This movie is slated for release Feb. of 2014. They’ve recently released a longer version of the trailer.
This is the 6 second pre-pre-trailer. I’ve posted this before in other sports related threads.
This is the longer pre-trailer.
It’s another movie from Wei De-sheng’s studio (he directed Cape No.7 and Seediq Bale), although this time he acts as the producer. The actor who played Temu Walis in Seediq Bale, Ma Zhi-xiang directed the movie.
The plot is based on real events. The baseball team from Kano (Jiayi Agriculture and Forestation School, equivalent of today’s high school) represented Taiwan in the Japanese summer Koshien (high school) baseball championship.
Kano was the first team from southern Taiwan to win the inter-Taiwan competition and to represent Taiwan. It was also the first team formed by Japanese, Han Taiwanese and Aboriginals. Prior to Kano teams were usually formed by pure Japanese, pure Han Taiwanese or pure aboriginal players. A couple of players went on to play in the Japanese professional baseball league, even entered the Japanese hall of fame.
Anyway, it should be interesting for those who enjoys baseball and history.
It is interesting this movie inevidably sparks the “Wei De-Sheng is pro-Japan/is anti-Japan” retoric again.
When Cape No.7 came out, China and some in the deep blue camp accused him of being pro-Japanese. Looking at history through a Japan colored lens.
Then Seediq Bale came out, some people still claimed him to be pro-Japan because not all Japanese in the movie were sex-crazed cold-blooded murderers. On the other hand, many people and some Japanese tried to paint Wei as anti-Japan.
I find the whole narative silly, since Wei is obviously just pro-Taiwan and pro-Story-telling. Regardless what kind of experience people might have had back then, Wei wanted to tell those stories, because they haven’t been told due to political reasons.
Wei said Seediq Bale challenged our view of progress and civilization. Where as KANO goes along with the mainstream view of progress and civilization. Seediq Bale took place only half an year before KANO went to Koshien. It means the students of KANO were training on the field, while the Seediq people were being bombed with tear gas in the mountains.
There were great injustice happening in Taiwan. However, at the same time people on the island at the time were also making small changes to correct such injustice. Wei tells the stories from each experience as honestly as possible. Unfortunately, there are always those who claims history and storytelling must be revised so there’s one single narrative to paint all Japanese as evil and any Japanese contributions were made for their selfish reasons so not worth commemorating. For some reason, saying honestly how things actually are or were equals political agenda to those people…
Seediq Bale was great. Anyone who thinks it’s pro- or anti-Japanese (or pro- or anti-aboriginal for that matter) clearly didn’t have the patience to sit through both films. Or just didn’t understand them.
Whatever happened to identity through being yourself?[/quote]
by the way, since I’ve done a little research into Japanese baseball prior to WW2, I think it’s rather interesting that the Japanese’s view about playing baseball against the Americans are rather similar to how Taiwanese at the time felt about playing baseball against the Japanese. During the 2 MLB barnstorming in Japan, one in 1931 and one in 1934 (second one known as the Babe Ruth tour), Japanese new papers wrote about fighting the mighty and defining national character.
I read that there is a Macedonia movie called The Third Half about how Macedonia seeking national identity through soccer (ok, fine, football), against their NAZI backed Bulgarian overlords. They did so by hiring a head coach from NAZI Germany. The twist in the movie is that though to the Macedonians at first, the coach was just German (Austro-Hungarian to be exact), but he was of Jewish descent.
And of course Nelson Mandela said "“Sport has the power to inspire and unite people.” There a book about how he united SA as the first black SA president called “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.”
[quote=“Hokwongwei”][quote=“rowland”]Identity through baseball?
Whatever happened to identity through being yourself?[/quote]
Being yourself was outlawed under most of the KMT’s rule in Taiwan, and then heavily frowned upon under CSB’s reign. [/quote]
One couldn’t even keep using their own names during Japanese or KMT era. Obin Tadao (played by Vivian Xu in Seediq Bale) was renamed to Takayama Hatsuko under Japanese rule, and then when KMT took over she had to die as Gao Caiyun.
KMT even renamed Mona Rudao. When Chiang The Bald decided to commemorate Mona Rudao as a Chinese anti-Japanese hero, he decided Mona Rudao didn’t sound like a hero, so he was given the name Zhang Lao (張老) posthumously…
What the media has seemed to neglected to mention is that the director of KANO, Umin Boya, is probably the first aboriginal director of feature film in Taiwan (There are already quite a few documentary directors already). Wei Te-Sheng is lending his fame to the film as the producer. According to interviews, director Umin Boya also played little league baseball and was a little peeved at how bad at baseball the actors who portrayed in other baseball films.
No its not. Which is just as well since a large reason for the Hongye team’s success was that they drew on a massive player pool. They had to change the rules to prevent the domination of Taiwan teams in the 70s and 80s.
More handsome guys news. Yesterday, there was a TV special of how KANO was made. A lot of historical research involved, lots of reconstruction/construction of sets. Taiwan is quite advanced on CG stuff, no doubt. But it was a complicated production. Lots of soul in this one.
There was a parade on Saturday, reenacting the welcome given by the city of Chiayi to the original Kano baseball players. Few images:
Chiayi was an important city in Japanese times, unfortunately it was heavily bombed by the Americans (Japanese had methanol plants there) and most factories closed and people moved away . That’s what I read in a memoir of 228 anyway… The present day Chiayi would be a shadow of that time.
:lovestruck:
