Several Taiwanese productions have been shortlisted for awards at a US film festival, while a feature film has been nominated for an award at a Canadian festival, organizers wrote on Facebook.
Organizers of Canada’s Banff Rockie Awards International Program Competition announced that the Taiwanese LGBTQ+ feature film Silent Sparks (愛作歹) has been selected for the program’s Feature Length Film Award.
Coproduced by the Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation (PTS) and By-The-Blueprint Production, Silent Sparks narrates a drama about two ex-convicts who drifted apart after developing an intimate relationship during their incarceration.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation
Starring Taiwanese actors Shih Ming-shuai (施名帥) and Akira Huang (黃冠智), the film is up against South Korea’s The History of Us, Canada’s Lowlifes, and Little Wing and Out of My Mind from the US.
The organizers said the winner would be announced on June 9.
Shih and Huang also costarred in the Taiwanese historical drama, Three Tears in Borneo (聽海湧), which has been shortlisted by the New York Festivals TV & Film Awards for a Drama Special award in the Entertainment Special category.
Also produced by PTS, the period piece tells the story of Taiwanese personnel forced to commit war crimes while working for and serving in the Japanese army in Borneo. At that time, Taiwan was a Japanese colony.
The show’s director Sun Jie-heng (孫介珩) said he was glad that Taiwan’s World War II story was being told to the rest of the world.
“I hope this message will encourage us to tell more Taiwanese stories,” he said.
The Taiwanese psychological thriller, Tasty Tongue (美味的舌頭), has also been nominated for a Student Film award.
The competition organizer said that all winners would be announced on May 22.
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
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 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
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