In a first for Taiwanese film, Wei Te-sheng’s epic “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale” premiered Sept. 4 at the Presidential Office Plaza on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei, a site more commonly used to stage protest marches.
Nominated for the Golden Lion Award at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Seediq Bale will open in local theaters Sept. 9, but advance tickets are nearly sold out, with sales surpassing NT$40 million (US$1.38 million). The picture has broken new ground in cinematic marketing, including souvenir tickets for the start and wrap of filming, a Mid-Autumn Festival screening in Kaohsiung featuring moon cakes by award-winning baker Wu Bao-chun, and an unprecedented variety of movie-related merchandise.
Recently several other locally made motion pictures have also done well at the box office, including Internet writer Giddens Ko’s first film effort, “You Are the Apple of My Eye,” which in two weeks has already grossed nearly NT$300 million, raising speculation that it could break the box office record of NT$530 million set by Wei’s “Cape No. 7.”
The motivational sports movie “Jump A-shin!” has pulled in NT$50 million, its real-life story even setting off a “Jump Taiwan!” movement encouraging people not to give up in the face of life’s obstacles.
2008’s “Cape No. 7” set off this groundswell in the domestic film industry. In the last few years, numerous light dramas have attracted attention for drawing on local experience and familiar performance styles, gradually bringing audiences back to theaters and seemingly re-creating the heady days of Taiwan new wave cinema in the 1980s.
And in a move that would seem to symbolize the passing of the cinematic torch, director Hou Hsiao-hsien, a representative figure of the new wave period, and producer Lee Lieh, very active in the industry in recent years, were named Presidential Culture Award winners this year.
The 1983 film “Growing Up,” for which Hou co-wrote the screenplay, began the new wave movement, and his later films such as “A City of Sadness” won many international prizes. Lee has introduced an innovative marketing approach injecting new vigor into the struggling industry, in rapid succession producing the hits “Orz Boyz,” “Monga” and “Jump A-shin!”
Today’s films have made dramatic breakthroughs in subject matter and artistry, as in the realistic violence of “Monga,” the youthful eroticism of Apple and the stunning battle scenes in Seediq Bale. Even more important are the new methods of marketing, transforming each film from an individual work into a media event or even a small industry. “Cape No. 7” showed the box office potential of local motion pictures, while Seediq Bale has brought new daring and vigor to Taiwan’s filmmaking.
Amid all this record breaking and innovation, however, the movie industry still has cause for worry. There are too many “boy/girl next door” actors, and even amateur actors, with no real superstars. Moreover, Taiwan has no movie studios, so even a TV drama sponsored by the Ministry of National Defense for the ROC centennial had to be filmed in mainland China.
Box office returns and movie-related merchandise have already proven that the motion picture industry is worth investing in—culture can indeed be profitable. The government, filmmakers and related sectors should now join hands to take Taiwanese cinema to even greater heights. (THN)
(This commentary originally appeared in the China Times Sept. 5.)
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