Global Appeal

The majority of Taiwanese cinema has not had overwhelming success with a global audience. The international distribution of Taiwanese films has been almost non-existent unless the film was co-produced with another country that has stronger ties to the global market. It has had a few success stories though, proving that its films can find appreciation but not as Taiwanese films.

Cape No. 7 (2008) was considered the most successful
Taiwanese film until You Are The Apple of My Eye (2011).

Generalizing the movie into a theme that appeals globally to certain audiences is what has worked the most when it comes to marketing Taiwanese films. For example, Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) was marketed as a food film and was highly eroticized, featuring quotes such as “It’s hard to tell where the sex stops and food begins” by John Anderson of the New York Newday. This detracted from marketing the melodramatic father-daughter conflict that is central to the plot of the film and focused more galvanizing the sex appeal.

Since the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film came into existence in 1957, Taiwan has submitted films every year for consideration. Ang Lee’s films – The Wedding Banquet (1993), Eat Drink Man Woman & Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) – have been the only Taiwanese films to ever be nominated for an Academy Award. Furthermore, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the only Taiwanese film that has actually won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film.

Films such as Monga (2010) and You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011) have gained popularity with a global audience mostly due to the influence of giant media distributors. Monga has only seen a theatrical release in Taiwan and has been presented at Asian film festivals around the globe but has not gained enough acclaim to receive a widespread release globally. However, in the three years since its release, You Are the Apple of My Eye has gained critical acclaim and made its rounds at various film festivals. After garnering such acclaim, 20^th Century Fox decided to finally release the film theatrically in America in 2014.

There is no appeal for Taiwanese films that focus a lot on the locality of the country itself. The global audience wants films that are made with a strong multinational interest in mind that can be simplified into a general theme and then eroticized. The only way to appeal to an international audience is to not market the film as a Taiwanese film but as an Asian-Hollywood film. The only way for a true Taiwanese film to obtain an international release is to fight and garner such acclaim that it would be hard for an international distributor to say no.

Success of Local vs. Hollywood productions in Taiwan (source)