Passing the torch of Taiwanese film

Pacing her office at Arc Light Films (吉光電影公司), producer and film critic Peggy Chiao (焦雄屏) looks harried as she talks into a cellphone. She later explains: "that was Miramax and Warner. They wanted to buy our films, so I had to explain to them that the films were already sold to Sony Classics."

Chiao is busy these days, not least because her two recent productions -- Betelnut Beauty (愛你愛我) and Beijing Bicycle (十七歲的單車) -- won four major awards at last month's Berlin International Film Festival.

Lin Cheng-sheng (林正盛), director of Betelnut Beauty, came away from the festival with the Silver Berlin Bear and the movie's star, Lee Sinjie (李心潔), captured the Piper Heidsieck New Talent award for the best young actress. Meanwhile, Wang Xiaoshuai (王小帥), who directed Beijing Bicycle, won a Silver Bear Jury Prize and the movie's two young actors together picked up the Piper Heidsieck New Talent awards in the men's category.

Arc Light suddenly became a hot item during the event, at which hundreds of film dealers and distributors hunt for films from different regions and markets. And after the worldwide success of Ang Lee's (李安) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍), no one wants to underestimate the market for Chinese-language films.

Not surprisingly, when discussing the so-called "Asia Invasion" in the Western film market, Chiao is visibly proud and excited, for she has been a major force behind the phenomenal success of Chinese-language films in the global market over the past decade.

"Chinese-language films have been recognized internationally for at least 10 years. The first-generation directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) and Edward Yang (楊德昌) from Taiwan, Tsui Hark (徐克) from Hong Kong and Zhang Yimou (張藝謀) and Chen Kaige (陳凱歌) from China have established a reputation for quality and strong artistic style in their films. The new trend is to make Chinese-language films more marketable and popular in a global market," said Chiao.

Chiao attributes recent breakthroughs to the introduction of higher-quality Asian films into the global film promotion system, making them far more accessible arger audiences to larger audiences.

"Crouching Tiger can be shown in small German towns where audiences had no idea why the characters in the film could fly above roofs. Edward Yang's A One and A Two (一一) has been screened in Paris for 15 weeks and theaters are still packed. And Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love has had more than 750,000 viewers in Paris," said Chiao.

"The global market for Chinese-language films has been opened," she said.

Chiao is no stranger to international film festivals. Twenty years ago, as a film critic, she began touting the new film movement called "New Taiwan Cinema" (台灣新電影), endorsing the works of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang as major achievements in forging new cinematic styles. She later brought these films to international film festivals.

When Hou's City of Sadness (悲情城市) won the Golden Lion at Venice, she was working as Hou's interpreter, coordinator and PR representative. She also worked with Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) on his Vive L'Amour (愛情萬歲), The River (河流) and The Hole (洞), which all won various awards at the Venice, Berlin and Cannes festivals.

Chiao has been a fixture at European film festivals over the past 10 years, shuttling back and forth and taking Taiwanese directors to visit festival chairpeople, judges, film critics and dealers.