Abstract The purpose of this study is to develop the strategy of Taiwanese film industry under the globalization. After comparing with different countries¡¦ film industry, analyzing Taiwanese current film industry, and interviewing key persons working in the film industry, I combine with all points to develop the strategy chart for Taiwanese film industry. This strategy includes the ways to build perfect teams, select proper topics, raise funds, produce professional films, operate effective marketing plans, and understand their customers, which help the film industry to work perfectly under business mechanism and will attract outside investors to invest in the film industry. About raising funds, filmmakers should raise funds under business mechanism to provide the clear business plan in details and invest their own money. The government should provide the deposit for the bankers to encourage them to loan money to filmmakers under the government guarantee money. Also, pre-sales contract can be a deposit for the bankers and filmmakers should buy completion bond to ensure the film will deliver on time. Most important of all is to set up a platform to help venture capitals or whoever are interested in investing films to quickly know how the film process runs. Also, the government should encourage companies to invest films by tax incentives. About producing films, collaboration is necessary, especially combining our creative directors with professional teams from Hong Kong. To invite actors or actresses from different courtiers will also have positive sales increase in actors or actresses¡¦ home countries. Also, filmmakers should choose the materials that are quite acceptable for the customers and involve different opinions from the west and the east. About returning, marketing teams should have clear marketing objectives, create return from relevant products, use combination marketing tools, choose right agents, strengthen negotiation power, provide exact numbers from box offices and familiarize customers¡¦ behavior.

Since the 1980s, growing international recognition for Taiwanese auteurs has placed Taiwan on the map of world cinema. However, in the new millennium popular tastes have gradually become a key concern for Taiwanese filmmakers; in the years since 2008, the dramatic box office success of Cape No.7 has further boosted their commercial production. Through four case studies, this thesis investigates four major filmmaking strategies among Taiwanese filmmakers, seeking to provide a wide-ranging picture of Taiwan cinema since the turn of the century. These case studies represent different approaches to filmmaking and indicate the different audiences that Taiwanese filmmakers may address. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon not only demonstrates that Asian films can achieve international box office success but also raises issues of cultural authenticity and cultural translation. Chapter One describes how the global success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has promoted transnational co-production in Asia. The Hollywood-funded project Double Vision and Taiwanese filmmakers’ engagement in intraregional co-production are outlined in Chapter Two, examining the development of pan-Asian co-production in Taiwan cinema. The immense popularity of Cape No.7 in Taiwan reflects Taiwanese viewers’ demand for cultural products with local colour. Chapter Three views this domestically-produced film as a local response to cultural globalisation and revisits the significance of nativist imagination to the production and consumption of contemporary Taiwan cinema. The last chapter examines auteur-oriented filmmaking in this area and underscores the dependence of art cinema in Taiwan on the film festival economy and international niche markets. These case studies highlight the influence of transnational connections on the production, consumption and content of contemporary Taiwan cinema, showing that Taiwan cinema should be understood in a transnational context.

As one of the most prominent Taiwanese film director, Wei Te-sheng’s films have been the focus of attention from publicity and film prize committees. Most of his film works focus on Japan-Taiwan theme. Based on auteur theory, this thesis examines the colonial and postcolonial relationship between Japanese and Taiwanese by analyzing the Taiwanese film director Wei Te-sheng’s three films, Cape No.7 (2008), Seediq Bale (2011), and Kano (2014). From the historical view in terms of the colonial relationship between Taiwan and Japan, this thesis reveals the Taiwanese’s ambivalence toward its ex-colonizer and explores the reasons behind the particular and complex relationship between Taiwanese and Japanese colonists. Since decentralization is the most noticeable manifestation of such colonial and postcolonial relationship, this thesis also probes into the reason why decentralization evokes nostalgic feelings among Taiwanese. This thesis interprets Wei’s film based on auteur theory. Auteur’s imprint is to be found both in style and basic motifs in Wei’s films as following three distinguished features: non-linear narrative, voiceover, and the use of allusion. There contain two aspects of the colonial relationship reflected on Wei Te-sheng’s films, the oppressor and the oppressed, and the emotional bond. Explanations of paradoxical pro-Japan attitude are manifested in the following two aspects: ineffectiveness of the KMT government, and contribution of Japanese colonial government, including improvement of infrastructure, promotion of economics growth, and colonial education. Three major films directed by Wei have all set in the rural areas. The praise for the energy and enthusiasm of rural dwellers is indicative of the shift in focus from urban to rural areas. Cape No.7 and Kano, reveal that Taiwanese hold a deep emotional appeal for building warm and harmonious communities in a society constantly shaped by industrialization and urbanization. Cape No.7 and Kano have brought a familial sense of community back to the audience. On the island’s mad rush toward modernization, these two films presented what was lost and sacrificed during this process: harmony with nature, a sense of community, time-honored cultural traditions and local cultures and ways of life. The popularity of the two films reflects the audience’s romantic imagination toward the irretrievable rural life, and reveals that they were nostalgic for the close-knit, intimate, direct interpersonal relationships in rural areas. The atomization of existence is associated with the current situation of cities, where each individual human beings is increasingly isolated. Under such circumstances, two films featuring a sense of community evoked a historical retrospection of the urbanization. The seemingly conservative rural areas preserve the precious complex that people aspire to retain, though it might be spotlighted through a reminiscing filter, the close-knit community with intimate, direct and simple interpersonal relationships.