This year’s Vancouver Taiwanese Film Festival (VTWFF) began on Friday with an opening gala at the VIFF Centre in downtown Vancouver and featured the premiere of a short film produced by young Taiwanese Canadians.
This year, VTWFF’s theme “honoring tradition, igniting innovation” showcased famous international blockbusters and films created by young Taiwanese Canadians with the aim of promoting Taiwan, the organizers said on Instagram on Friday.
Among the dignitaries present at the opening gala were Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vancouver Director-General Liu Lih-hsin (劉立欣), British Columbia Minister of Municipal Affairs Anne Kang (康安禮), and Vancouver City councilors Sarah Kirby-yung (楊瑞蘭) and Lenny Zhou (周楠).
Photo: CNA
Charlene Liu (夏琳), the festival’s chairperson, said the film selection committee did not choose a well-known movie as the opener, but instead picked a short film titled Unspoken that was made by young Taiwanese Canadian filmmakers.
The film depicts a young woman in a Taiwanese immigrant family who finds herself “caught between the pull of tradition and the allure of modern love,” the film’s synopsis said.
“Her parents, eager to preserve their cultural heritage, attempt to steer her towards a relationship with a family friend’s son — someone they believe aligns with their expectations,” it said.
“As subtle pressures and quiet conflicts build, she must navigate the unspoken tensions within her family,” it said.
Apple Chang (張郁柔), the film’s producer, said that all of the production team and actors involved in the film were ethnic Taiwanese who had either been born in Canada or immigrated to the country during their childhood.
“The Taiwanese language is spoken in two-thirds of the movie,” Chang said. “In the process of pursuing Taiwanese language and Taiwanese culture, everyone found it very interesting and hoped that more people would get to know Taiwan.”
In her opening remarks at the festival, Liu Lih-hsin praised the vitality and innovation of the young filmmakers, who she said can be a catalyst for cross-cultural understanding.
This year, the two-day film festival’s lineup includes Vive l’Amour by award-winning director Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮), Life of Pi, a 2012 adventure-drama directed and produced by two-time Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (李安), Old Fox by Hsiao Ya-chuan (蕭雅全), who won the 60th Golden Horse Best Director Award last year for the film, and But First, Coffee, directed by Philip Shih (施文翰).
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS