Expanded Taiwan Content Market Opens With Talk of Money and Opportunity: ‘We Have Diversity and the Creative Freedom to Tell Those Stories’

Officials and filmmakers were on hand Tuesday in Taipei to hail the Taiwan Creative Content Fest as a stepping stone for local and Asian creators to mount the world stage.

“We have great ambitions for TCCF in the years going forward,” said Sue Wang, deputy minister at Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture. She was speaking at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, a new venue in a high-tech eastern suburb of the Taiwan capital. The event runs Nov. 5-8 and is backed by government-affiliated agency the Taiwan Creative Content Agency.

A substantial sum — some NT7.5 million ($235,000) — is on offer as prizes for the centerpiece project pitching event, according to Homme Tsai, chair of TAICCA. “People will reach out to each other saying – ‘show me the money, lets collaborate,'” Tsai said.

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Money was also a theme for the deputy minister. “TCCF has risen from a humble past, from a relatively small exhibition platform and market to one of the leading B2B events in the world. This really highlights the importance we have placed on the content creation industries not just home. but around the world, Wang said.

“We hope to create momentum for eventually the private sector to drive momentum. Money cannot buy everything, but it can start something. And we hope the incentives [provided by TAICCA] will enable Taiwan creatives to tell their stories on the world stage,” she said.

Away from the on-stage formalities, which also included a formal inauguration that ended with a laser show, TAICCA CEO Dr. Lu Jiun Wei was on hand to provide further details of the strategy.

“We already have good stories and topics in Taiwan from the local people, but what we need to improve is storytelling. We wanted to learn the international ways of storytelling, so that we can promote and push Taiwanese local content to the international market. That’s why we’re trying to attract more international co-production and co-funding,” he told Variety.

Taiwan has increased its profile within the East Asian film and TV production scene in recent years, partly due to funding and structural efforts made by the Taiwanese authorities, its financial support and agencies like TAICCA. And multinational media groups have turned to Taiwan as Hong Kong and mainland China companies have become more complicated to work with.

Lu talked up democratically-run Taiwan’s creative strengths. “These things come from the stories here in Taiwan. We have the diverse topics here, like BL [‘boys love’] and girls love. Those topics are not allowed to be presented in China. We talk with our international partners because these unique topics can only found in Taiwan,” Lu said. “This diversity of topics and the creative freedom to tell those stories would be the strengths of Taiwan.”

This year’s TCCF hosts over 100 market booths, compared with 90 last year. Its pitching event received submissions by more than 600 projects hailing from more than 50 countries and territories.