Taiwan Movies

Like most of us, we are new to Taiwan movies, but the success story of Taiwan New Cinema constantly winning prizes in international film festivals should be attributed to not only the talent of the directors themselves, but also efforts of film critics such as Peggy Chiao, Huang Jianye, and Chen Guofu at the time. They deliberately orchestrated the structuring of the auteur discourse while establishing connections with international film critics. One of their efforts was to approach people such as Tony Ryans from England, Marco Muller from Italy, Satō Tadao from Japan, and the French director Olivier Assayas, the then film critic of Cahiers du cinema. 33 The first article on Taiwan New Cinema published in Cahiers was Olivier Assayas’s seven-page essay,  “Our Reporter on the Republic of China” (Notre reporter en République de Chine) in December 1984. In the article he compares the new generation of Taiwan directors to the French new wave. According to him, the new wave directors in Taiwan are much more independent and audacious than those in Hong Kong, where the new wave is already “passes.”35 He describes in detail his invitation by Chen Guofu to Taipei via Hong Kong, including the visit to the Central Motion Pictures Corporation and the marathon- screenings of the young New Cinema directors’ works in a small projection room for him, and his interviews with them later over a wonderful dinner at a “French restaurant with a Beverly Hills look.” He is very much aware that his star treatment is due to his identity as the representative of Cahiers du cinéma, the most prestigious film journal in Europe. He is quick to perceive that, abhorring Hollywood and Hong Kong. Even if new generation of directors taking good movies Taiwanese cinema is now facing difficult times competing with Hollywood blockbusters.  Box office for local films is dwindling to less than 20 films annually and many Taiwanese viewers prefer watching Hong Kong or Hollywood productions, making the country 39s film industry dominated by foreign repertoire. The once successful Taiwan film industry went into decline in 1994 and collapsed in 1997 because of spiralling levels of piracy. There have been a few bright spots though, as in the high box office takings of Cape No.7 (2008), which had become so popular in Taiwan that on November 1, 2008, became her highest grossing domestic film, second in the country 39s cinematic history to Titanic (1997). Another recent popular local film is the gangster flick Monga (2010). For me, in the future Taiwan movies are going to take the world by storm with their innovation ideas.