How Taiwan Creative Content Fest Is Showcasing Taiwanese Innovation & Building Bridges With The World

Liz Shackleton
·5 min read
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Launching in the first year of the pandemic in 2020, Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) has taken a few years to secure its positioning in the global film markets calendar, but this year’s edition is on track to be its biggest and most international yet.

The event, which runs November 7-12 at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei, is divided into three sections – Pitching, which has opened to international projects for the first time (see separate story for more details); Market, which has been extended from three to four days and has around 100 companies attending; and Innovation, which explores the intersection between content and technology.

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Taiwan’s content industries suffered less than some of their neighbours during the pandemic, as being an island, the borders could be quickly closed, limiting the spread of Covid-19. For most of the past three years, shooting on film and TV projects has continued and cinemas remained open.

But international guests were only able to start returning to Taiwan for TCCF and Golden Horse Film Festival in November 2022, at a time when international travel still had its challenges. This year, no such restrictions exist and TCCF is welcoming producers, buyers, sales agents and investors from Asia, Europe and North America.

“Our vision is to encourage licensing and co-production opportunities, as well as connect our local industries to creative professionals around the world,” explains Homme Tsai, chairperson of Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), which organizes TCCF in addition to a range of other industry support activities.

“While we have a mission to support Taiwanese filmmakers and content creators, we also want to focus on cross-country collaboration,” Tsai continues. “Innovation is also a key strand of TCCF as Taiwan is at the forefront of exploring future production technologies.”

TAICCA, an agency under Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, also operates two substantial content funds – the Creative Content Development Program (CCDP) and Taiwan International Co-funding Program (TICP) – and also invests in projects and corporations in the creative content industries through the National Development Fund.

The agency has a wide brief – in addition to supporting Taiwan’s film, TV and animation industries, it oversees music, publications, comics, video games, performing arts, visual arts and fashion. TCCF focuses on the audiovisual side of those creative industries, although Tsai says it may be expanded to other areas in the future.

For now, the big difference between TCCF and other film and TV events in the region is its focus on innovation, highlighting Taiwan’s strength in industries ranging from hardware manufacturing to robotics, machine learning and semiconductors. This expertise is in turn fuelling growth in audiovisual industry-related technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) & mixed reality (MR), along with Virtual Production, AI, blockchain and Web3.

TCCR’s Innovations section will present 21 immersive artworks housed in two warehouses, including high-tech installations and VR, AR & MR experiences, along with a series of workshops, panels and masterclasses with speakers from Venice Immersive, Ars Electronica, Moonshine XR Studios and VFX firm Reno Studios, among others.

Some of the highlighted immersive works include France-Taiwan collaboration Colored, an AR experience about the civil rights movements in the U.S. in the 1950s, which premiered at France’s Centre Pompidou in April 2023.

Tech companies such as Trend Micro, Hon Hai Technology Group and Asus Cloud will also be exhibiting in TCCF’s market, along with companies from the good old-fashioned world of 2D content such as Japan’s Fuji Television, Hong Kong’s TVBI and Singapore’s MediaCorp. The market will also host  several Taiwanese film commissions and national pavilions from France, Korea and Japan.

TCCF’s Industry Stage will present a series of keynotes, panels and spotlight presentations with speakers including Adele Lim, writer of Crazy Rich Asians and director of Joy Ride, Imagine International vice president Janice Chua, Felipe Galvez Haberle, whose debut film The Settlers won the Fipresci prize at Cannes; and Takeshi Natsuno, CEO of Japan’s Kadokawa Corp.

Before the pandemic, Taiwan had already emerged as a hub for Chinese-language content production for global and regional streamers, and while some of that activity has recently subsided with the streamers rationalising production costs, Taiwan’s TV production companies remain busy.

Taiwan’s film industry has also been making its mark internationally, especially in the horror and BL (boy’s love) genres, which have been performing well in Asian markets including Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan.

“Over the past few years, with the joint efforts of both government and industry, the quality of Taiwanese content has been steadily approaching the international level,” says Tsai, when asked about the current strength of Taiwan’s film and TV industries.

<strong><em>TAICCA chairperson Homme Tsai</em></strong>
TAICCA chairperson Homme Tsai

“However, we believe there’s still room for improvement, so TAICCA hopes to take advantage of international co-production and collaboration opportunities to engage in more talent training and exchanges with foreign partners.”

Due to the political situation, there is not much participation in TCCF from the world’s other big Chinese-speaking content market, mainland China. But TAICCA wants it to be known that its doors are open: “Taiwan is known for commerce and we welcome Chinese companies, producers and projects to do business with us,” said a TAICCA spokesperson when asked about this delicate subject. “Unfortunately we didn’t receive any submissions for the project pitching from China this year.”

Overlapping with TCCF is another key Taiwanese event, the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (November 9-26), which also hosts a film and TV project pitching event. Golden Horse differs from TCCF in that it focuses on Chinese-language projects in its pitching sessions, which take place alongside an international film festival and the prestigious Golden Horse Awards for Chinese-language cinema.

This means that should international visitors wish to spend all of November in Taiwan, there are film-related events running through the entire month.

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