The film may be upbeat in tone, but the prospect of it reaching a great number of audiences is not. Despite the favorable reviews the film has received after it premiered at the Taipei Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival (台北金馬奇幻影展) last month, only two movie theaters, Spot — Taipei Film House (台北光點) and Vie Show Cinemas Xinyi (信義威秀影城), have agreed to show Pinoy Sunday. Most movie theaters hung back when they heard the story is about OFWs, and staff at one theater went so far as to say they didn’t want foreign migrant workers hanging around in front of the theater, according to Ho.
Moreover, the dominant Filipino language spoken by the leading characters also made the film, a recipient of the government’s Subsidy For Film Production (電影輔導金), run into trouble with the Government Information Office (GIO, 新聞局), which issues the money. Because one of the subsidy’s rules states that Chinese dialects should be the dominant languages spoken in government-funded films, an additional copy of the film was dubbed in Taiwanese, and several commercial screenings of it are required.
“I think it comes down to whether the GIO wants to encourage creativity or bureaucracy. We’d like to discuss with the [GIO] how to make the regulations more flexible for movies about new immigrants,” Ho said.
Foreign migrant workers with ID cards can buy movie tickets at a discount price of NT$150. Visit pinoysunday.pixnet.net/blog/post/6207639 to find out which six theaters are screening Pinoy Sunday in Taipei, Jhongli (中壢), Tainan, Douliu (斗六) and Kaohsiung.
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