Taiwan Today

In 2010, Ethan Ruan was named best actor at that year’s Golden Horse Awards, Taiwan’s top prizes for films from Mandarin-speaking societies including the home market, Hong Kong and mainland China. The 28-year-old rising star, who won for his role as an ambitious gangster in the movie Monga, was the first Taiwanese actor in the past decade to receive the honor. In fact, Ruan’s participation in the film partially explains why Monga earned more than NT$110 million (US$3.5 million) in Taipei’s theaters, as he has enjoyed great popularity since his performance in a local TV drama series in 2008. As a rule of thumb, a movie’s box office throughout Taiwan is usually estimated at double the capital city’s figures.

Monga, which chronicles the 1980s exploits of gangster groups in Taipei’s Monga area, the old name of Wanhua District, together with all other locally produced works including Seven Days in Heaven, Au Revoir Taipei and Taipei Exchange, contributed about 8 percent of the box office earnings of all movies released in Taiwan in 2010. That marked the biggest share of Taiwanese films in the domestic market during past two decades except for 2008, when the sleeper hit Cape No.7 alone garnered around NT$230 million (US$7.3 million) in Taipei and more than NT$500 million (US$15.9 million) nationwide. Cape No.7 is Taiwan’s top-grossing locally made film to date and its all-time third-highest behind Avatar (2009) and Titanic (1997).

From 1996 to 2006, however, there were only two years when local works earned more than 2 percent of Taiwan’s total box office haul, which is usually dominated by Hollywood films and other imported heroes or heroines.

Local Stories

For Chu Wen-ching, director of the Government Information Office’s (GIO) Department of Motion Pictures, the remarkable box office record of Cape No.7 represents an instance of localization winning over globalization, as the movie played on grassroots sentiments and blended its present-day setting with historical events. The film centers on the formation of a local band, which opens for a Japanese singer at a concert on a beach in southernmost Taiwan. “Along with the recent surge of domestic films,” Chu says, “Taiwanese audiences found a desire for their own stories and [cinematic] language.”

In fact, the success of several recent Taiwanese movies shows that domestic audiences are warming toward local films, a trend that has added considerable verve to Taiwan’s long-stagnant film industry, says Liao Gene-fon, an associate professor at National Taiwan University of Arts’ Department of Motion Pictures. According to a report by the Cabinet-level Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA), of the 11 sectors of Taiwan’s cultural and creative industry including advertising, design, publishing, music and visual arts, among others, cinema was one of the least affected fields during the recent global financial crisis. Moreover, GIO statistics show that the number of local companies registered as film production ventures rose from 556 in 2005 to 914 in October 2010, while those registered as film distribution businesses increased from 1,270 to 1,602.

Wang Yu-lin, director of Seven Days in Heaven, is the head of Magnifique Creative Media Production Co., a film production and distribution company established in 2007. Based on an award-winning work of nonfiction in memory of the author’s deceased father, Magnifique’s Seven Days in Heaven includes aspects of traditional Taiwanese funeral arrangements and became a surprise hit. By garnering about NT$38 million (US$1.2 million) in box office sales nationwide, the movie not only turned a profit, but can be considered quite a success by local standards.

Wang says that the excitement brought about by Cape No.7 has broadened the horizons of Taiwan’s film circle and given confidence to those in the industry who might otherwise have given up. It also has had the effect of attracting more people to work in the business. “There used to be fewer than 10 Taiwanese films released every year, but now we have 40 to 50,” Wang says. “I hope that our films continue picking up energy and keep going on this road.” Seven Days in Heaven won the 2010 Golden Horse prize for best adapted screenplay, while Wu Peng-feng won the best supporting actor award for his role as the Taoist priest who leads the funeral process. The best director and best picture titles went to The Fourth Portrait directed by Chung Mong-hong and When Love Comes by Chang Tso-chi respectively. Both films focus on family dramas, with The Fourth Portrait looking at domestic violence and When Love Comes tackling pregnancy out of wedlock. Like Wang, Chung and Chang run their own film production companies.

Celebrated Taiwanese film director Hou Hsiao-hsien says he hopes to see Taiwanese film production increase to 100 movies a year, which would ensure an adequate business scale for the local industry. This goal would be unlikely under the typical model of individual studios struggling on their own, however, Hou says. Despite more success stories at the box office, few local directors are able to sustain themselves by working full-time on movie projects and must rely on other forms of work such as producing TV advertisements to make a living.

In a statement released to mark Hou’s chairmanship of the 2010 Golden Horse Film Festival executive committee, the director outlined his vision for the development of Taiwan’s cinema during the next two decades. As part of that plan, Hou suggests adopting the French approach to subsidizing filmmakers, whereby taxes are imposed on movie tickets, as well as on television and Internet broadcasts and DVD sales. “Thanks to such a system, more than 200 movies are released each year in France, outnumbered worldwide only by India with Bollywood and the United States with Hollywood,” he noted. As Taiwanese people spend more than NT$5 billion (US$161 million) a year at movie theaters, a tax rate of 10 percent would garner more than NT$500 million (US$16.1 million). All told, such taxation projects could create an annual fund of more than NT$1 billion (US$32.3 million), which could be devoted exclusively to filmmaking, Hou says.

Currently, the majority of government funding takes the form of GIO film assistance subsidies. Chung Mong-hong’s Cream Film Production Co., established in 2002, and Chang’s Chang Tso-chi Film Studio Co., established in 1998, each received NT$10 million (US$302,600) from the GIO for the making of their 2010 Golden Horse prize winners, representing about one-third of their budgets for the movies. In 2009, another 32 filmmaking projects received financial assistance through GIO grants ranging from NT$2 million (US$60,500) to NT$10 million, totaling some NT$200 million (US$6 million) paid out for the year. In 2010, the ceiling was raised to NT$20 million (US$645,200) per project. Moreover, big-budget projects of more than NT$60 million (US$1.9 million) can apply for a subsidy of up to 30 percent of total costs. Such direct funding has been awarded to filmmakers for at least two decades.

In recent years, the government’s financial assistance to the industry has expanded to include providing government-backed loans for film projects, as well as building contacts between filmmakers and potential investors. Moreover, if a film eventually gains more than NT$20 million in ticket sales, funds equal to 20 percent of the movie’s total sales will be made available for the production company’s next film.

Flagship for Films

In 2010, the GIO started a five-year flagship program to develop Taiwanese films for Mandarin-speaking audiences worldwide, and also to strengthen the local industry by offering film seminars and helping studios upgrade to digital production, among other measures. The CCA has also launched services designed to help those in film and other sectors of the cultural and creative industry to access the various resources available from the government. Liao Gene-fon believes that such favorable factors make Taiwan one of the friendliest environments for filmmakers in the world, but cautions that it will take time to build sound business fundamentals throughout the industry.

With respect to the government’s work to secure venture capital for filmmakers in recent years, Wang Ken-yu, a veteran film producer and film festival curator, says it marks a positive development from the previous system, under which companies bid for government subsidies. All too often, the funding was won by companies with little experience in filmmaking, she says, with the result that the quality of the final product suffered. Wang was the producer of Island Etude, a 2007 movie about a young man who cycles around Taiwan. The film found moderate success, with earnings of around NT$8.9 million (US$278,000) in Taipei alone. In addition to receiving NT$5 million (US$152,000) from the GIO to make the film, another NT$2 million (US$60,900) came from Giant Manufacturing Co. Ltd., a leading bike manufacturer in Taiwan and worldwide, through the help of GIO officials. Wang recalls that Island Etude’s popularity helped produce a craze for biking around the island, with the result that Giant saw markedly higher business revenues that year. The producer, who also serves as chairwoman of the board of the Taiwan Original Filmmakers Union, says that helping filmmakers find investment from the private sector is a way to create substantial, long-term benefits for the film industry as a whole. The filmmakers’ union was established in 1998 to build a robust environment for moviemaking in Taiwan. The organization now has more than 400 members including film directors, producers, musicians, distributors and scholars.

Wang Ken-yu says that Taiwan does not have to follow the Hollywood model to develop the local film industry. “Instead, we can look at and learn from foreign markets similar in scale to Taiwan such as the Netherlands and Denmark,” she says. “We can try to go our own way and shape our own style, even though things operate more like a cottage industry here,” she says, a reference to the numerous small-scale studios that work more or less independently of each other.

During the last two years, the Taiwan Original Filmmakers Union has held regular workshops every few months for veteran as well as younger filmmakers in different fields such as screenwriting, art design and cinematography. “Film is a broad art that needs input from many art sectors,” she says, “but the exchanges among practitioners in each specific sector are somewhat lacking in Taiwan.” Magnifique’s Wang Yu-lin agrees, saying that the strong expertise available in each sector of the filmmaking process and the availability of plentiful funding are mainly what set Hollywood apart from Taiwan. “We won’t be able to copy that pattern,” says the director of Seven Days in Heaven, “but we can create something essential, sincere and really moving.”

Despite the black humor in Seven Days in Heaven, there are very poetic and introspective moments in the film reminiscent of Taiwan’s New Wave Cinema movement in the 1980s. The movement, typified by the works of directors Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang (1947–2007), is credited with helping to found an intellectual, humanistic style among Mandarin-language films. In the early 1980s, when Taiwanese audiences started to turn away from increasingly melodramatic domestic films toward foreign movies, New Wave filmmakers attempted to revitalize the declining local cinematic industry. The new films won high critical acclaim at home and abroad and often featured at major film festivals around the world, but New Wave directors never made up the majority of filmmakers in Taiwan and their movies never claimed a majority market share in Taiwan.

Hard to Please

Wang Yu-lin says that nowadays, Taiwanese audiences are quite hard to please, and that filmmakers need to make smart choices if they want to attract local viewers, who have been exposed to a wide variety of film styles, but still mostly favor Hollywood films.

Wang Ken-yu worked on several New Wave movies including Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day, the 1991 Golden Horse winner for best picture. The film is based on a true murder story involving teenagers and is set in 1950s Taipei. Wang Ken-yu says filmmakers are not always to blame for failing to attract large audiences, explaining that it often takes time for moviegoers to develop a greater range of tastes and aesthetic views. For example, by the mid-2000s, the New Wave style of presenting stories of everyday life found extension in a surge of documentaries. These offerings contained some of the ingredients of popular entertainment by developing dramatic elements, but nevertheless spoke a cinematic language different from Hollywood fantasies. Many of the viewers who were put off by the propensity of New Wave films to center on the lives of low-profile “ordinary” characters were nonetheless attracted to these documentaries, which often featured local people with colorful personalities or those in extreme circumstances. Audiences warmed to the elderly residents in a fading agricultural community in southern Taiwan, for example, as portrayed in The Last Rice Farmers (2005). The film continued the box office success of Life (2004), a documentary about survivors of the destructive 921 earthquake that struck Taiwan on September 21, 1999. Life’s box office tally of some NT$20 million (US$598,000) was more than that of all the locally produced movies released in the previous year. Industry watchers considered the size of these earnings a major sign that Taiwanese cinema was making a comeback.

For National Taiwan University of Arts’ Liao Gene-fon, the popularity of the 2007 film Secret in Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China was another significant indicator of Taiwan’s cinematic potential. Mandopop star Jay Chou directed and wrote the hit movie, and also plays the male protagonist, a senior high school student who majors in piano and falls in love with his classmate. The fantasy plot revolves around time-travel made possible by a mysterious musical score. The movie garnered some NT$26 million (US$812,000) in Taipei alone. Musical performances are arguably the best part of this teenage love story, and the title song Chou composed for the film won the 2007 Golden Horse award for best theme song. The Secret soundtrack also won Chou the title of best album producer at the 2008 Golden Melody Awards, Taiwan’s top music awards, where the musician has been a frequent award winner in the past decade. Liao believes that the creative energy and commercial capability of Chou and Taiwan’s pop music scene, the most dynamic sector of Taiwan’s entertainment businesses, could provide major support for the country’s film development. According to Liao, a similar example is Love in Disguise (2010), which stars Taiwanese-American Wang Lee-hom, another Mandopop celebrity. Wang Lee-hom also wrote and directed the movie and composed its soundtrack. Despite modest ticket sales in Taiwan, Love in Disguise enjoyed a degree of success in mainland China.

Liao notes that Taiwan’s strength in producing television dramas could also help deliver on the promise of a cinematic revival. For one thing, a number of popular Taiwanese films are in the style of local TV idol dramas, while young TV actors and actresses often make the leap to the big screen. Before Ethan Ruan became the Golden Horse choice for best actor in 2010, he was a household name due to his leading role in You Are My Destiny, the 2008 idol drama series that became one of the most popular TV programs of all time in Taiwan.

Liao says that the competitiveness of Taiwan’s pop music and TV drama products in Mandarin-speaking societies could help open up overseas markets for Taiwanese films. At the same time, the professor points out that films with a strong local flavor like Seven Days in Heaven can be quite popular in the home market, but might be much less so outside Taiwan because of cultural barriers. He hopes to see more Taiwanese films that transcend culture, in addition to more professional international marketing.

Resonating Elsewhere

Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the United States, makes a similar point. Speaking of Cape No.7’s tremendous success in Taiwan, Davis says that it is great for movies to deal with local issues and enable local audiences to see their own lives on the screen, but such works might not resonate in the same way elsewhere in the world. Davis was invited to join 2010 Golden Horse events in Taiwan before his planned retirement this year from the Academy executive position that he has held for more than 20 years. He suggests that Taiwanese films, while keeping a distinctive local feel, should also develop some kind of universal appeal.

Challenges aside, the GIO’s Chu Wen-ching is upbeat about the future of filmmaking in Taiwan. Chu sees a strong talent base and atmosphere of artistic freedom, saying that Taiwan’s filmmaking environment is moving from works of individual expression to movies actively seeking larger audiences and backed up by marketing. He believes that, with its pluralistic culture that blends Chinese, Japanese, Western and aboriginal elements, Taiwan’s free and democratic society can build a unique film brand among audiences in Mandarin-speaking societies and throughout the world.

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com