"Taiwan is desperately lacking film producers!" said Peter Chan, Carrie Wong, and also Hunag Yu-shang (黃玉珊), a chairperson of the Kaohsiung Film Festival. This sentiment was prevalent at the Forum on Film Coproduction and International Promotion for Asian Films among those representatives of what passes for Taiwan's film industry.
"A producer is very important in the sense that he is the true person to bridge the dream world of the directors and the business world of the investors," said Peter Chan.
A big portion of the international forum was in fact an introductory session for local filmmakers to understand the work process for financing a coproduction, especially one with a budget bigger than US$10 million.
Philip Lee, associate producer of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is now line-producer for Zhang Yimou's (張藝謀) US$30 million film, Hero (英雄). He emphasized the importance of Completion Bond Companies, a form of coporation that can help projects such as Crouching Tiger get bank funding more easily.
Peter Anshin from Wincom Enterprise, the Asian representative of Comerica Entertainment Group, a financial organization specializing in the entertainment industry, was invited to explain the principle and basic requirements for the group to finance a film. The group had also expressed willingness and interest to provide banking services for Asian film projects.
But the reaction from local film busineses was a little cool. Only a few film distribution companies such as ERA group and Spring International had sent their delegates to the forum. Neither of these firms have put forward projects for investment.
At the moment, Peggy Chiao (焦雄屏), with her Arc Light, and Hsu Li-kong (徐立功), with his Zoom Hunt, are probably the only Taiwanese producers with an international reputation. The former successfully brought Beijing Bicycle (十七歲的單車) to Europe and the US market, where it was distributed by Pyramid and Sony respectively. Zoom Hunt was the producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
The fast withering domestic market for Taiwanese films is the result of the lack of film producers and investors in Taiwan. The market share of Chinese-language films in Taiwan was only 1.6 percent for the year 2001.
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