Taiwan to piggyback on ‘Brokeback..’ Ang Lee’s fame

PANAJI - Taiwan wants to cash in on the goodwill of Ang Lee, director of Oscar winning films like “Brokeback Mountain”, the country’s ambassador to India Wen Chyi Ong said Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the 41st International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Wen said that the source of Ang Lee’s innovative and creative powers were rooted in Taiwan, the place of his birth.

What my embassy and my government is trying to do is associate Ang Lee with Taiwan and Taiwan with Ang Lee, Wen said, adding that Ang’s Oscar-winning film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” gave him worldwide acclaim.

The source of his innovative powers comes from the place of his birth Taiwan. The impact of Taiwanese culture on his work is very strong, Wen said.

Aung was born in 1954 at Pingtung in Taiwan and is rated as one of the most promising directors in Hollywood.

His brother Khan Lee is also a film maker.

Khan Lee’s movies are a part of the eight-film special package ‘New Wave Taiwanese cinema’ which is being screened at IFFI. He said that his brother’s emergence in cinema coincided with the new wave cinema back home.

The new wave Taiwanese cinema was a conscious move away from the Beijing influence on Taiwanese cinema. It also captured the social change in Taiwan, which changed in the eighties from a closed society to an open one, Khan Lee said.

Earlier, the films were made in the Beijing dialect and dealt either with Kung Fu or romance, but the new wave cinema was more realistic and closer to the lives of the ordinary Taiwanese. The language in the cinema was the one spoken by the people of Taiwan, he said, adding that the new wave cinema was a sort of a rebellion against the overwhelming influence of mainland China.

The new wave cinema ended in the nineties when Taiwan cinema and its film lovers were swamped by Hollywood films. That was the dark age in our cinema, Khan Lee said.