Director Po-lin Chi was at TNUA in Januar y
giving insights into the making of his critically
acclaimed "Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above," a
documentary that has drawn tremendous attention
to the serious pollution problems facing the
country.
Chi explained how more than 400 hours of aerial
footage of Taiwan, taken over a span of more than
three years, was edited into a work that won a
Golden Horse Award last year and collected over
NT$200 million in box office, the highest ever for
any documentary that has been screened in Taiwan.
Mr. Chi said he set out to make the documentary
with an agenda: to raise the awareness of Taiwan's
pollution problems.
He said he had tried to do so by giving talks in
schools and other places, but there had not been
much success. And eventually he decided that a
documentary might serve the purpose better.
The director, who was a civil servant, said that in
2009, he decided to invest all of his lifelong savings
of over NT$3 million on the mission. He rented
an aerial filming system that would have cost
US$700,000 to buy, and embarked on a week-long
lming project around the island.
He concluded the week with more than 30 hours
of footage, but after editing, only a six-minute
documentary was left. A lot of footage was
unusable because of his lack of experience.
But what he saw during his very first project –
the devastation brought by Typhoon Morakot –
sent him deciding to fully devote himself to the
environmental cause. He resigned from the civil
service job, formed a film company and started
looking for sponsors.