With the support of the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK, professor Chris Berry of King's College London organized screenings of several Taiwanese-language films at the Skalvija theater in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, from Nov. 17 to 21.
The films screened at the event included "The Best Secret Agent (天字第一號, 1964)," "Goodbye, Taipei (再見台北, 1969)," "Dangerous Youth (危險的青春, 1969)," "Brother Liu and Brother Wang on the Roads in Taiwan (王哥柳哥遊台灣, 1959)," and "The Husband Secret (丈夫的秘密, 1960)," encompassing genres such as espionage, comedy, social realism with Lithuanian subtitles. The films were well-received by the audiences.
The opening and post-screening discussion of "The Husband Secret," which was screened on Nov. 19, was co-hosted by Deimantas Valančiūnas, a Lithuanian scholar and associate professor of the Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies at the Vilnius University who mainly studies South Asian films, and Gabija Vosyliute, the Indian literature and art lecturer.
Before the screening, the organizer Chris Berry introduced the historical background of Taiwanese-language films to the audiences. Additionally, director of the Cultural Division Chen Pin-chuan (陳斌全) was invited to attend the post-screening discussion to share the Taiwanese film restoration project and how digital remastering was used to reconstruct film history.
The third edition of the screenings this year is part of a series of activities: "Taiwan's Lost Commercial Cinema: Recovered and Restored – 2020-2021 Edition (遺落的臺灣商業電影－臺語片：重新發現與修復2020-2021)."
For more information about Taiwan's Lost Commercial Cinema: Recovered and Restored – 2020-2021 Edition, please click here.