The past year saw Taiwanese cinema broaden its horizons with record-breaking, big-budget genre flicks and a strong showing of auteurist potential.
The year’s highlight is Wei Te-sheng’s (魏德聖) Seediq Bale (賽德克.巴萊), a two-part, four-hour long action epic that centers on the little-known 1930 Wushe Incident (霧社事件), when tribal chief Mouna Rudo led warriors of the Seediq tribes in a violent uprising against their Japanese oppressors.
With a budget of US$25 million, Wei’s saga is the costliest Taiwanese production to date.
Though the end result is weighed down by second-rate CGI, the movie is a giant step forward for Taiwan’s filmmaking industry.
And for something completely different: You Are the Apple of My Eye (那些年,我們一起追的女孩), directed by best-selling writer Jiubadao (九把刀 or “Nine Knives”), tells a tale of puppy love based on a real-life romance that the author experienced in his youth, when he was known by his real name, Giddens Ko (柯景騰). The briskly paced blockbuster grossed more than NT$400 million at the box office in Taiwan and made its leads, Ko Chen-tung (柯震東) and Michelle Chen (陳妍希), immediate superstars.
Other box office hits include Lin Yu-hsien’s (林育賢) Jump Ashin! (翻滾吧!阿信), a motivational sports movie inspired by the life story of the director’s gymnast brother. Though the film’s narrative is uneven, Jump Ashin! is immensely entertaining and its leads, Eddie Peng (彭于晏) and Lawrence Ko (柯宇綸), turn in stellar performances.
Moving on to the year’s art house productions, director Lee Chi-yuarn (李啟源) strikes a fine balance between style and content in Blowfish (河豚), his newest romance movie. With scant dialogue, the film depicts a love story through acute feelings and nuanced emotions.
Other notable movies include prolific commercial and music-video director Chen Hung-i’s (陳宏一) second feature, Honey Pupu (消失打看), a meticulously crafted visual wonder filled with glittering imagery and enigmatic characters, and veteran commercial director Teng Yung-shing’s (鄧勇星) Return Ticket (到阜陽六百里), a slice-of-life tale of migrant workers living in Shanghai.
In the realm of documentaries, Hand in Hand (牽阮的手), by director couple Yen Lan-chuan (顏蘭權) and Juang Yi-tzeng (莊益增), threads together interviews, found footage, animation, archival records and manuscripts to bring to life the six-decade relationship between democracy activists Tien Meng-shu (田孟淑) and Tien Chao-ming (田朝明). The documentary is a must-see for anyone interested in the history of Taiwan’s democracy movement, and for people who don’t think it affects them.
Last, but not least, 10+10 boasts a list of creators that reads like a who’s who of Taiwanese cinema. This compilation of 20 short films is an ambitious joint effort by 10 established directors and 10 up-and-coming talents, each of whom contributed a five-minute work dealing with an issue that he or she thinks is unique to Taiwan. Participating directors include Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), Chung Mong-hong (鍾孟宏), Cheng Wen-tang (鄭文堂) and Cheng Yu-chieh (鄭有傑).
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your