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.
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