One movie that made waves in Venice recently was Taiwanese director Wei Te-sheng's "Seediq Bale," and how the shy and quiet cineaste came to make what many in his own country said was an impossible movie to make is a story worth repeating – and archiving for future film school students everywhere.
The movie itself is a trailblazer and will go down in film history as one of Taiwan's finest contributions to the world of cinema.
It's based on Taiwan's storied past during the Japanese Colonial Period (1895-1945), when the emperor of Japan and his Imperial Army ran the island of Taiwan as a fertile colony to pluck and to plunder.
The story Wei tells is about the so-called ''1930 Wushe Incident,” a bloody and tragic uprising of local Austro-Polynesian Aborigines from the Sediq tribe against their Japanese colonial oppressors. For those not familiar with Taiwan's history and ethnic mix, the nation has an Aboriginal population of some 500,000 people who are the descendants of people who first settled the Pacific island as long as 10,000 years ago, perhaps as long as 25,000 years ago. Scholars differ in their published research.
And it's important to remember that the 12 different Aboriginal tribes in Taiwan are not ''Chinese'' people, and that their language and culture comes from the South Pacific and not Asia.
Wei's four-hour film tells the tale of the Sediq tribe's revolt against the colonial Japanese in the 1930s. It's not a pretty picture, although the movie is pure cinema — and beautiful. It's going to take the world — and Hollywood — by storm, according to the film's boosters in Taipei.
Before the film was made, Wei, just 42, raised around $70,000 to shoot a five-minute demo reel that explained his dream of shooting an epic movie in authentic tribal languages in Taiwan. He was obsessed, determined, patient — and he persevered.
Making the popular Taiwanese film "Cape No. 7" in 2008, which did extremely well at the box office and assured his place in the nation's movie firmament, Wei had been dreaming for 10 years of making a movie about the Sediq people, and now, thanks to the gods of cinema, his dream has come true.
Venice called. Other global film festivals are calling. Hollywood is calling, too, and don't be surprised to see director Wei at the Oscars next year. This man's on a roll, and not just a film roll — a career roll!
What served Wei the best as he pursued his dream? According to friends and observers in the film industry in Taiwan, ''a lot of personal charisma coupled with a deep passion and determination,'' as one newswpaper reported. This was a guy who just refused to give up, against the odds, despite the many hurdles.
To give an example of how difficult things were on the set, 10 months before shooting even began, the sound editing team still hadn’t received any funds, Taipei sources say.
"It was well known that Mr. Wei was under severe financial pressure and was deep in debt, but people continued to have faith in him, believing that he would not skip out on his bills and that he would pay crew and cast wages when he had the money," said one man familiar with the movie's trajectory.
According to film industry observers, "'Sediq Bale' is also a technological gem, with "every sound in the film showing a strength and quality of sound recording never before seen in a Taiwanese movie, and foreigner audiences will be thrilled at what they see and hear."
According to the Liberty Times, a Chinese-language newspaper serving all of Taiwan, Wei's star is rising fast and there's no end in sight to what he can do now.
Move over, Ang Lee; here comes Te-sheng Wei.
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