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Art house cinema is in a Spot of bother

By Ho Yi
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Jan 12, 2007, Page 13

Spot pulls in plenty of film lovers, but not much cash. PHOTOS COURTESY OF SPOT

On a recent breezy Saturday afternoon at the Spot – Taipei Film House (台北光點), film students and art house film lovers eagerly took notes as director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) discussed the works of his favorite French director Rober Bresson with film festival curator Wang Pai-chang (王派章). This discussion was part of a program featuring Bresson's oeuvre as the last installment of the 2006 POP Cinema (國民戲院), which finishes Jan. 21.

After the symposium, while the crowd watched the gray-haired Hou smoking from a distance, a few approached Wang and thanked him for presenting wonderful films over the last year.

Taiwan's foremost art house cinema venue, Spot began its POP Cinema programs around three years ago. Run by the Taiwan Film and Culture Association (台灣電影文化協會) of which Hou is the chairperson, the programs were originally put together by association staff, and it was not until two years ago that outside curators were enlisted for individual program.

Things took a turn for the better [though not necessarily in the box-office sense] when Wang stepped in last year. Veering away from the trouble-saving format that usually groups films by country or genre, Wang designed his programs around themes or points of view, seeking to create a more in-depth cinema experience.

Favorable reviews from the small band of art-house filmgoers inspired the association to recruit Wang as a regular curator. But this does not affect the underlying problems that have dogged the operation of the art-house cinema venue since its inception.

"It's the same old problems: no enough money, resources and time," Wang said.

Compared to the French art-house movie theaters, which are fully funded by the government, Spot has to apply for the NT$2 million fund for each program from the Council for Cultural Affairs (文建會), which reserves the right to reject any subsidy application.

Even with these irregular grants, the venue can barely cover the personnel expenses and sometimes costly screening fees, and has been forced to absorb financial losses itself.

What about box-office receipts? The problem is that as the cinema seats only 88, ticket revenues are necessarily limited, even when the film brings in a full house.

Apart from the money issue, Spot's gravest problem is to get the films they want. Unlike film festivals, which have easy access to items carried by local and foreign distributors, the curator of POP Cinema has to first locate the old, non-distributed works he or she wants and spend long time negotiating with sometimes more than one copyright holder for the screening rights of the selected film.

"Since we rarely screen new films, we are not tapped into the regular film distribution system. Many of our films are rented from film archives that only provide copies without dialogue transcripts, so we have to get the DVD version of the film and translate the subtitles from it," Wang said.

Lineups are further limited by time constraints as curators also get tied up with the programming and promotion campaigns, which, in a healthy art-house environment, shouldn't be part of their job description. "Say you want to do a program on Federico Fellini, then the reservations on his works need to be made one year ahead. In our case, it is out of the question," Wang said.

All the above-mentioned constrains may explain why none of the curators stay in the job for extended periods. Even Wang quietly wonders how far he can go. "I am sure that I want to do something different. But in a tiny corner of my brain, I can still hear the voice asking what if there is no one coming to see the films?" said Wang, adding that local film festival should be held responsible for this situation, as they do not aim cultivating art-house movie audiances.

The closure of Taipei's art-house movie theater President Cinema (總統戲院) and the temporary shutdown of the Majestic Theater (真善美戲院) in Ximending (西門町) last year sent frantic waves through local independent film distributors and art-house movie goers worrying that there would be no space left for non-Hollywood cinema. But in the eyes of veteran art-house theater manager Monica Hsu (徐金珠), the problem is not so much about the lack of screening spaces as it is about the increasing numbers of independent film distributors cramming the small market. And the market is only expanding at a painfully slow pace.

Hsu, who is the manager of the Marketing and Sales Department of Central Pictures (中影) and is in charge of the programming at the Majestic Theater and Spring Cinema Galaxy (絕色影城), which screen independent films, shares a similar view to Wang. She said the number of art-house moviegoers hasn't enjoyed significant growth over the years and as a result, theater venues like Spring Cinema Galaxy have to screen commercial films to make up losses incurred on non-mainstream films.

"But as more and more independent film distributors come into the market in recent years, box-office receipts are diluted among them and things appear worse than it actually is," Hsu said.

POP Cinema's Robert Bresson, Hereafter (羅伯布列松．然後) at Spot finishes today and moves to the Kaohsiung Film Archive (高雄市電影圖書館). Screenings begin Tuesday and end on Jan. 21. For more information, visit www.spot.org.tw.
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