All in mourning, over this man, who’d contributed so much to the land of Taiwan here, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
The accidental death of the documentary series “Seeing Taiwan” director, Po-Lin Chi, everybody is grieving over, and, his death also caused the discussions over the environment as well. Other than issues of environmentalism, the cultural depletions of the movie industries, is another, focal point.
Director Chi’s “Seeing Taiwan” had set a record for sales for Taiwanese documentary films. Naturally, alternatively, he’d, hoped, to awaken that sense of environmentalism in the public, not making money off of his film. And, this film also showed the general problem that films produced in Taiwan faced, how difficult it is, to get the funding for filming.
Even though, “Seeing Taiwan” had made huge sales, but, it’d not made it any easier, in the process of Chi’s getting funding for the series. At the filming press conference for the second of the series, he’d estimated that he would need one-hundred-million dollars N.T. for the making of “Seeing Taiwan II”, but, the capital he managed to get, was merely, a-third of what he needed. And this sort of a situation, even the award-winning director, Wei Te-Sheng had faced too as he managed to get funding for filming Seediq Bale.
Reviewing over the histories of documentary films, “Happy without Rice”, “Never-Aging Riders”, “Let the Eagle Soar”, and “Pull Hard, on that Rope”; all of these films were made, in response, to some issues in the society here, and, because funding for these films weren’t that easily gotten, at the beginning stages of filming, the directors took money out of their own pockets, and later on, turned to the enterprises for funding, or, managed to gather up the amounts they’d needed by smaller sponsors. Simply stated, in order to make a film, a documentary in Taiwan, even those shows on T.V., the producers were often, stressed out about not having enough funding.
There’s an old saying in the movie industry, We’d all sold our homes to make films”, even if the houses weren’t sold, getting a second mortgage to get the money needed to film from the houses, are more than common, if we can’t get out of this vicious cycle in the films, and, treat the money given for assistance to make movies as any other forms of social welfare benefits, then, the directors of Taiwanese films will always have the passions, but are always going at it alone.
going at it alone, wtihout anybody’s help, photo from online…
Director Chi already took his dreams and left us, leaving all the memories for us, and, can we actually, look at what he’d contributed, and, make a change too?
So, this, would be, the problem of these, film directors, it’s hard for them, to get the monetary supports they’d needed, to make meaningful films, because Taiwan is NOT that apt in supporting of the arts, and yet, the films these directors had, scrounged up the money to make, are often the ones, who left that deeper impression in the movie-goers mind. So, support the arts more! Don’t let the dreams, the visions of these wonderful directors, just D-I-E………