We appreciate Mayor Lin's efforts to promote the first city film festival of Taichung! In recent years, city film festivals and various themed film festivals have been prominent subjects in the artistic and cultural activities in Taiwan. Yet, in a city full of creativities and cultures as Taichung, there haven’t been any city film festivals that stood out. After Mayor Lin took office, he urged the Information Bureau to organize a film festival for Taichung. During the preparatory period, we consulted many experienced film professionals. After a series of discussions and planning, it came to a conclusion that Taichung’s city film festival should be “Taichung International Animation Festival” (TIAF), hoping that it would bring about Taichung’s unique qualities as being a “creative city and lively capital”.

2015 TIAF is the first city film festival in Taiwan that is themed with animation movies. For the domestic competition, we offer high prize money and have attracted 379 contestants to join the competition. This reveals there is great potential of productions in the animation industry in Taiwan. Among those 44 nominated movies are many masterpieces, which had been participated in domestic and international film festivals. We highly expect to see various talented creations from both students and professionals in Taiwan to participate in the running for the greatest prize in TIAF!

As for the World panorama part, we are especially pleased to invite a wide range of animation films from all over the world. It includes not only the films from Canada, U.S.A., France, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong but also the prize winning films of noted international movie festivals, feature films, documentary and the works from foreign animation schools. The festival will be rich in content and filled with excitement. We welcome all of you to join us and to support the animation films of Taiwan.