Sinjhuang District (新莊) is to become a hub for Taiwanese cinema, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) told a ceremony yesterday to open the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s new base.
With the new facility completed, the city government hopes that a plan to build a cinema museum nearby would start soon, Hou said.
The museum and the institute would make the area a hub for Taiwan’s cinema and audiovisual industry, while introducing a wider audience to Taiwanese movies, he said.
Photo: Chen Yi-chuan, Taipei Times
With the central government’s help, hopefully the plan to build the film hub, which was proposed by previous New Taipei City mayors, would be completed, he said.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said that the Cabinet last year approved a budget of NT$5.4 billion (US$195.02 million) for the planned 1.6-hectare museum and would provide more if necessary.
“The central government will give its full support” for the project, Su said, adding that the museum would bolster the institute’s film archive.
Photo: CNA
The archive, which consists of about 18,000 film reels and more than 200,000 artifacts, is in rented factory space in the city’s Shulin District (樹林).
Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute president Lan Tsu-wei (藍祖蔚) said that the institute would strive to educate more people on the importance of film archives, which are a testimony of the nation’s history, collective memory and personal stories.
“Preserving the memories of Taiwanese is our responsibility,” Lan said. “We hope to help Taiwanese understand the stories of their fellow citizens and allow the world to better see Taiwan.”
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) lauded the institute’s efforts to preserve and remaster Taiwanese films so that young people and foreigners have a chance to see them.
Tsai said she hopes that the institute would expand its focus from cinema to promoting television and radio work.
The institute is tasked with preserving film archives, conducting research, and promoting Taiwanese film through exhibitions and special screenings.
It had a soft opening of its new facility last year.
The new building is the institute’s first permanent base in the 44 years since it was established.
It has offices, theaters, a film library and exhibition spaces.
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
PUBLIC POLL: More than half believe Chinese drills would make Taiwanese less willing to unify with China, while 36 percent said an invasion was highly unlikely Half of Taiwanese support independence, according to the results of a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which also found that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) support rating fell by 7 percentage points. Fifty percent of respondents supported independence, 25.7 percent supported maintaining the “status quo” and 11.8 percent supported unification, while 12.1 percent had no opinion, did not know or refused to answer, the foundation said. Support for independence is the new mainstream opinion, regardless of which party is in power, foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said. Insinuations that Taiwan wants to maintain the “status quo” are a fabrication that
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
RSS