On November 18 last year in the French city of Nantes, the 20th anniversary of the Festival des 3 Continents (Three Continents Film Festival) was marked by a gala evening with the title: "A Salute to the Directors." Of the 16 directors invited to the event, two were from Taiwan: Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang. The celebrations also embraced a week-long program of 60 films, running throughout the day at three cinemas and seen by a total audience of 36,000, with over 500 journalists and movie industry people in attendance. The sight of the red, white and blue flag of the ROC being raised slowly aloft for the awards ceremony, held at the Nantes International Convention Hall, was incredibly moving.

Taiwanese films have collected a string of awards at European film festivals in recent years, from Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness, which won the Golden Lion Award at Venice in 1989, and Ang Lee's 1993 film The Wedding Banquet, winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin, to Tsai Ming-liang's Vive l'Amour (1994) and The River (1997), winners respectively of the Golden Lion at Venice and the Silver Bear at Berlin. It is a record of success that has earned Taiwan's struggling film industry a little breathing room, while also winning kudos in Europe for the ROC. The Festival des 3 Continents-where quality films are selected and introduced-has played a crucial part in that process, though it remains little known in Taiwan.

Asia, Africa and Latin America

Among film festivals in France, the 3 Continents is second only to Cannes in both scale and status, and it is also the most important festival in the world for new films from Asia, Africa and Latin America, along with films by black film-makers. The festival was founded 19 years ago, when brothers Philippe and Alain Jalladeau, film distributors in Nantes who at the time, like most others in the business, handled mainly French and Hollywood-made fare, came to realize from their travels abroad that France was missing out on plenty of good films from South America, Asia and elsewhere. The Jalladeaus believed that helping people involved with cinema in the West, and France especially, to come to know these films and their makers, would expand and enrich the world of film. Thus was born the first Festival des 3 Continents, which premiered at a small cinema and adjoining coffee house in Nantes. Thanks to the high quality of the films selected for the festival, it quickly aroused interest among people in the movie industry and media, and became one of Europe's leading film festivals.

In both 1984 and 1985, the first prize at Nantes was won by Hou Hsiao-hsien films-The Boys from Fengkwei, and A Summer at Grandpa's-attracting attention in the West for Taiwanese directors just as the New Cinema movement was taking off in Taiwan. New directors emerged, releasing a string of original works, ranging from In Our Time, That Day at the Beach and Sandwich Man, to A Time to Live and a Time to Die and The Boys from Fengkwei, and European film critics began visiting Taiwan to see and select movies for themselves. Thus was launched the last decade or so of award-winning Taiwanese movies.

With its scent for talent, the 3 Continents-where notable Taiwanese directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang and Lin Cheng-sheng were "discovered"-stood out among a crop of new film festivals, and became, for critics and industry professionals alike, one of the most important occasions on the circuit. To a certain extent it is fair to say that the reputation of the Nantes festival grew in tandem with that of Taiwanese cinema.

The death of Taiwanese cinema?

It is, however, an incontrovertible fact that the audience for Taiwanese films has dwindled in last few years. What can account for the contrast between the positive reception for Taiwanese movies at festivals in Nantes, Cannes, Venice and Berlin, and the parlous state of the market for domestic films in Taiwan today, along with the cries of "cinema is dead!"? For an answer it is perhaps worth considering the larger context-the state of the industry around the world today: in short, the unchallenged dominance of Hollywood on the global market. This has squeezed out local productions and decimated film industries in many countries, as well as reducing cinema from an art-form to a spectacle, from which viewers expect simply visual and auditory entertainment.

Looking at the international picture, there are only a handful of countries that maintain a flourishing market for domestically-produced movies and are still able to resist the Hollywood invasion. But this is usually a reflection of the relatively closed nature of their markets, due to the special political or social import of their movies. India, for example, is the only country in the world that approaches and even surpasses the US in annual output of movies, and is where Hollywood has probably its lowest share (under 15%) of the market. Yet this itself is a function of the role that cinema plays in that country of over 900 million souls. As leading Indian director Adoor Gopalakrishnan explains, each of India's 25 states is home to its own languages and cultures, and aside from cinemas showing films in Hindi, the official language, along with films from the surrounding region, there are numerous small cinemas in each state dedicated to dialect films from around the country. These often provide migrant workers from other areas with their only remedy for homesickness. Some even watch the same film in their own mother tongue night after night, weeping along with the characters on the screen, or laughing at their exploits.

"Resisting Hollywood"

Naturally, there isn't much room for Hollywood to impose itself in an environment like this, but then India is the merest of exceptions. According to statistics from France's National Film Institute, 570 feature-films were released in the US in 1996, compared with 278 in Japan and 650 among the 15 countries of the European Union (the largest share of which, 134, were French, followed by 64 films from Germany). In terms of box office, the 25 highest-grossing films in the world that year were all Hollywood productions, earning a total of over US$6.2 billion, more than half of which came from overseas markets. This gives Hollywood an economic clout that stifles film industries in other countries and threatens their very survival.

There is no denying that only Hollywood is capable of concentrating the necessary quantities of capital and expertise, along with star-names, that combine to make the sort of movie spectaculars which sweep the world accompanied by a blitz of spin-off products and promotional advertising-and which have left domestic movie industries around the world tottering on the verge of collapse. But during the last decade a trend for "resisting Hollywood" has emerged in Europe. Not just a protectionist ploy to save domestic movie industry jobs, this is an effort to prevent the creative freedom of the cinematic art from being overwhelmed by the Hollywood model, geared solely to entertainment and box office, and at the same time to question the kitsch, sensationalist movie language and shallow mainstream values that characterize Hollywood. Taiwanese films, as represented by the works of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, have played their part in this movement, generating a multitude of possibilities, rich and profound, for film-makers in Western Europe.

According to Jean-Michel Frodon, senior cinema correspondent with the French daily Le Monde, Taiwan's award-winning movies of recent years comprise one of the most outstanding branches of non-Hollywood cinema. Frodon sees a creative vitality in Taiwanese movies, and while acknowledging that Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang have different styles, he feels that the rich language, profound exploration of human nature and keen observation of life that figures in the films of both has a kind of universal resonance for audiences, guiding viewers into that human dimension occupied by the characters on the screen. Even people today, used as they are to being unmoved by surrounding events, feel delight or anguish on behalf of those characters-so remote from themselves in time and space-as they come out of the cinema, or find themselves left without answers, just like most people in the film. Viewers then extend these feelings into their own experience, as they ponder, for themselves, the human condition.

Savoring life

Alain Jalladeau, chairman of the Festival des 3 Continents, analyzes the extraordinary qualities of Taiwanese films in terms of form and content. He believes that while the stories and themes are highly individualistic and regional in character, the directors' skillful handling of a distinctively open narrative form enables viewers brought up in a different culture to freely savor the richness of life, and experience the human spirit that permeates the films. It is this which testifies again and again to the talent and effectiveness of the directors.

One point worth examining is why these films, so acclaimed by Western critics, go unappreciated in Taiwan. It is even charged by some in Taiwan that such films have killed off the local movie industry. Although there are fairly complex factors behind the demise of Taiwan's film industry, involving distribution, funding and so on, this, as far as audiences are concerned, provides a thought-provoking handle on the question.

When cinema is reduced to an entertainment commodity geared purely to box office receipts, then, like television, pop music and other forms of mass culture, its consumer life-cycle becomes extremely brief. People get used to rapidly liking and consuming the product, and then forgetting all about it.

In contrast, there are plenty of opportunities for reflection and criticism in the films made by Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang in recent years. In Tsai's The River, for example, his observation and depiction of Taiwanese society is chillingly trenchant, bringing post-modern terms such as "alienation," "marginalization" and "desocialization" to life in the day-to-day experience of the characters, with an emphasis that is cruelly apparent when the story reaches its point of conflict. Movies like this need to be thought about, and we have to ask ourselves how to break free of similar traps and dilemmas in our own lives. Such is the art of cinema, connecting the human instinct for examining life with our own ruminative experience.

True friends of Taiwanese cinema

Offering his appraisal of films from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Alain Jalladeau says that only in Taiwan do the subjective and objective conditions exist that allow these directors to fully express themselves. Hong Kong director Stanley Kuan echoes this sentiment, saying that many films by Taiwanese directors tackling cultural identity and critiquing the status quo, could never have been made in Hong Kong, perhaps because of distortions effected by the colonial education, or due to political or commercial considerations.

Taiwan is blessed with a number of lavishly gifted film-makers who are committed to their ideals, but the solemnity of whose creations perhaps deters a movie-going public raised on Hollywood and Disney. Their films, however, help serious cinema-goers in Taiwan and around the world to better confront life, and at the same time win international exposure for Taiwan, enabling the island's more cultured aspect to break through in the face of international political taboos and wrangling. Our government and people really should give more support to these film creations, and not expect Taiwanese cinema to continue without true friends except for those in Europe. Otherwise, we may find that when we wish to watch a Taiwanese movie some day in the future, the only way will be to look in the film archives and contemplate what once was.

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Flags from every participating country were arrayed at the festival-an event in which political wrangles played no part.

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Award-winning directors Hou Hsiao-hsien (second from left) and Tsai Ming-liang (middle) from Taiwan, with Turkish director 珵er Kavur (second from right) and festival founders Philippe and Alain Jalladeau, pictured here at the Festival des 3 Continents gala event.

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Festival posters were displayed throughout central Nantes. The picture shows passage Pommeraye in the downtown area. (courtesy of the Festival des 3 Continents)

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The Jalladeau brothers established the festival together. Through their love of cinema and eye for quality, they have brought numerous good movies from Asia, Africa and Latin America to European audiences. (courtesy of the Festival des 3 Continents)

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Hou Hsiao-hsien's recent film Flowers of Shanghai depicts brothel life in the foreign concession district of Shanghai during the late Qing/early Republic period, realized with exquisite detail. The film was nominated for competition at Cannes.(courtesy of 3H Productions Ltd.)

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Tsai Ming-liang's films are characterized by a profound questioning of modern life, one that resonates with us as viewers. This picture shows the father and son in the movie The River, played by Miao Tien and Lee Kang-sheng. (photo by Lin Meng-shan)

Festival posters were displayed throughout central Nantes. The picture shows passage Pommeraye in the downtown area. （courtesy of the Festival des 3 Continents）

The Jalladeau brothers established the festival together. Through their love of cinema and eye for quality, they have brought numerous good movies from Asia, Africa and Latin America to European audiences. （courtesy of the Festival des 3 Continent s）

Hou Hsiao-hsien's recent film Flowers of Shanghai depicts brothel life in the foreign concession district of Shanghai during the late Qing／early Republic period, realized with exquisite detail. The film was nominated for competition at Cannes. （courtesy of 3H Productions Ltd.）

Tsai Ming-liang's films are characterized by a profound questioning of modern life, one that resonates with us as viewers. This picture shows the father and son in t he movie The River, played by Miao Tien and Lee Kang-sheng. （photo by Lin Meng-shan）