Ministry of Culture-Performance Venues & Architectural Heritage

To strengthen global connection with a service focus on international mainstream communities, the Ministry of Culture has designed and created the Taiwan Culture Portal, a multi-lingual website platform that includes literature, cinema, fine arts and traditional performing arts. The intention is to promote Taiwan culture and arts overseas by means of these materials so those in the international community will gain a better understanding of the current state of Taiwan culture in a variety of areas, and to open up increased opportunities for cross-country cooperation and exchanges.

Each culture toolkit will be a systematic collection of the most representative pieces provided with a multiple search function for browsing, full-text retrieval, and advanced searching. The Cinema and Traditional Performing Arts Toolkit will even offer DVDs that will be distributed to key Taiwan diplomatic missions and the Ministry's overseas offices. The content of each Toolkit is as follows:

1. Cinema

Taiwan Cinema Toolkit was launched by the Ministry of Culture and is organized by Taiwan Film Institute. The aim of the Toolkit is to offer the world easy access to the best of Taiwanese cinema. To realize this, we provide selected films, relevant introductions and critiques as well as other promotional materials on our website, and each year we compile a film brochure with our latest programming recommendations for global audiences.

Since 2013, we have accumulated over 180 films on DVD, all recommended by prominent film directors, critics, and curators in Taiwan, and in 2016, we began providing screening materials in high-quality formats such as DCP and Blu-ray. The selected films are available for any overseas individuals, curators, and organizations to arrange non-profit screening events. We further help with support for screening fees, aiming to send our films to medium-scale or above screening events to enhance the visibility of Taiwanese cinema around the world.

2. Literature

The Literature Toolkit is a systematic introduction to Taiwanese writers, their works, and Taiwan's literary history; at the same time, the project also examines the Taiwanese experience, literary aesthetics, and the salient characteristics of its various literary categories. Thus, the Toolkit’s sixteen thematic categories and 160 majorworks are an ideal gateway to appreciating and understanding the literature of Taiwan.

Ten representative literary selections are included under each theme, as well as ten associated videos, musical, or documentary films. As for the types of the 160 literary selections, they cover poetry, essays, and fiction and date from early indigenous oral literature to colonial literature from the period of Japanese rule and the works of modern and contemporary young writers, everything is included. In terms of their character, these works embrace both serious and popular literature. With 16 diverse themes, 160 high-quality literary pieces, and 146 writers, each with a unique style all on offer, we believe this Toolkit will help bring overseas readers very quickly into the world of Taiwan literature.

3. Fine Arts Toolkit

The Fine Arts Toolkit presents the movement and the spirit of Taiwan fine arts creation. The contents focus on how each work applies its aesthetic style under different spatial background, as an introduction of art work for different groups. The Fine Arts Toolkit also provides ideas on themed exhibition curations and ways of representation for Taiwan arts.

Source materials are selected based on the displayed works of the permanent exhibition of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and exhibitions related Taiwan art. In order to define various works among Taiwan fine arts creation in a broad sense, the selected works are classified by the medium, which includes: ink painting and calligraphy, Eastern gouache, oil paints and acrylic colors, watercolor, print, sculpture, photography, mixed media, ceramics, installation art, new media and video. The year of birth of the artists, decade, related exhibition and key works search function are also provided for special categories searching on Taiwan art.

4. Traditional Performing Arts Toolkit

This Toolkit introduces the categories of Taiwanese opera and music categories of the traditional performing arts that are representative, important, and currently active. The purposes of this Toolkit are to comprehensively collect and arrange the texts and video data concerning modern traditional performing arts in Taiwan, utilize the ubiquitous internet, and provide information on the beauty and characteristics of the traditional performing arts in Taiwan to those who are interested. 

The chief materials will consist of an introductory level appreciation and analysis of significant representative opera types and music that are that still actively performed, as well as a carefully chosen selection of 40 performance troupes and 120 of their representative works, each accompanied by a 3-5 minute highlight video. Links for further reading and related websites have also been designed to raise the international visibility of traditional Taiwan performing arts as well as enhance exchange possibilities.