Taiwanese film fans were waiting anxiously yesterday morning to find out whether the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would award its directing prize to an Asian filmmaker for the first time in its 78-year history.
And the long wait paid off as Ang Lee (
At a press conference after the award, Lee said his accomplishment was the collective achievement of Chinese-language cinema.
He also said that it was essential for an artist to look to his or her cultural roots. Even though he usually directs English-language films, he said his vision and thinking has been, and always will be, in Chinese.
"Working on big-budget films in Hollywood gives me the freedom and resources to do anything I want, but I need to come back again and again to make Chinese-language movies for artistic rejuvenation," Lee said in a TV interview with Kevin Tsai (
Aside from winning an Oscar, the cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain also brought Lee top honors at the Venice International Film Festival, the Golden Globes, as well as from the Directors Guild of America, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards.
Lee's career, however, has not always been a smooth ride.
Born in Chaojhou Township (
When Lee discovered his true vocation for performing arts and cinema, he blossomed. With his family's support, Lee went on to earn a bachelor's degree in theater at the University of Illinois and an masters in film production at New York University.
Lee has often attributed his success to his wife and family, saying that he would not have become a filmmaker if it had not been for his wife Jane Lin's (
Lin, a microbiologist, supported the family in the US for six years while Lee stayed at home taking care of their children.
A close friend of Lee's, The Wedding Banquet screenwriter Neil Peng (馮光遠), said the artist has a tempo of his own and the six-year break gave Lee a chance to prepare himself for his directing career.
"During those six years, Lee never gave up his film dreams. He kept a huge movie database in his brain and would work on dozens of scripts at the same time," Peng said.
At the age of 37, Lee made his first acclaimed feature film Pushing Hands. The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) won applause from international film circles and brought him to Hollywood's attention.
Since then Lee has roamed freely among different genres, from costume romances like Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Ride With The Devil (1999) to The Ice Storm (1997) and science fiction flicks like the Hulk (2003). But it was his martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) that pushed him to the top of the ladder as a world-class filmmaker.
Lee has said that growing up in an authoritarian environment in Taiwan and living as an outsider in the US made him into a quiet person with low self-esteem. Filmmaking, he said, gave him the opportunity to achieve something that could be shared and appreciated by others.
Filmmaker Khan Lee (
He said the success of Brokeback lies in the fact that it is an honest film which offers a reflective look at social issues and our collective mentality, yet leaves space for the audience to think for itself.
Khan Lee told Taipei Times in a telephone interview that he believed that Brokeback Mountain deserved both the Best Director and Best Pictures awards and he thought that the former was a delayed concession from the Academy Awards.
He said the costume romance Sense and Sensibility and stark drama The Ice Storm should have earned his brother and his film crews their rightful recognition at the exclusive Academy.
Khan Lee also said that the top honors given by the Directors Guild of America for Brokeback Mountain means a lot more to his brother since it was a important recognition from his film peers and colleagues.
Years of hard work have earned Ang Lee international fame. But, perhaps, the ultimate validation came from his father, who, on his death bed, told his son to keep on doing what he loves without fear.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the