A South Korean box office hit has set off a flurry of discussions about the state of Taiwan’s film industry.
The News Lens
Date: 2016/09/21
By: Olivia Yang
“Train to Busan,” a South Korean zombie apocalypse film, has set a box office record for South Korean
Photo Credit: GaragePlay 車庫娛樂
movies in Taiwan with a three-week gross of more than NT$300 million (US$9.5 million) since its Sept. 2 release.
The film’s success has prompted many Taiwanese critics to ask why the local movie industry has been unable to produce movies on this scale and of similar quality. And with Seoul announcing on Sept. 8 that the arts will become a compulsory subject of middle school education, many have attributed Taiwan’s relative incompetence to the lack of government support and arts education.
Wenchi Lin (林文淇), former director of the Taiwan Film Institute and current associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at National Central University, told The News Lens International that this discussion has been on-going for the past 20 years. [FULL STORY]
