A Preliminary Study of the Market for Documentaries in Taiwan

Foreign guests were surprised by the long line waiting to see documentary films during the 1998 and 2000 Taiwan International Film Festival. It was obviously an indication that audiences in Taiwan yearned for documentaries, especially those from abroad. Moreover, in the years between 2004 and 2006, documentary films and videos such as Gift of Life , Viva Tonal — The Dance Age, Jump! Boys , and The Last Rice Farmer had made it into the commercial cinemas in direct competition with domestic and foreign feature films, and had outperformed most Taiwanese feature films at the box office.