It was at the film set of Lin Cheng-sheng's (
"Of course it's a hard environment for us. There are scarce opportunities," said Chen, the leading actress and lonely woman who wandered Paris in Tsai Ming-liang's (
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
An actress for more than 10 years, Chen has only appeared in seven movies. The small number of opportunities is one reason -- consider that Taiwan produced only 16 films last year -- but Chen also has personal reasons for having limited her screen roles. She was away from the business for three years studying theater performance in New York and now teaches acting at Taiwan Arts University, as well.
"We have never felt much of the pain in the whole process, perhaps because we've never tasted the sweetness, either. For us, the hardship is always normal," said Dai, who plays Chen's onscreen boyfriend and was her real-life classmate at the college where she now teaches.
For a year in which he had no acting opportunities, Dai hosted at a call-in show on a cable channel.
But he hasn't had to worry about a lack of opportunities lately. Dai has averaged three film contracts a year for the past three years, making him one of the highest-profile actors in Taiwan. He appeared as a gang member in Lin's Betelnut Beauty (
"My screen time and screen exposure have exceeded the amount for big movie stars in the 1970s, a prosperous era for Taiwan's film industry," said Dai.
"Does Taiwan not have any movie stars?" I ask them. When we discuss the question, Dai seems a little more agitated than Chen.
In the late 1980s, a group of directors presented a new film language to voice Taiwan's social reality, a wave now called New Taiwan Cinema (
"The directors at that time figured highly and it became the trend. So the spotlight [continues] to shine on the directors, not the actors. They are more like the stars. ... To establish a screen image for Taiwanese audiences is something I've been trying to achieve," Dai said. "I work hard and I'm responsible for every role I take," he said.
Lacking stardom is a symptom of Taiwan's barely surviving movie industry. Dai lights a cigarette and explains why.
"In Hollywood, the marketing and publicity arms of a [production company] will do everything they can to publicize the actors' faces. But here, nobody is spending money to promote us," he said.
"Marketing in Taiwan's film industry is so weak that the promotional budget for a local film is far less than that of a pop music album," Dai said. The industry struggles to brighten the star of even an actor with three contracts a year, let alone less exposed actors.
But there is always hope and passion, at least in Lin's newest project. Dai will play Robinson, a real-estate salesman who is surrounded by several women and the troubles of his loathsome job. "It will be a love story with modern feelings," said Lin.
Stardom for Chen is an old concept. "We cannot go back to the glory days of the 1970s, why not try something new?" she said after finishing her make-up. Chen has been accompanying Tsai on his nation-wide lecture tour of college campuses for the film What Time Is It There?. Using this new means of promotion, the film has garnered nearly NT$2 million at the box office.
"There will always be a huge gap between us and Hollywood. We don't have to chase them. We should be walking our own roads. It may be hard, but we should try as we can," said Chen.
Dai agreed. "Hollywood is not the only standard. We [referring to himself and Chen] joined this business at a time when we already knew about the weakened environment. Nobody forced us. I have this working philosophy that as long as I'm happy with what I do, I will continue. In this is business, you shouldn't struggle with reluctance and complaints, because you can always leave," he said.
And for now the two actors are happy with what they do.
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
The March/April volume of Foreign Affairs, long a purveyor of pro-China pablum, offered up another irksome Beijing-speak on the issues and solutions for the problems vexing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US: “America and China at the Edge of Ruin: A Last Chance to Step Back From the Brink” rang the provocative title, by David M. Lampton and Wang Jisi (王緝思). If one ever wants to describe what went wrong with US-PRC relations, the career of Wang Jisi is a good place to start. Wang has extensive experience in the US and the West. He was a visiting
One of the challenges with the sheer availability of food in today’s world is that lots of us end up spending many of our waking hours eating. Whether it’s full meals, snacks or desserts, scientists have found that it’s not uncommon for us to be mindlessly grazing at some point during all of our 16 or so waking hours. The problem? As soon as this food hits the bloodstream in the form of glucose, it initiates the release of the hormone insulin. This in turn activates a switch present in every one of our cells, which is responsible for driving cell
RSS