The College of Liberal Arts hosted an event named the New Taiwan Cinema and Television World last week with a series of activities that included showing of movies, television dramas to documentaries. Apart from these moving images, there were forums for discussion, exhibitions and a time corridor that illustrated a detailed history of Taiwan cinematic development at the Exhibition Hall of the Business and Management Building. Above all, the organizer provided some high quality and profile films to TKU faculty and students who had the privilege of feasting on such a multifaceted and rich visual experience.

Those high profile films include “Taipei 21”, which is one of the critics’ favorites but was cold-shouldered at Golden Horse Awards. In its first show at the Carrie Chang Fine Arts Center, crowds packed the whole theater all rolling in laughter. The director, Yang Shun-ching came personally after the film to do some ‘kiss and tell’, such as how the movie did not receive any subsidies from the government so he managed everything independently including writing the screenplay. He jokingly revealed that he wrote the play with one hand on the cradle of his child, while the other on a pen. The other high profile film “The Blue Door’ which was shown on the last day, culminating the ending of the event, has been to several film festivals and is considered one of the films that has the critics blessing and at the same time, is a Box Office star.

Additional to these two films, three episodes, which included the best cuts and the making of the historical drama, “Cherry Blossoms in the Wind” made for the public television channel in Taiwan were also shown to the audience. The historical drama tells a story of the folk hero of Tai Ya Tribe, Mo Na Lu Dao and how he and his people fought against the Japanese occupation in the early 19th century that resulted in the famous Wu She Uprising in Taiwan. This film stands out among many similar productions as the director of the film, Wan Jen pointed out that he was trying to be neutral in making the film without giving in the temptation of melodramatizing the plot and glorifying the main character. All he wanted to was to tell a good story as it happened.

Good motion pictures aside, the audience had the luck of meeting their admired directors and actors in person. Yi Zhi Yan, the director of “The Blue Door” and the actress who is extremely popular on campus, Kuai Lun-mei came when their film was shown. Another famous film director Niu Chen-tze who directed a popular reality show for TTV known as “Matchmakers” came with his entire crew to meet fans at the University Commons for a autograph ceremony. All the good-looking wannabes on his show proved to be irresistible as they attracted large crowds.

Cheng Wen-cheng, and Yang Ya-tze, two outstanding alumni of the Department of Mass Communication, also brought their work that consisted of some documentaries and dramas to the event. The former just made a documentary on late Mrs. Chang Kai-shek for Taiwan public television channel and received good reviews. At TKU, she showed another documentary of hers entitled “Spring-- the story of Shu Jing-yu.” Yang Ya-tze, on the other hand, brought her work “The Paradise of Illegal Extensions” that is both tender and humorous.

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