Look closely at the winners of this year's Golden Horse awards and despite a "Chinese" appearance, they are a long way from being pure local product. As the Chinese-language film market in Taiwan and Honk Kong has continued to shrink over the past 10 years, filmmakers from the region cannot but seek international funding to make their films.
The involvement of multinational firms has given these Chinese-language productions a greater presence in the international film market. It has also tended to make the films hybrid productions. So despite the high quality of the films in this year's lineup, the winners reflect a worrying trend in the local film industry -- namely that locals have increasingly little control over supposedly "local" films.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF NEW ACTION ENTERTAINMENT
Take Ang Lee's (李安) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) for example. The US$15 million film is a co-production of Columbia Tristar Asia, its Taiwan's Zoom Hunt International (縱橫國際) and Good Machine. The film itself includes outstanding actors from Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, was shot in China with the cooperation of the Beijing Film Studio (北京電影制片廠), and its action sequences were choreographed by Hong Kong kungfu expert Yuan Wo-ping (袁和平). And finally, the film was given its sophisticated polish by Hollywood's computer graphics professionals. Most importantly for the film's success, Columbia Tristar's international promotional and distribution muscle made the film available to many people who might not otherwise watch a "Chinese" film.
PHOTO: TANG CHUNG-YIN, LIBERTY TIMES
Ann Hu's (胡安) Shadow Magic (西洋鏡) is another multinational production. It is funded and produced by four parties: Hu's own CNA Production, Road Movies Production based in Germany, Beijing Film Studio, and interestingly, Taiwan KMT's party enterprise, the Central Motion Picture Corporation (中央電影公司). The film's production reflects its story -- East meets West.
Even the seemingly pure Hong Kong movie In The Mood For Love (花樣年華) is also a hybrid. In The Mood was produced by Wong Kar-wai's (王家衛) Block 2 Production Company (澤東電影公司) with funds from Japan and Korea. Despite the acclaim and the awards, the film's box office record has not been as satisfactory -- just HK$7 million so far in Hong Kong. His work has done rather better in the larger markets of Korea, Japan and in Europe.
PHOTO: SHENG CHAO-LIANG, LIBERTY TIMES
It is believed that his next work 2046 will adopt the same funding pattern.
PHOTO: TAI LI-AN, LIBERTY TIMES
With the establishment of the Asian center for Columbia Tristar in Hong Kong early this year, some people obviously think that multinational funding for Chinese-language movies is the way of the future. In fact, Crouching Tiger is just one of Columbia Asia's investment in Asia for 2000. Another is Hong Kong director Tsui Hark's (徐克) Time and Tide, (順流逆流) and Columbia Asia is already committed to funding a film project by Taiwanese duo Chen Kuo-fu (陳國富) and Su Chao-pin (蘇照彬) next year.
Other Taiwanese directors are seeking funding elsewhere. Edward Yang's (楊德昌) Cannes award winner A One and A Two (一一) was funded by Japan's Polycanyon, and Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮), director of The River (河流) and The Hole (洞), winners at Berlin and Cannes, will have his new film funded by French distributors.
International budgets facilitate the recruitment of talent from across the Chinese-language world -- something that would have been impossible before. And Hollywood's powerful promotional machine is a guarantee for international publicity. But the strength of these outside agents only highlights the parlous situation of the local film industry, which local businesses seem unwilling to invest in.
In Taiwan, Central Motion Picture Corporation and Zoom Hunt International are probably the only two firms likely to continue their financial commitment to local films. But their relatively small size, (compared to the Hollywood studios) and limited promotion budget, mean that many more Taiwanese films are likely to be hybrids like Crouching Tiger. Purely local films, such as Chen Yi-wen (陳以文) and Chang Hua-kun's (張華坤) The Cabbie (運轉手之戀), haven't the promotional punch to survive for more than a few days in major cinemas, with predictably poor box office performance.
A new award category -- the Jury Prize -- has been established at the Golden Horse to encourage local filmmakers with a prize of NT$500,000. The need for such a move -- a kind of consolation prize for local films which simply cannot cut it in the major award categories -- is an embarrassing reflection of Taiwan's filmmaking environment.
With so much filmmaking talent around in the Chinese cinema, audiences can expect many more great films at future Gold Horse awards. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that many will be "made in Taiwan."
Feces, vomit and fossilized food from inside stomachs have provided new clues into how dinosaurs rose to dominate Earth, a new study revealed on Wednesday. Scientists have discovered plenty about dinosaurs — particularly about how they vanished off the face of the planet 66 millions years ago. But “we know very little about their rise,” said Martin Qvarnstrom, a researcher at Sweden’s Uppsala University and the study’s lead author. Dinosaurs first appeared at least 230 million years ago, fossils have shown. But they would not become the world’s dominant animal until the start of the Jurassic Period some 30 million years later. What caused this
Last week, the government rejected a petition to amend the law that would allow permanent residents a path to citizenship. This was widely expected, but it came amid a flurry of negative trends about the future of the nation’s labor force. There was much ironic commentary on the juxtaposition of that decision with its idiotic, abusive reasoning with the urgent demand for labor across a wide range of fields. This demand was highlighted by the government’s plans for five NT$10 billion (US$307.6 million) funds to promote development in key fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), “smart” healthcare and green growth announced
The Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道) draws its name from the idea that each hiker starting at the summit of Jade Mountain (玉山) and following the trail to the coast is like a single raindrop. Together, many raindrops form life and prosperity-bringing waterways. Replicating a raindrop’s journey holds poetic beauty, but all hikers know that climbing is infinitely more appealing, and so this installment picks up where the last one left off — heading inland and uphill along the 49.8-kilometer Canal Trail (大圳之路) — second of the Greenway’s four sections. A detailed map of the trail can be found
“Bro, I can’t wait for my first dead body,” wrote an 11-year-old boy on Instagram in Sweden, where gangs recruit children too young to be prosecuted as contract killers on chat apps. “Stay motivated, it’ll come,” answered his 19-year-old contact. He went on to offer the child 150,000 kronor (US$13,680) to carry out a murder, as well as clothes and transport to the scene of the crime, according to a police investigation of the exchange last year in the western province of Varmland. In this case, four men aged 18 to 20 are accused of recruiting four minors aged 11 to 17
RSS