Filmmakers in Taiwan used to struggle when it came to telling a story that could resonate internationally. Things started to change when the 2017 drama series The Teenage Psychic (通靈少女), a collaboration between HBO Asia and Taiwanese Public Television Service (PTS), became a huge hit not just locally, but also internationally. The coming-of-age story was adapted from the 2013 PTS-produced short film The Busy Young Psychic (神算).
Entirely filmed in Taiwan, the Mandarin-language series even made it on HBO’s streaming platforms in the US.
It is proof that a well-told Taiwanese story can absolutely win the hearts and minds of hard-to-please international audiences in the ever-changing world of content consumption.
Early this year, another Taiwanese production, The Victims’ Game (誰是被害者), an eight-episode forensic crime thriller that is based on an award-winning 2015 Taiwanese novel, and stars some of Taiwan’s most prominent actors and actresses, has been one of the fastest-growing shows in audience demand on Netflix since its release in late April, being one of the most-streamed programs among major high-budget productions churned out by mega-hit powerhouses in the US, the UK and South Korea.
Despite the challenge of the global media-consumption landscape being ever-evolving and becoming extremely segmented, a smartly weaved and professionally executed story will always be in high demand.
With this newly gained confidence, and growing interest from local and international content investors, it is the perfect time for Taiwanese storytellers, working with scripted, but also non-scripted, stories, to proactively seek more international collaborations through coproduction and cofinancing.
As local, regional and international streaming platforms are offering international viewers more compelling stories from different countries and cultures, producers and directors in small-yet-sexy Taiwan are witnessing a rare golden opportunity to thrive beyond borders like never before.
Roger Cheng is a producer and director, and runs the content company Go Inside.
With its passing of Hong Kong’s new National Security Law, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to tighten its noose on Hong Kong. Gone is the broken 1997 promise that Hong Kong would have free, democratic elections by 2017. Gone also is any semblance that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plays the long game. All the CCP had to do was hold the fort until 2047, when the “one country, two systems” framework would end and Hong Kong would rejoin the “motherland.” It would be a “demonstration-free” event. Instead, with the seemingly benevolent velvet glove off, the CCP has revealed its true iron
At the end of last month, Paraguayan Ambassador to Taiwan Marcial Bobadilla Guillen told a group of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators that his president had decided to maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan, despite pressure from the Chinese government and local businesses who would like to see a switch to Beijing. This followed the Paraguayan Senate earlier this year voting against a proposal to establish ties with China in exchange for medical supplies. This constituted a double rebuke of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) diplomatic agenda in a six-month span from Taiwan’s only diplomatic ally in South America. Last year, Tuvalu rejected an
US President Donald Trump on Thursday issued executive orders barring Americans from conducting business with WeChat owner Tencent Holdings and ByteDance, the Beijing-based owner of popular video-sharing app TikTok. The orders are to take effect 45 days after they were signed, which is Sept. 20. The orders accuse WeChat of helping the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) review and remove content that it considers to be politically sensitive, and of using fabricated news to benefit itself. The White House has accused TikTok of collecting users’ information, location data and browsing histories, which could be used by the Chinese government, and pose
US President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday last week announced it would impose sanctions on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a vast paramilitary organization that is directly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and has been linked to human rights violations against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. The sanctions follow US travel bans against other Xinjiang officials and the passage of the US Hong Kong Autonomy Act, which authorizes targeted sanctions against mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials, in response to Beijing’s imposition of national security legislation on the territory. The sanctions against the corps would be implemented
RSS