Linkou/Taipei/Bangkok (ANN) - The sight of girls dressed in kimono trooping to a Japanese-styled village in the outskirts of Taipei could have been a scene straight from the Taiwan epic movie Seediq Bale: Warriors of the Rainbow.
But filming has long been finished although what remained of the movie location in Linkou, New Taipei City, is open to the public but only until February 12.
The US$25-million Seediq Bale was shown in Taiwan in two parts: The Flag of the Sun and The Bridge of the Rainbow. The film is a retelling of the Wushe Incident in central Taiwan in the 1930s when an indigenous hero led an uprising against the Japanese colonial rulers.
Seediq Bale has been likened to Mel Gibson's Braveheart by the Taiwan media and had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival last year. The foreign audience found the four-and-a-half-hour film too long that Wei Te-sheng, the film's director, was forced to cut it down to two and a half hours.
It was short-listed in this year's Oscars but failed to make it to the final nominees.
"Everyone was so excited because for so many years, Taiwanese movies have not been nominated at the Oscars," producer Jade Lee of the Central Motion Picture Corp (CMPC) told AsiaNews.
She candidly admitted that the original length of the movie may have been too long for non-Taiwanese and could have been the reason why it didn't get an Oscar nomination. While the production had cut down the film to two and a half hours, it was still required to submit the original version shown in Taiwan as stipulated under Oscars rules.
"Being short-listed was already a great honor. We didn't think we'd come this far," she said.
Seediq Bale took two years to shoot, the delay caused by funding problems. Wei first presented the idea to investors in 2003 and while it received positive feedback, he was unable to raise enough budget. It was only after his film, Cape No. 7, became a surprise hit in 2008 that Wei decided to take up the project again.
Many big Taiwanese stars including Jay Chou, Jerry Yan and Vivian Hsu have invested in the film, with Hsu's mother even helping out with the costumes. For Wei and his friends, it was a labour of love in their desire to bring the story to the big screen.
Lee explained that the budget ballooned because of the filming requirements. "We shot in the mountains most of the time, the weather was uncertain. There were more than a hundred extras and we also invited a lot of international teams. Everyday we were losing money... people got hurt, the shoot was difficult."
The team was rewarded, however, by the support of the domestic market, earning close to NT$400 million (US$13.5 million) by end of 2011. Despite this, however, the film is still far from breaking even.
Lee said they are hoping they can screen in China by March although she hinted that they may have to cut some scenes to satisfy the censors. "Talks with China have been promising, we are still talking to them but there is a great chance we can show in March," she said.
The DVD will also be released in March and the production is hoping to gain additional revenues from this.
The production did not earn, however, from the filming location that had been attracting tourists to Linkou since it opened on Sept 14, 2011. Lee said CMPC was keen on helping maintain the set but Taiwan's commercial law prohibits the site from operating for more than six months. "If you invest a lot of money, it will be a loss," Lee said.
Known as Wushe Street, the site has been accepting up to 5,000 visitors daily. It cost NT$80 million (US$2.7 million) to build the set that features Japanese-style wooden houses and shops that were seen in the movie. Fake Cherry blossom trees adorned the hillside.
There were shops selling Taiwanese snacks, a tattoo stall and a rental stand for Japanese and aboroginal costumes. There was also a souvenir shop in the main building that served as the school in the movie. Here, one can find mementos from the film including shirts, mugs and even the costume worn by the Seediq warriors.
Lee said Wei still has three to four story ideas about Taiwan history that he wants to make into a film and CMPC is open in supporting him on these projects.
"CMPC wants to do more big-budget productions and movies to support the Taiwanese movie industry. We also we want to work with China, the market is there," Lee said. "But it's not only because the market is there, we also want to share our point of view and more stories with Hong Kong and China."
Despite failing to make it to the final nominations at the Oscars, Lee said it was already a great achievement proving that Taiwanese filmmakers still have the mojo to come up with an epic production despite the depressing two decades in Taiwan's movie industry.
"We were able to show that even if the industry was down the last 20 years, we have been able to come up with something this big a scale."
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