Who are young Taiwanese filmmakers and what movies do they want to make? These are the kinds of questions Jerome Baron had in mind when he brought Producing in the South (Produire au Sud) to Taipei last month, along with a group of film professionals, mostly from France and Taiwan. The intensive, four-day workshop offers young directors and producers tools and techniques needed for international co-productions through coaching individual projects under development.
Baron and Guillaume Mainguet, head of the Producing in the South workshop, say there has been a noticeable absence of Taiwanese cinema from the international film festivals in recent years.
“We talk about Taiwanese projects but we don’t see them... The workshop is kind of a spark, just to say: ‘there is a place for you, but you have to be there and take it,’” Mainguet says.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Film Festival
“We miss you,” adds Baron.
FRENCH LIASON
Producing in the South is a workshop that was created in 2000 as part of the Three Continents Festival, an annual film festival in Nantes, France, which showcases films from Africa, Latin America and Asia since its inception in 1979. Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), Abbas Kiarostami and Jia Zhangke (賈樟柯) are among those who have gained international recognition through the festival.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
The lineup of instructors includes a variety of international professionals, ranging from script consultants and pitch experts to producers and distributors.
This year, the workshop partnered with the Taipei Film Festival (TFF, 台北電影節). Participants include established director Chen Hung-i (陳宏一) and new talent Lau Kek Huat (廖克發).
Six director-producer teams were selected to work through a series of consulting sessions and at the end given the opportunity to pitch a film project conducted in English.
TAIWANESE CINEMA MISSING
Kuo Ming-jung (郭敏容), program director of TFF, sees the workshops as a way to rekindle interest in arthouse cinema in Taiwan’s film industry.
“Most Taiwanese films today are either comedies aimed at the local market or Taiwan-China co-productions. It’s been a long time since we’ve had films that reflect how we live, think and feel. Everything is about genre cinema. But while we are still learning to make good genre movies, we’ve stopped telling stories about the human condition,” Kuo says.
Production-wise, one of the main purposes of the workshop is to find alternative ways to make and produce films.
“It means to co-produce with someone not from China and be able to look at other countries from different regions,” Mainguet says.
Taiwanese filmmakers are curious to know what European producers are looking for in international co-productions.
In Baron’s opinion, the only way for Taiwanese filmmakers to find European co-producers is through artistic projects because European markets are already saturated with locally-made commercial movies and American blockbusters. There is virtually no space for commercial cinema made outside the regions “unless they have exceptional qualities or become a genuine public phenomena.”
For the entire European market, such exceptions account for no more than five films a year, Baron says.
“To take a concrete example, neither Cape No. 7 (海角七號) nor Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (賽德克.巴萊), both singular films by Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖), were commercially released in France. And France is by far the most available market to accommodate non-European or US commercial films,” he says.
Moreover, European producers are always on the lookout for projects with a unique vision and artistic ambition. Artistic works, when well-produced, have a better prospect on the international stage than a big-budget commercial movies, which need large box office returns to be profitable.
“We are certain that the history of Taiwanese cinema ... is attractive and reassuring to many European producers,” Baron says.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRODUCER
At the workshop, participants and instructors also tackle the differences in how films are made in different countries.
In France, for example, the role of a producer is equally as important as the director, if not more so. The producer is tasked with realizing the vision he or she shares with the director, asking precise questions and forming strategies in terms of international funding and marketing.
Producers in Taiwan, however, are typically reduced to a financial or executive role.
“Most [participants initially] thought that the producer follows the director. But it is quite the opposite... For international co-productions, they need a person who knows exactly what he or she is talking about,” Mainguet says.
BUILDING NETWORKS
Even though Producing in the South is a French institution, organizers see it as global in scope, building networks in different regions.
Taiwan, for example, should be proactively networking with South Korea, Japan and Southeast Asian nations.
“We encourage them [the filmmakers] to get out of Taiwan, reach out to people and organize. It is impossible to work via e-mail. You need to meet people,” Mainguet says.
For her first feature-film project Raining Roses (緋雨的季節), Rina Tsou (鄒隆娜), the youngest participant, teamed up with Filipino producer Joseph Israel Laban to tell a coming-of-age story about a Taiwanese college student and a young Filipina. Half Taiwanese and half Filipino, the filmmaker says that it is important to raise her voice and perspective as a member of the second generation of Southeast Asian immigrants in Taiwan.
“I feel I need to start telling stories related to my background and experiences... It is a new voice. It has yet to make it to the mainstream, but it will,” Tsou says.
Director Hsu Chao-jen (許肇任), who was selected at the workshop for his project Memories of Chung-hu Hoe (青丘會的回憶), which is set in South Korea, the market is not limited to Taiwan and China, but other Asian countries and possibly Europe.
“While Taiwanese cinema has retained a certain appeal and ability to compete internationally, we are less known because we have been absent from the scene for a while. That is all the more reason for reaching out,” Hsu says.
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