It’s not Ang Lee, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, or Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai, or China’s Zhang Yimou. At the Cannes Film Festival, which ended with great success at the end of last month, although mainland China won the first short film Palme d’Or in history, however, did you know that in the Chinese film industry, who has been shortlisted for the official short film competition of the Cannes Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival? And who is the first Taiwanese purely local filmmaker to set this record and lead China in nearly 20 years?

 

LIN JUN-HONG?

 

Where is this sacred?

 

Sorry, I believe you have never heard of him, but he is really from Taiwan. Hong Kong, mainland China and even Singapore, which is the so-called cross-Taiwan strait, three places plus one country in the Chinese film industry. He has been shortlisted for the Cannes Film Festival and Berlin Film Festival; and he is a native Taiwanese filmmaker who has never received any foreign film and television education or training!

 

Only shortlisted, not winning

Is it difficult to set such a record?

 

Of course it’s difficult!

 

Otherwise twenty years would not have passed

No one in Taiwan can continue or break this record

Even mainland China, which has a large population and abundant resources, seems to have never seen a second case...

 

But what is a short film? Are short films important?

   What is the significance of being shortlisted for the award?

 

This year, for the first time, mainland China won the Palme d’Or for short films at the Cannes Film Festival. Although the winner Qiu Yang is from Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province in China, he graduated from an Australian film-related major, but he is still not a talent cultivated by mainland China; and before although we occasionally hear that independent Chinese directors have been selected for the Cannes or Berlin Film Festival short film competitions, there seems to be no example of the same person being nominated and selected for the two major world film festivals. The reason is that the two major film festivals are highly competitive with each other, unless the cases are very special and outstanding. , otherwise as a rule, they will only cultivate talents who belong to their own film festival system, and rarely accept new talents that have been approved by the other party. Unless they are established masters and famous directors or feature films that are usually screened commercially, they are not subject to this restriction. Moreover, the works invited to participate in the exhibition still have to be world premieres before they can be shortlisted for the official competition, which is very strict and authoritative; especially short films, whether they are now called short films or Micro-movies, are very special compared to common commercial feature films. Short films with the goal of profit are more creative, more competitive, more hard-founded , more non-mainstream independent creative directors, and an arena for un-famous newcomers, which will not be affected by the fame of the creators. , or their background or even money, film studio operations and other factors will determine your shortlist... As the saying goes, "Winning awards depends on luck, but being shortlisted depends on strength." Not to mention how many newcomers want to squeeze into the world’s top international film festivals every year. There are so many, they are simply countless!

Therefore, we have made a simple statistics: in the past nearly two decades, Taiwan has only four short film finalists in the official competitions of the four major international film festivals. The difficulty is evident (see the attached table).

 

      He has been shortlisted for the official short film        competition in Cannes and Berlin, setting the record   of  being the first Chinese from cross-Taiwan strait and three places 

 

This topic hopes to explore the relevant processes and reflections on the development of Taiwanese films through a series of reports on Taiwan’s short film contestants that have been shortlisted for the first level of the four major international film festivals over the years. In view of this, we will start with this LIN JUN-HONG, Taiwan’s first and only director who has been shortlisted for the official short film competition in Cannes, started talking about it - this Taiwanese who was born and raised in Taiwan and has not received relevant film and television training or education abroad, according to the current media commonly used Judging from the language, it is no exaggeration to call him the "Glory of Taiwan"... But what kind of weirdo is LIN JUN-HONG? …Because if someone has been shortlisted for the official short film competition of the Cannes Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival, he should have entered the formal system to make feature films long ago, or become a well-known director like Ang Lee. Why? Maybe its so unknown that it disappears like evaporation? Now, where has this Glory of Taiwan gone? ...silently...retired and went abroad? Or simply changed careers? Is it exposing the problems and deficiencies that Taiwanese films have ignored...or is it hiding its capabilities and biding its time, waiting for the right time to take action?

 

The following is the content of the interview:

 

(Reporter) I would like to ask Director LIN, it has been nearly twenty years since you were shortlisted for the Cannes Short Film Competition in 1998 ( Note 1) and the Berlin Short Film Competition in 2001. However, in the Chinese world on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, three places, There has never been a second director or creator who was also favored by the two major film festivals. What do you think of this?

(Director LIN) That should be pure chance and luck, right? Although it is not easy to be shortlisted, I think not to mention mainland China, even if it is only in Taiwan, the second and third places should appear sooner or later... And I think, in fact, for most Taiwanese people, I am afraid that so far We are still not very clear about what a short film is... Because of the common people’s impression, the so-called movies are probably feature films, very American and Hollywood, and American Hollywood is equal to the world. Winning the Oscar for making a movie is equivalent to winning a world championship. As for other things, If you are lucky enough to be shortlisted or even win a prize in a truly international heavyweight film festival such as Cannes, Berlin or Venice, the Taiwanese people don’t feel much at all, let alone just being a finalist. However, in recent years, Taiwan’s  entries into the official competitions of the above-mentioned heavyweight film festivals have almost disappeared. It still has to rely on veteran director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s "The Assassin" to temporarily return to the Cannes stage, and it must win an award. That’s why it was reported on the front page of newspapers, emphasizing that it is the "Glory of Taiwan", etc... Therefore, I think all filmmakers in Taiwan have a consciousness, that is, it is impossible to make films for some film festivals, because it is too unrealistic. , the return on investment is too low, and the uncertainty is too high. In the early days of the The Government Information Office, there was a high finalist bonus, but later it was cut in half. I don’t know if it was because the government officials at the time thought the finalist competition was too easy. …and this may be one of the main reasons why the second example mentioned earlier has not appeared in Taiwan, so feature films are like this, let alone short films with fewer resources.

 

     Clarify the essence of short films and pursue the purest  freedom of creative

 

(Reporter) Yes, this year, for the first time, mainland China won the Palme dO’r for short films at the Cannes Film Festival. So we don’t want to let the other side of the Taiwan Strait will steal the spotlight, so we hope to also do the story about the four major international film festivals(Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Oscars) that Taiwanese has participated in at the first level of of Short Film Competition over the years, by reviewing the process of setting rare records in those years, arouses the outside worlds attention to the creators of short films... What do you think?

(Director LIN) I want to first try to clarify the nature of short films - what I want to discuss here is of course not funny short films such as YouTube: short films should really get rid of the fate of "it is small, it may not be good if it is big", and it should also It has its own unique form of expression, which is not just negative. It is not just a feature film made because of insufficient funds, or a short film made as a pre-professional training to advance to the next level. It should be the product of a highly concentrated creative idea, and the length of time It’s not the point at all, and don’t think that short films are all made by students or amateurs. Twenty years ago, I was shortlisted for Cannes and Berlin. I spent my own money and found ways to shoot using the standard 35mm film format (forcing myself not to use 16mm, I want to integrate into the professional field as early as possible), and almost never apply for subsidies or tutoring funds. Of course, it is definitely not because I have lots of money, but because I want the purest creative freedom, and then train myself to work while using my salary to support this expensive " "Hobby", so for me, creation and work can be very separate. They can both bring me different valuable experiences and then use each other, and I will not hide in the ivory tower and live in the world just because I create independently. In the other hand, I can be realistic and also avoid being able to work alone and think rigidly and follow the crowd...

 

  Adhere to a professional attitude and boldly innovate    and try

(Director Lin) However, don’t think that these practices are enough. When I go abroad to compete and take a look at the outside world, not only are the other finalists already so professional, but their sounds are also mixed with Dolby and produced in various ways. Such exquisite posters and promotional materials...Of course I know that the content is the key point, and spending money to improve the specifications is only a secondary condition, but you can clearly feel their professional attitude and will not focus on creativity over technology in the short film. Now that the digital age is coming, the threshold for making films has been lowered. Although short films are now called micro-movies, I believe some concepts will never change; I remember when I was in my twenties, and my boss and I went on stage to win the Golden Horse Award  in Taipei, there was no such thing at all. The short film competition project was established because I persuaded my boss to invest at that time (because I read the rules of the Golden Horse Awards at that time and found that there is no upper or lower limit on the length of all the entries, so I should be able to boldly try it in animation projects with better performance), and then  I was honored to win the award and gained valuable experience. It was not until a few years later that the Golden Horse Awards established a short film competition, and other related film festival competitions (such as the earlier China Times Evening News Film Awards, which was the predecessor of the Taipei Film Awards, and the judging process was also publicly serialized in newspapers). There has been a sudden increase in the number of projects at home and abroad, especially the number of short and micro-film projects. Suddenly, everyone seems to be filming, and even the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals have a lot of people watching or attending. For the external competition, the chances were not as slim as when I signed up at that time. I just relied on my impulse. There was no Internet at that time. I only relied on mail and fax. I started from completing the registration procedures, and then officially notified me after a period of time. Being shortlisted, and even stepping onto the red carpet of the film festival at the end, still had an unreal feeling... It’s just that after so many years, it seems that is getting harder and harder to be shortlisted for the official short film competition...

 

Competition intensifies and media attention doubles 

 

(Reporter) Yes, other units such as the " Cinéfondation " competition in Cannes that specifically rewards film students, and the observation-based "Un Certain Regard" or "Short Film Corner" ( Note 2) are not official competitions. But after all, it is not easy to be shortlisted and win awards, so now whenever there is news about a Taiwanese film being selected, the media attention will be several times greater than before. I wonder if this is related to the media environment at that time?

 

(Director LIN) I remember that there was no Apple Daily at that time, and China Times and United Daily News did not have electronic newspapers. The Peoples Welfare Daily had not yet ceased publication. Among the media reporters who still have impressions in my memory, Mr.Tony Lan of Liberty Times should be the most senior. After all, There are not many reports that continue to care about the dynamics of independent film creators in Taiwan, so it is understandable that the media usually does not pay attention to the field of short films. If it were not that the current media focuses on short films or micro-films that are suitable for mobile phone playback, I would The formal channels for publishing short films are still very limited.

 

(Reporter) There seems to be very little related publicity... I also found out about the director’s work "A Short Film About Deat" that was shortlisted for Berlin through the documentary package album published by ToSee Culture Studio. However, "Child.Scrawl.Family Pictures" was earlier shortlisted for the Cannes competition is not included. Where can I see it?

 

(Director LIN) Because I could only work alone at that time, many distribution problems had not been solved. Moreover, my two short films were really short, and they were closely related to the news issues at the time (respectively about "Bai Xiaoyans murder case" and "The September 21 Earthquake"), but since they are only about three minutes long, it should be difficult to schedule them for theater screening, and they were completely self-financed and independently produced without applying for tutoring funds or other resources, so the budget must be strictly controlled. There is no publicity fund at all... After "Child.Scrawl.Family Pictures" was shortlisted for the touring exhibition, of course it could only be frozen into the film library of The Government Information Office together with other exhibition copies; if it were to be seen again in the future, Im afraid it would be another new plans to produce and release DVDs again.

 

Defining generalized film genres without the dichotomy of commercial art  

 

(Reporter) Is it possible for your work to be broadcast online? What are your thoughts on the future of film?

(Director LIN) I currently work in a cable TV system, and I happen to be particularly interested in online audio and video streaming platforms such as iQiyi in mainland China and Netflix in the United States. In addition to being my current competitors in this industry, the most important thing is It’s because they are an unstoppable trend in the future, so let alone short films, in the future almost all feature films, TV series and other video works can be broadcast on the Internet, and even everything from planning and filming to completion can be handled by one person , the veteran HBO is also deeply aware of the threat from the video streaming industry, and has actively cooperated with teams from all over the world to self-finance original film and television works, such as "The Teenage Psychic", which was very popular before... But no matter what it is, don’t just regard movies as a money-making tool. If you just want to make money, you will be underestimating movies and making movies smaller. Never use the dichotomy of commercial art to define general movie types. Movies that don’t make money and are not erstanding are not It is equal to art, and vice versa. Meeting needs (commercial movies?) is as important as creating needs (artistic movies?). There is no distinction between realm and elegance. Life is really more important and complicated than movies. Creators should try to draw from life rather than the movie itself. Real art is very cunning. The more people work hard to master it, the less they can grasp it. In addition, the Internet has no borders. The more globalized it is, the more local it is, and the more local characteristics must be emphasized, rather than shouting. Just pay attention to innovation and creative slogans. Now our definition of the word "creativity" is too loose... Creativity cannot only be a sudden idea , but also a complete set of thoughts . And this has nothing to do with political ideology. Of course, we cannot skip the mainland, the world’s largest Chinese market. We just have to make market segmentations, but not by ethnicity and class , but by unique creativity . This is the specialties, just like whenever you mention dried tofu in Taiwan, you will definitely think of Daxi dried tofu. Maybe there are preconceived prejudices, but peoples intuition, which is almost a stimulus reaction, vaguely reveals that this may be successful. A message that is not easily replaced.

 

    Observe that Taiwan’s film industry is more united         and  begins to pay attention to marketing

 

(Reporter) Who are the filmmakers working at the same time as the director? Why not just jump into the film industry? Will you make another short film?

(Director LIN)I think that Lin Cheng-sheng, Hsiao Ya-Chuan, and Chen Hung-i who debuted at the same time have already made several good works, so don’t call me a new director, because I am very "old" (laughs) , besides, age is really not a problem or an excuse. Some people are a blockbuster in their first film, while some people can never make a decent film in their lifetime. What’s more, success does not depend on me. If I can make a film, I will make it. If I can’t, I will just be an audience. Now the new generation of Taiwanese filmmakers are energetic and more united than before. We often see positive examples of mutual support and collective fighting. They also place more emphasis on marketing, and they don’t dominate the director... I am a bit strange myself, not directly involved in the film industry. Instead, I chose to take a roundabout path and work in a cable TV system that was less directly related. Probably because I like to pay attention to peoples issues and observe them in my own way. I always feel a little repelled from pursuing popular things. For example, I dont like computers and mobile phones. It’s the so-called 3C cold syndrome, but you can’t understand it, if you don’t like it – especially the actual experience of Face to Face , not just the virtual social network of Facebook ! Life is like this, and so is the attitude towards movies; as for the Internet just mentioned, now that everyone has a mobile phone, making short films has become a trend, so I probably won’t join in the fun anymore, but as for the plan to produce a feature film,  I am somewhat glad that some immature cases were not implemented before, especially I feel sorry for my good friends who wanted to help enthusiastically before. For example, the now famous producer Yeh Ju-fen, we have known each other for a long time in the past, but a few years ago due to the temporary change of investors, we lost Im really embarrassed that I almost dragged her into the water... Now we all know that she is a very good producer, and I think there will definitely be opportunities for cooperation in the future.

 

(Reporter) How can you balance your work with creation? What are your future filmmaking plans?

 

(Director LIN) I have said before that I make a clear distinction. Work is work and creation is creation, but in the end there are always similarities. The place where I work now - Sanchong, New Taipei City, is a very special place with a large number of people. People who have migrated from the central and southern parts of the country to the north, especially the working class, are always said to be cultural deserts. Therefore, this is just an experimental field suitable for breaking prejudices. It is equivalent to a microcosm of Taiwan, which is relatively unconventional. Only looking at the world from Taipei, the so-called Tianlong Kingdom (powerful dignitaries)  thinking, although I do not make documentaries, but I contact all walks of life from the most basic places and big things every day. I feel that the experience and tempering of these years are very valuable. If I were to enter the film industry directly and make films, I will definitely not be able to experience these things; and I have also sorted out ideas and methods for completing future plans, that is, not blindly following the trend. I know that I am not a very willful person, and I cannot take other people’s lots of money, especially investor’s money at will, and then say that you can make films if you want... In short, you must be persistent and seize the opportunity, otherwise it will be just another example of failure in the end.

 

    The glory of Taiwan, which keeps a low profile and hides his strength and bide his time  

 

(Reporter) Yes, fortunately you have your own ideas. Otherwise, if you enter the film industry early and are quickly exhausted, or if such talents are recruited by foreign countries and poached away, I am afraid it will be a great loss to Taiwan... There is a saying " "Hide your strength and bide your time" probably means this... and more importantly, I heard that Director LIN will release his first feature film in the future. It is speculated that this is a very innovative approach, and the content is highly confidential, right?

 (Director LIN) It’s too exaggerated! There is no such thing as "hiding ones capabilities and biding ones time"... (laughs) I just speak out when I think I can do it, and don’t brag. I don’t want to talk about the content of the new film yet. The reason is not to keep it secret or to whet your appetite, but because I mentioned it in passing during the interview. I feel that any remarks about so-called innovative approaches should always be cautiously reserved. Of course I am no exception, and as for the shortcomings mentioned above, whether it is a short film or a feature film, I must not repeat the same mistakes. It would be best if I can truly "low-key", but at least wait until the work is completed and smooth. On the day of premiere, if it is worthy of media interviews, it will not be too late to speak freely at that time... Of course, it will still depend on the results by then, and you will know whether you are just "exhausting your talents" or really "keeping a low profile".

(Reporter) Thank you, Director LIN, for accepting our exclusive interview today, and I wish you all the best.

 

(Attachment)

List of official competition lists of Taiwan’s short films shortlisted for the four major international film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Oscars) over the years
Year	Festival	Title	Director
1998	Short Film in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival	Child.Scrawl.Family Pictures	LIN JUN-HONG
2001	Short Film in the official competition of the Berlin Film Festival	A Short Film About Death	LIN JUN-HONG
2005	Short Film in the official competition of the Venice Film Festival, Golden Lion Award	Small Station	LIN CHIEN-PING
2007	Short Film in the official competition of the Berlin Film Festival, Silver Bear Award	Mei	Arvin Chen
2016	Short Film in the official competition of the Berlin Film Festival, Audi Award	Anchorage Phohibited	Chiang Wei Liang

 (Remarks) In 1999, documentary director Ko-shang Shen’s work "With the Mountain" was not shortlisted for the short film competition of Cannes Film Festival, but it was selected for the "Cinéfondation" student competition. In 2017, Taiwanese National Arts University student Wang Yiling’s work "Towards the Frontier Highway" was also selected for this category. In 2016, "The Free Man" directed by Sam Quah was selected into the top ten Oscar short films. It was the first time that a Taiwanese short film has come closest to being nominated for the Oscar. All in all, in the past nearly 20 years, Taiwan has only had four short film finalists in the four major international film festivals, which shows how difficult it is.

In addition, although Berlin, Germany, and Venice, Italy, now have independent international short film festivals, they are not related to the above-mentioned four major international film festivals, and because they have just been established, their importance has not yet reached a certain level, so they are not within the scope of this discussion.

This special topic will continue to track and report on the alternative "Glory of Taiwan" . Exclusive interviews include Taiwanese director Lin Chien-ping, who won the Golden Lion Award for the first time in the official short film competition at the Venice Film Festival in Italy , and director Arvin Chen, who won the Silver Bear Award for the short film official competition at the Berlin Film Festival in Germany. Director of the film "One Page of Taipei") , so stay tuned!