Series Mania and Taiwan Content Agency to Launch Serial Bridges Event

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The husband and wife team of Otsuka Ryuji and Huang Ji, who worked with a minimalist crew and mostly non-professional actors, gave a round of thanks to Asian leading auteurs for inspiring them, and then hugged each other on stage for winning the Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards best narrative feature prize with their pregnancy drama “Stonewalling.” The numerical winner on Saturday night was “Old Fox,” which earned the best director award for Hsiao Ya-chuan, as well as the best supporting actor, makeup and costume, and best film score prizes. The nominations, announced in October, saw “Snow in Midsummer” collect nine nominations and Taiwan‘s Oscar contender “Marry My Dead Body” head the field with eight.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Marco Mueller, the veteran film festival curator and director, is set to launch a new festival and market in Macau. It will have its first edition in January. The Asia-Europe Young Cinema Festival, running Jan.

The Kills have announced details of a tour across the UK and Europe, set to kick off in 2024. Check out ticket details below.The newly shared run of live shows will see the duo – formed of Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince – hit the road in celebration of their latest album ‘God Games’.

Former OGC Nice manager Adrian Ursea has offered an insight into INEOS' ownership of a football club, explaining that impending Manchester United investor Sir Jim Ratcliffe is unlikely to get in the way of manager Erik ten Hag.

Will Tizard Contributor Indie and art film producer Jon Kilik, unlike many, remains hopeful for the personal, mid-budget movie for grown-ups. “Those are the films directors love to make and audiences still love,” says Kilik, being feted this week at Poland’s Camerimage cinematography festival for work of special visual sensitivity.

This year’s winners at Camerimage Film Festival in Toruń, Poland were unveiled Saturday, with The New Boy, Warwick Thornton’s drama about an indigenous boy taken in at a mysterious remote monastery, taking the top prize.

Air have announced a 2024 UK and European tour that will see the French duo perform their debut album ‘Moon Safari’ in its entirety for the first time.Having celebrated its 25th anniversary earlier this year, Air will tour their ‘One Night Only’ experience for ‘Moon Safari’ in February and March, which will include a show at London’s Coliseum.The tour – which will be the first time ever the duo have performed the 1998 album live – will kick off at Anitgel at Victoria Hall in Geneva, Switzerland, continuing on to Milan, Vienna, Belgium, Berlin, Paris and Amsterdam, before concluding in London.Pre-sale starts this Thursday (November 16) at 10am local time, while general sale goes live Friday (November 17) at 10am local time. You can buy tickets for the London show here, and all remaining dates here.“We were a duo doing some electronic thing, dreaming of selling 10,000 copies and being recognised by other musicians as cool,” said Jean-Benoît Dunckel of the record in a press statement.

Valerie Wu Intern Disney Branded Television has acquired first-generation Taiwanese American filmmaker Sean Wang’s award-winning documentary short, “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó.” “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó” features dialogue in both Mandarin and English and is a “multigenerational story” that celebrates Sean Wang’s two grandmothers, one on his father’s side and the other on his mother’s side. The film premiered at the SXSW film festival, where it took home the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award.

With a background in Taiwanese public television and now president of leading production company Greener Grass Culture, Phil Tang has been one of the key players in Taiwan’s evolving drama production space. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Paramount+ has signed a partnership with Microsoft for the streaming service to be available on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S across several international markets. Under the deal, Paramount+ will roll out on Xbox consoles in Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latin America (including Brazil), Switzerland and the U.K.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwanese production companies DaMou Entertainment and KOKO Entertainment unveiled a starry local cast for “Fired Up,” their Taiwan remake of hit Korean series “Itaewon Class.” At an event held within the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) on Thursday, the two companies also confirmed plans for a second season of “The World Between Us,” a 2019 drama series that premiered on Taiwan’s Public Television Service and regional streamer Catchplay. “Fired Up” will star Mandarin-language pop star Eric Chou, Golden Horse Film Award nominee Angela Yuen, Shao Yu-wei, Huang Guan-zhi, Cosmos Lin, Ben Wu and Sean Lin in leading roles. The show is co-directed by kao Pin-chuan and Tseng Ying-ting, working from a script headed by Chien Li-ying (“Wave Makers”). “Itaewon Class” is a story about an ex-convict who sets up his own business after release from jail.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief France and Taiwan on Thursday signed a wide-ranging agreement to enable their film and TV industries co-operate on a higher level. At a signing ceremony in Taipei at the Taiwan Creative Culture Fest (TCCF) convention, government representatives of both territories stressed shared values at the political level and in the audiovisual sphere.

Stephen Sanchez has shared details of 2024 UK and European tour – find out how to buy tickets below.The Nashville singer-songwriter’s ‘The Troubadour Takes Europe Tour’ will take in shows at Bristol’s SWX, London’s KOKO and Manchester’s New Century Hall between February 12 and 14 before other stops in major European cities.Tickets go on general sale at this Friday (November 10) at 9am GMT here. A fan pre-sale is already open for select dates.The news follows the release of Sanchez’s debut album ‘Angel Face’.

France’s Series Mania Festival is teaming with Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) to launch a workshop, Serial  Bridges, in France and Taiwan next year that is aimed at East Asian screenwriters and producers. 

Sophia Sun Intern Indonesia’s Giovanni Rustanto brings “A Ballad of Long Hair” to the 2023 Taiwan Creative Content Fest, its latest stop on a tour of project markets and labs. Set in the 1990s, the project centers around an Indonesian-Chinese young man who inherits a magical trait from his witch mother – his hair grows half a centimeter every night. Possessing mesmerizingly long hair and a unique talent for ethereal metal music, he stands up against oppressive forces and sparks a youth rebellion that challenges toxic masculinity and government corruption.

Sophia Sun Intern American-Taiwanese actor and director Peter Ho (“Wind and Cloud”) is at the 2023 Taiwan Creative Content Fest with in-development film project “Appetite for Desire.” The completed picture is intended to be a 120 minute film that tells the story of clout-chasing YouTubers Yong Cheng and Gao Wei who are introduced to a mysterious dish called Kappa meat by their high school classmate. The magic Kappa meat gives them temporary superpower which allows them to create more extreme video contents. However, as Yong Cheng and Gao Wei become more and more reliant on it, a darker secret about it is being revealed.

Bruce Dickinson has teased new single ‘Afterglow Of Ragnarok’ and confirmed details of an upcoming tour of the UK and Ireland. Find ticket details below.‘Afterglow Of Ragnarok’ will be the first single from the Iron Maiden frontman’s forthcoming album ‘The Mandrake Project’.

A teen decided to ditch going to university - and now gets paid £1k a month to travel the world on millionaire superyachts.

Savina Petkova There is an ample tradition of historical dramas set in Interwar Poland, but there’s rarely one made by a woman director. Anna Jadowska wants to fill in this gap with her new project, “Tethys Ocean,” which will be presented at Thessaloniki Film Festival’s Agora Crossroads Co-production Forum next week. The story unfolds in 1938, as seven-year-old Wiktoria is being sent from a village near Kraków to become a servant at the mansion of a wealthy family where her older cousin also works.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Subscription video subscriptions in Taiwan increased by 315,000 in the July to September quarter, to reach 5.8 million, according toa new research report. Netflix and Disney+ were responsible for the bulk of the growth. The “Online Video in Taiwan” report from consultancy Media Partners Asia and its AMPD Research sister company showed premium VOD engagement and subscriptions were up 6% quarter on quarter.