Although year-on-year Taipei box office numbers fell more than 5% in 2008, the box office for Taiwan films was significantly up. The key reason was the miraculous success of local ensemble comedy, modern romance and historical drama Cape No. 7. This scored the highest box office for a local film in recent decades, only bettered by James Cameron’s still unsinkable Titanic. And the success of Cape also helped other films attain box office glory as audiences returned to local cinema, at least momentarily.
Excluding documentaries, there were 20 local narrative feature films released in Taiwan in 2008 out of a total of 369 releases. Their gross box office was US$8.7m, representing a market share of 12%. In a parallel universe in which Cape was never released and had no impact on other releases, the box office of local films would have still have grossed a relatively up-beat 3%. The general quality of local features was also up, particularly in the field of art house cinema, where directors showed signs of telling less introspective stories.
One of the key trends was the invasion of Hong Kong producers, attracted by the wealth of underused talent in Taiwan and the potential access to government subsidies to offset risk. The trend had begun in 2007 with Sundream Picture’s 25% investment in Cheng Wen-tang’s youth ennui drama Summer’s Tail. In 2008, Mei Ah Entertainment invested in youth drama Winds Of September and gangster thriller The Button Man, Wong Kar-wai’s Jet Tone Films co-invested in Miao Miao and Filmko Picture’s produced romantic omnibus L-O-V-E.
Tom Lin’s Winds Of September is probably the most successful of the group so far. It had a combination of critical and box office success with competitive screenings at festivals in Shanghai, China, and Thessaloniki, Greece. The film reaches for a greater landscape with a story of teenagers growing up against the backdrop of a baseball scandal in the 1980s. That, for the director, marked the end of innocence for a generation. Mei Ah were inspired to produced Hong Kong and Chinese episodes with new filmmakers.
What’s interesting about these investments is that they are primarily films entrusted to first-time directors, particularly at a time when the opportunities for debut directors in Hong Kong itself are limited. Hong Kong producers that have come to Taiwan have been willing to sacrifice box office for art house prestige with more festival-friendly fare. However, recent films Button Man and L-O-V-E represent attempts at box office-friendly films that may represent a shift in the direction of the collaboration.
In Taiwan it can sometimes be difficult to define a debut film. Recipients of government short film subsidies routinely edit their films into feature-length versions, partly to make them more attractive to foreign film festivals. Wei Te-sheng’s first film, About July, was made on a short film subsidy and extended to a 72-minute cut that was never theatrically released in Taiwan. Other extended shorts that had impact on the festival circuit include Leste Chen’s Uninhibited, Singing Chen’s Bundled and Zero Chou’s Splendid Float.
Nevertheless, however you do the math, half of the films released in Taiwan last year were by first-time feature film directors. It’s a trend that is continuing into 2009 as five of the eight films due for release in the first four months of this year are by newcomers. In addition, several award-winning short filmmakers are preparing their own feature debuts, including Ho Weiding, director of Respire and A Sunday Afternoon, Chang Rong-ji, director of The End Of The Tunnel, and Arvin Chen, director of Berlin Silver Bear-winning short Mei.
Ho Weiding’s upcoming Pinoy Sunday is representative of another new trend: films that focus on South East Asian themes. Black comedy Sunday is headlined by Filipinos; horror The Fatality features a seriously ill, ethnically Chinese man in Taipei who wakes up in the body of a Thai man in Bangkok with health, wealth and a beautiful wife; Rich Lee’s Detours To Paradise, the opening film at this month’s Singapore International Film Festival, is a Taiwan-set love story between an Indonesian maid and a Thai labourer.
Signifying that these films represent a new, more respectful approach to South East Asia, they’ve cast name actors in their leading roles. Sunday has Filipino superstar Vhong Navarro, best known in Udine for his roles in superhero film Gagamboy and romantic comedy Mr Suave. The Fatality features actress Pitchanart Sakhakorn, star of The Victim and Pattaya Maniac. Meanwhile, Indonesian actress Adinia Wirasti, star of Riri Riza’s road movie Three Days To Forever, has just performed in Amber Wen’s short film Sleeping With Her.
A game-changing trend in 2008 was the increased support of Hollywood majors in distributing Taiwan films. The majors take no financial risks, take a (low) double-digit percentage of the gross and are rarely involved in the actual marketing of the films. But their power ensures that they can secure more cinema screens for more days with a greater percentage share of box office profits for the films’ producers. As a bonus, theatres will settle their accounts more promptly with the majors for fear of losing future Hollywood product.
Of the four Taiwan films that broke the psychological milestone of NT$10m (US$288,000) at the Taipei box office in 2008, three were booked by the majors: Buena Vista with Cape No. 7 (US$6.6m), Twentieth Century Fox with historical drama 1895 In Formosa (US$375,000) and Warner Bros with youth drama ORZ Boyz (US$480,000). The fourth film, Kung Fu Dunk (US$450,000), starring local superstar Jay Chou and was distributed by industry veteran Scholar Films who operate their own chain of thirty theater screens in Taiwan.
But 2008 really belonged to maverick local directors who took huge personal financial risks to bring their visions to the screen. Most famously, Wei Te-sheng mortgaged his own house and took out a government-backed loan to produce Cape No. 7. But the debut directors of lesbian omnibus Candy Rain, Chen Hung-yi, and black comedy Parking, Chung Meng-hung, also risked equivalent sums of their own savings. Of the three, only Cape secured its investment back, by means of successful distribution in other Chinese-speaking territories.
It wasn’t the first time that Wei had emptied his bank account for his cinematic ambition. In 2003, he produced a five-minute short film about an aborigine uprising in the 1930s, during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, entitled Seediq Bale. Its purpose was to find investors to support this epic vision from an unproven director that demanded real aborigines in the leading roles. With the success of Cape, Seediq Bale has now secured at least US$2.4m in seed money from the Taiwan government towards an estimated US$10m budget.
The two highest profile new actresses in 2008 were Japanese Tanaka Chie and half-French Sandrine Pinna. Tanaka had previously appeared in minor roles in a series of Hong Kong films including Initial D, Spring Snow, and Moonlight In Tokyo. She has claimed it was Jay Chou who encouraged her to come to Taiwan where she learnt Mandarin and secured the leading actress role in Cape No. 7. Pinna has been acting in Taiwan films since 2000, but came to prominence in 2008 with roles in Miao Miao, Candy Rain and award-winning short The End Of The Tunnel.
Both Tanaka and Pinna have new movies in 2009 that play with the borders of fiction through the use of films-within-films in which both actresses play variations of themselves. In Yang Yang, Pinna, whose Chinese name is Chang Yung-yung, plays an aspiring Eurasian actress called Chang Ching-yang who can speak no French. Tanaka’s Sumimasen, Love features the love story of a Chinese-speaking Japanese actress with an unusual career in Taiwan. Yang Yang premiered at the Berlin Film Festival while Sumimasen went straight to theaters in January.
Another Japanese actress making her Taiwan feature film debut is adult video star Ozawa Maria in violent slasher horror Invitation Only. Like most of his generation, 25-year-old director Kevin Ko grew up on Hollywood cinema, a fact reflected in his cinematic style. While the film has no direct influences from Taiwan cinema, it does have precedents in the local exploitation cinema known as “Black Movies” that enjoyed a brief existence in the late 1970s and early 1980s, just before the director was born. The film opens in Taiwan in mid-April.
On the larger landscape, the big news of 2008 was the return of the Kuomintang government to political power. The Kuomintang was founded in China in 1912 where it ruled from 1928 until 1949 when the Communists took control. It then fled to Taiwan where it ruled for five decades until 2000. Their election victory has resulted in closer ties to mainland China including the opening of direct air travel. While Taiwan directors and actors could already work in China, now possibilities are opening up for Chinese directors and stars to work in Taiwan.
The first Chinese film to shoot in Taiwan was Huo Jianqi’s Snow Falling In Taipei. Shot in December when the government regulations were still being formed, the romance features a predominantly Taiwan cast in the love story between a young female Chinese singer and the young man that she meets in Taipei. Huo is a familiar face in Udine having attended FEFF with his noir A Love Of Blueness in 2002.
It’s not clear yet what 2009 holds for Taiwan cinema. The history of Taiwan film over recent decades is one of boom and bust: brief spurts of optimism and potential that have rarely seen fruition. Nevertheless, the success of Cape No. 7, however miraculous, has proven that local audiences are willing to watch local films when the conditions are right. Even if the heights of Cape No. 7’s success aren’t repeated in 2009, it will have likely helped local films find new investors and give them greater access to local cinema screens.
Stephen Cremin