As any good entrepreneur will tell you, there is always an opportunity in any business downturn.
This is how the Asian motion picture business appears to be sizing up its prospects, a result of the economic storm that has swept through the world film industry over the last 18 months, hitting Hollywood particularly hard.
With signs of a strong domestic movie market driven by a homegrown product, the Asian movie business continues to grow in international stature spurred on by the digital revolution and Hollywood remakes of Asian film hits.
“Now we have the confidence to compete with Hollywood,” said Jennifer Jao (饒紫娟), director of the Taipei Film Commission.
“The popularity of US movies has declined,” said Kenta Fudesaka from Japan’s film industry group Unijapan. “Maybe we are waiting for a new
star like Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise
to emerge.”
The big batch of films from Asian directors that have been included in Cannes’ main lineup, including Taiwan-born Ang Lee’s (李安) homage to the 1969 US music festival Woodstock and Taiwan-based art house moviemaker Tsai Ming-liang’s (蔡明亮) film about making a movie about Salome, helped to underpin that confidence.
Also in the 20-movie race for the festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or award are Chinese director Lou Ye’s (婁燁) tale of desire in Spring Fever (春風沉醉的夜晚) and Filipino director Brillante Mendoza’s gangland story in Kinatay.
In addition there is legendary Hong Kong director Johnnie To’s (杜琪峰) revenge thriller Vengeance (復仇), that also helped to mark 100 years of Hong Kong cinema.
Buoyant national film markets and international film festival recognition means that large parts of the Asian movie business have managed to escape the fall-out from the current economic downturn, unlike Hollywood, which emerged from a major industrial showdown with scriptwriters only to be engulfed by the global financial crisis.
“It is a good chance for us,” Jao said, as Taiwan’s movie business slowly gains ground and the nation’s film companies have so far avoided making big job cuts.
In 2005, Taiwan-made films accounted for less than 2 percent of the national box office. But by last year their hold on the market had grown to more than 12 percent.
The same is true of Japan. Despite the global recession having sent the Japanese economy spiraling downward, the nation’s movie business still appears in relatively good shape.
A strong domestic box office, film festival success and a big move by Japanese television companies into movie production helped to underpin the Japanese movie industry.
“They want to make commercial films,” Fudesaka said.
One exception to the upbeat mood in the Asian cinema industry appears to be the Korean film sector, which is still battling to emerge from a crisis, which came in the wake of too many films being produced, ballooning movie budgets, piracy and illegal downloads combined with concerns about the falling quality of the nation’s movies.
In the meantime, the percentage of Korean movies in the Korean market slipped to 42.1 percent last year.
“It is still not in good shape,” said Han Sang-hee from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).
But progress is being made. About 113 movies were made last year compared to 124 in 2007.
Nevertheless, underscoring Korea’s emergence in recent years as a major new Asian movie powerhouse, the nation has a raft of films screening in this year’s Cannes.
The lineup includes veteran Korean director Park Chan-Wook, whose tale about a priest-turned-vampire, Breath, is in the race for the festival’s top honor, the Palme d’Or.
At the same time, the crisis has meant that low-budget independent moviemaking appears to have come to life in Korea with a documentary about an aging farmer’s relationship with his ox becoming a surprise hit.
To be sure, it can take just one film hit to give the national box office a big push. In Taiwan it was the success of Ang’s Lust, Caution (色，戒), which is set in 1930s Shanghai.
“Lust, Caution brought film back to Taiwan,” Jao said. This success was followed up by Cape Number 7 (海角七號) last year. A sentimental movie, Cape Number 7 scored a box-office record.
Taiwan is also keen to ensure that the potential of the vast Chinese-language film market encompassing China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore is fully realized.
“Co-productions could be another way to make people come back to the movies,” said Jao, as Taiwan plans to increase the number of co-productions with China to 10 a year.
In the meantime, a special Chinese-backed US$150 million fund to promote Chinese movies was announced in Cannes on Monday.
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
When Lisa, 20, laces into her ultra-high heels for her shift at a strip club in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, she knows that aside from dancing, she will have to comfort traumatized soldiers. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, exhausted troops are the main clientele of the Flash Dancers club in the center of the northeastern city, just 20 kilometers from Russian forces. For some customers, it provides an “escape” from the war, said Valerya Zavatska — a 25-year-old law graduate who runs the club with her mother, an ex-dancer. But many are not there just for the show. They “want to talk about what hurts,” she
It was just before 6am on a sunny November morning and I could hardly contain my excitement as I arrived at the wharf where I would catch the boat to one of Penghu’s most difficult-to-access islands, a trip that had been on my list for nearly a decade. Little did I know, my dream would soon be crushed. Unsure about which boat was heading to Huayu (花嶼), I found someone who appeared to be a local and asked if this was the right place to wait. “Oh, the boat to Huayu’s been canceled today,” she told me. I couldn’t believe my ears. Surely,
This is a deeply unsettling period in Taiwan. Uncertainties are everywhere while everyone waits for a small army of other shoes to drop on nearly every front. During challenging times, interesting political changes can happen, yet all three major political parties are beset with scandals, strife and self-inflicted wounds. As the ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is held accountable for not only the challenges to the party, but also the nation. Taiwan is geopolitically and economically under threat. Domestically, the administration is under siege by the opposition-controlled legislature and growing discontent with what opponents characterize as arrogant, autocratic
RSS