World Premiere | Out Of Competition
Guest Stars:
CHIU Fu-sheng, main character
Liu Yi, director
Taiwanese real estate tycoon Chiu Fu-sheng was on a business trip in the South of France, where he attended the Cannes Film Festival. This was in 1988. He wondered why Taiwanese films were not featured at international awards shows. He found that Taiwanese filmmaking lacked several widely used technologies and techniques, such as synchronous recording, optical printing, and layered audio. This became the spark in his mission to elevate Taiwan cinema, as he soon became a prevalent and crucial producer of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s many iconic films – City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster, just to name a few. He would also cross over to Mainland China, working with Zhang Yimou with Raise the Red Lantern and To Live, just to name a few.
He became a key promoter of Chinese-language films on the world stage, and a savvy media tycoon – he founded the Taiwanese media groups TVBS and ERA Television.
Traveling and working between the Mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, he helped the worldwide channel of CCTV launch in Taiwan for the first time, and single-handedly organized the Forbidden City Performance by the Three Tenors to promote Beijing’s bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games. He also launched Lo Ta-yu’s first album Zhi Hu Zhe Ye as producer.
Chiu’s life and works pass through tumultuous times: the Vietnam War, Taiwan’s Chiang Ching-kuo era, Mainland China’s reform and opening up, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Handover of Hong Kong, the Beijing Olympics, and the age of the Internet.
His personal history highly coincides with these historical transitions, and each of his ventures has a strong imprint of the times.
A larger process of rapid transformation is reflected in his work – from a rigid and conservative cultural environment to an increasingly open world of diverging narratives.
The most representative works to show this trend can be found in the emotionally powerful media of music and films. Chiu, who studied music, relies on his talent and strong business acumen to survive the dramatic changes of the times. This film shows the tycoon’s character traits, his feelings for his family and country, business strategies, and his political ambitions.