Taiwan and France have joined hands to promote extended reality (XR) development and make international strides in leading the XR industry! The Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NewImages Festival (hosted by the Forum des images), the largest immersive content festival in France, to accelerate the exchanges between creators and professionals with a wide range of expertise from the XR industries of the two countries. This project aims to strengthen the links between French and Taiwanese industries, allowing alliances to form, as well as all sorts of cooperation and business opportunities to accelerate Taiwan's XR industry ecosystem, making Taiwan a leader in XR content internationally.
TAICCA chairperson, Hsiao-Ching TING stated that the two parties share the same values and ambitions for XR creation, and is optimistic that the partnership would deepen and accelerate communication between XR talent on both sides. She adds that Taiwan's XR content ecosystem is developing rapidly with several important successes proving Taiwan's achievement in XR hardware and software integration and TAICCA has multiple schemes and international co-production programs to take a step further in step in the collaboration between Taiwan and France in XR creative content.
The NewImages Festival Director Michaël Swierczynski said, "We are proud to join forces with TAICCA to support immersive creation. This partnership reinforces the special and privileged friendship that the festival has had with Taiwan for several years now. This brand-new and unprecedented collaboration between NewImages Festival and TAICCA offers a unique opportunity to strengthen exchanges, collaborations, and synergies and to promote co-productions as well as the emergence of new talents. It is a strong commitment of our two countries to structure and make the XR ecosystem grow, and keeps acting in the best interests of professionals."
Following an open call for applications, both organizations will collectively select ten Taiwanese XR professionals from the industry to attend the 4th edition of NewImages Festival in Paris, starting from June 9th to 13th, 2021. On the eve of the festival, the one-day Taiwan-France XR Day event will serve as a platform for the selected participants to engage in direct and constructive dialogue, bringing the players from both sides closer together. This sequence will also be a warm-up for Taiwanese delegates before they engage in subsequent events of the NewImages Festival together with other international delegates and professionals.
In the second stage of this bi-annual program, Taiwan will also invite 10 French XR professionals to join the 2021 Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) to illustrate Taiwan's content advancement plans and open up more collaboration opportunities.
The Host of NewImages Festival, the Forum des Images, is one of the most important and innovative cultural institutions in Paris since 2016, which promotes movies, digital films, documentaries. The NewImages Festival is a pioneer virtual reality (VR) content and immersive creation that endeavors to utilize and explore new vehicles for storytelling via immersive experience. The festival has been dedicated to popularizing immersive and interactive digital experiences. For that, the NewImages Festival has gained the most iconic status as the most well-resourced XR immersive creative art festival in Europe. Among the programs, the XR Financing Market, where funding and investment occur, is also an iconic event in the international XR ecosystem.
The "TAIWAN x FRANCE XR Day" XR talents networking program is available on TAICCA's official website on Jan 18th and the application will end on March 12th. The professional XR judges of the NewImages Festival will help with the screening of XR talent. For more details, please refer to the TAICCA website: https://taicca.tw/article/c061ffca
In addition to the XR talents networking program, TAICCA's Immersive Content Grant for Co-funding or Co-productions launched early last year is also accepting applications from Jan 18th to March 12th, 2021. The grant welcomes narrative, performance, and interactive immersive content projects in the production stage to apply. Please refer to TAICCA's official website for more information: https://taicca.tw/article/9bb45e4f