LT: What did you do behind the scenes? How did you persuade the city government?
Cheng: From the very beginning, I insisted on approaching the issue from the artist’s perspective. I refused to engage in any protests, and even if every single reporter was trying to get hold of me, I refused to choose the option to put everything on the table. If I also started to run around holding placards or hanging banners, I would at most get a two-page spread in the newspapers, but I would also get caught up in the old Taiwanese political protest culture, and that would not help things.
I chose to ask my friends for help, because the whole issue involved freedom of speech and freedom of creativity. Once a work has been published, others cannot do anything with it, just as you can’t take a piece of art that an artist has painted red and paint it another color, or delete an article published by someone else. This is the universal human right to creativity.
LT: Was the persistence of the Australians of any help to you?
Cheng: The team that made 10 Conditions is very friendly and understand the pressure we’re under. They kept reassuring us and saying we should not let this hurt us, but their ideals were very clear. They didn’t oppose a political party wanting to intervene and show the film across all Taiwan, but they insisted that it must be shown at the film festival, because the invitation from the Kaohsiung Film Festival is the main reason 10 Conditions can be seen in Taiwan at all. The number of screenings can be expanded and it can be shown anywhere on the premise that it is shown at the film festival. If it is, everything else is negotiable. Their insistence is interesting and helpful. If they give up, there’s nothing I can do.
LT: Has this incident aroused your creative desires?
Cheng: I have already started on a documentary about the film festival. I want to explore the question of how the cultural and movie circles approached this issue over the past 10 days. Was there something they thought they should have done? I want to know why Chen Li-kuei (陳麗貴), director of The Burning Mission: Rescue of Political Prisoners in Taiwan (火線任務 — 台灣政治犯救援錄), and Chen Yu-ching (陳育青), director of My Human Rights Journey (我的人權之旅), were the only two directors to withdraw their films from the festival to express their anger over political interference with the festival’s independence.
I don’t want to criticize, I just want to explore why this happened, and what everyone is thinking.
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