japanese fishing songs and also captured footage of him working in the fields.
Bunun men also feature in the movie, as Sakai follows them into the mountains to film them hunting.
Taiwan Banzai showcases the spirit of returning to the “origin of things,” something she said that Japan is losing.
For example, the Taiwanese family members cherish each other and how Aboriginal cultures respect nature are being lost in Japanese society, Sakai said.
Sakai is working on a documentary about Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and said that its relationship with Taiwan proper is similar to that between the Ryukyu Islands and the main islands of Japan.
She hopes to meet more people working in the film industry in Taiwan, she added.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS