Taiwan's film industry should start all over again, Hong Kong producer and president of the Federation of Hong Kong Film Workers Ng See-yuen (
The three-day conference was packed with local and international film professionals, as well as enthusiastic film students and movie fans. Together, they discussed the all-too familiar topic of how to save the Taiwanese film industry.
This time around, the country's young generation of filmmakers seemed to agree with Ng.
"Taiwan has too many film directors. But we don't have enough scriptwriters," said filmmaker Su Choa-pin (
It took Su and his team two years to write the text for Double Vision, all the while sending the script back and forth to various Hollywood producers and writers. It was the first Taiwanese movie made under the Hollywood working model, co-produced with Columbia Asia. "It was hard work, but very rewarding for me," said Su.
"In the past we always wrote our own scripts and made director's movies. But maybe it's time for a change," said Cheng Wen-tang (
Both Su and Cheng said this was a different approach to movie-making, a path distinct from predecessors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien (
As further proof of this theory, there are no Taiwanese films selected for the recently announced line-up at this year's Cannes Film Festival. South Korea and Thailand, however, are well represented. Two Korean films Hong San-soo's Woman is the Future of Man and Park Chan-wook's Old Boy have been selected for the competition section. A Thai film, Apichatpong Weerasethaku's Tropical Malady has been selected for the first time.
Hou Hsiao-Hsien has finished his latest work Coffee Time (
Discarding the tradition of looking at the world with a humanistic perspective, younger generation filmmakers are now moving toward a more innocent and less intellectual way of making films, concentrating on pure entertainment and marketable movies.
Formula 17 (
Fortunately for Yeh, the gay romantic comedy became one of the few local movies that made a profit in the past five years. The budget of the movie was just NT$4 million but it grossed NT$5 million at the box office, a small sales figure, but enough to make it the No.1 movie in terms of ticket sales this year.
This was a boost not only for Three Dots Entertainment, set up by a group of 30-somethings, but also for 23 year-old first-time director Chen Ying-jung (
Using pretty TV actors is another trend for the younger
generation of filmmakers. Alice Wang (
"My idea was to bring Taiwanese actors to mainland China and Hong Kong. A star is not born by appearing in just one film. You have to keep making movies to make them remembered by a wider audience," she said.
Wang's Karate Girls (
The film, co-produced with Bona Films in Beijing, was made with the Chinese market in mind. Thus, Wang was able to quickly raise funds for her next film, West Town Girls (
"For a long time, Taiwanese filmmakers have forgotten the basic social function of going to movies: that is to go to movies with your date, your family and friends," said Wold Chen (陳鴻元), CEO of Mata Entertainment. "Now, we are happy to see a younger generation going in a different direction," he said at the conference.
The latest military exercises conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last week did not follow the standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formula. The US and Taiwan also had different explanations for the war games. Previously the CCP would plan out their large-scale military exercises and wait for an opportunity to dupe the gullible into pinning the blame on someone else for “provoking” Beijing, the most famous being former house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Those military exercises could not possibly have been organized in the short lead time that it was known she was coming.
From an anonymous office in a New Delhi mall, matrimonial detective Bhavna Paliwal runs the rule over prospective husbands and wives — a booming industry in India, where younger generations are increasingly choosing love matches over arranged marriage. The tradition of partners being carefully selected by the two families remains hugely popular, but in a country where social customs are changing rapidly, more and more couples are making their own matches. So for some families, the first step when young lovers want to get married is not to call a priest or party planner but a sleuth like Paliwal with high-tech spy
When Portugal returned its colony Macao to China in 1999, coffee shop owner Daniel Chao was a first grader living in a different world. Since then his sleepy hometown has transformed into a bustling gaming hub lined with glittering casinos. Its once quiet streets are now jammed with tourist buses. But the growing wealth of the city dubbed the “Las Vegas of the East” has not brought qualities of sustainable development such as economic diversity and high civic participation. “What was once a relaxed, free place in my childhood has become a place that is crowded and highly commercialized,” said Chao. Macao yesterday
The world has been getting hotter for decades but a sudden and extraordinary surge in heat has sent the climate deeper into uncharted territory — and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Over the past two years, temperature records have been repeatedly shattered by a streak so persistent and puzzling it has tested the best-available scientific predictions about how the climate functions. Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming, and that natural climate variability can also influence temperatures one year to the next. But they are still debating what might have contributed to this
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