Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (
`"There is such glamor in movies ... there is tradition and there is future," Lee told a group of art workers and students in Taipei. ``People are exhilarated when they talk about movies. There is a cohesive force for the human heart."
Lee was making his first visit to his home island since his gay romance film Brokeback Mountain received four Academy Awards in March.
PHOTO: AP
Among them was Lee's prize for best director, the first time an Asian has won the honor.
Lee noted that Taiwan's free, democratic society offered fertile soil for a local film making renaissance -- particularly if the island could make good use of its substantial creative class.
"You have culture that has nourished your taste, and freedom that gives you creative thinking," he said. "There are many talents but they don't have people to guide them."
Taiwan's film industry, which won world acclaim in the 1980s for its realistic portrayal of island life, has since been undermined by fading viewer appeal and growing columns of red ink.
Over the past decade, annual movie production has stalled at around a dozen titles, and the box office market share for local films has remained at a minuscule 2 percent.
Directors and film workers have left the profession in droves, or moved abroad, disheartened by relentless competition from American movie offerings.
Lee said Taiwan is not the only place to fall victim to Hollywood films.
"Like volleyball and basketball, the West sets the rules and we have to go along," Lee said.
He said China's rich language and culture -- transplanted to Taiwan over the past 400 years -- offered native film makers a treasure trove of marketable cinematic material.
However, he said, a lack of savvy scriptwriters was crimping the development of the Taiwanese film industry.
"You can't keep people in the dark theater without a good plot and good stars," he said. "When I select a script, I have to make sure there are enough elements there to make a two-hour film."
For years, Lee said, he had wanted to make a film of a Chinese subject but couldn't get access to good scripts -- a sharp contrast to the scores of high quality English-language scripts he receives in the West.
He called on Taiwanese to begin training talented young people, in the expectation they would reap the benefits in five or 10 years.
"Don't put the focus on me or people of my generation, but on the young directors," he said.
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets. For example, KMT Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation’ ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.” Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that would limit semiconductor
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party’s acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.” The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
March 9 to March 15 “This land produced no horses,” Qing Dynasty envoy Yu Yung-ho (郁永河) observed when he visited Taiwan in 1697. He didn’t mean that there were no horses at all; it was just difficult to transport them across the sea and raise them in the hot and humid climate. “Although 10,000 soldiers were stationed here, the camps had fewer than 1,000 horses,” Yu added. Starting from the Dutch in the 1600s, each foreign regime brought horses to Taiwan. But they remained rare animals, typically only owned by the government or
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
RSS