Producer , Executive Producer

Peggy CHIAO is a famous film scholar, author of 45 film books. She is now an important film producer, and was the pushing hand behind the Taiwan New Cinema movement in the 1980s. In late 1980s she helped establishing the China Times Express Film Awards to encourage young Taiwanese filmmakers. In 1993, with the government funding, she founded an year-round “Film Year” activities to help promote Taiwanese films and to train professional film personnel in the fields of producing, directing, sound engineering, animation and make-up. Important young filmmakers such as LIN Cheng-seng(林正盛), CHEN Yu-Hsun(陳玉勳) and HSIAO Ya-Chuan(蕭雅全) were students at the time. CHIAO also presented 16 retrospective showing of different topics of Taiwanese and Chinese cinema, as well as published four books of Taiwanese film history in the same year. In the following year, to continue her effort in promoting Taiwanese cinema, she set up Taiwan Film Center(台灣電影中心). It had helped many international film festivals in different continents in showing Taiwanese film programs. Ms. CHIAO is also constantly invited to attend and to represent Taiwanese cinema in international film festivals in the world. She is now concentrating her energy both in teaching graduate students of filmmaking at Taipei National University of the Arts and producing feature films and television serials. She wrote the script for Stanley KWAN’s (關錦鵬)“Centre Stage”(阮玲玉) and produced two personal documentaries on the return of Hong Kong to China by KWAN and Ann HUI(許鞍華). She also produced “Homesick Eyes,”(望鄉) HSU Hsiao-ming’s(徐小明) documentary film on Thai migrant workers, and “HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien” by French director Olivier ASSAYAS. In 1996 she founded Arc Light Films(吉光電影公司). It has produced “Betelnut Beauty” (愛你愛我directed by LIN Cheng-seng, winner of the Best Director Award at Berlin Film Festival) and “Beijing Bicycle” (十七歲的單車directed by Wang Xiaoshuai王小帥, winner of the Silver Bear Jury Prize at Berlin Film Festival). YEE Chih-yen’s (易智言) “Blue Gate Crossing” (藍色大門) is also an Arc Light Production, and winner of many international awards. Currently Peggy CHIAO is producing “Pigeon,”(五月之戀) a film by HSU Hsiao-ming, about how a young boy and a mid-age man bumped into each other and discovered something missing from their life, and “Shanghai Babe,” a film about a group of pretty Shanghai girls who use their looks and English ability to pick up foreigners, directed by Chinese young filmmaker, Jia Zhangke(賈樟柯). The two films are part of a six-film project by Arc Light collectively titled “Tales of Three Cities” (三城記). The project recruited directors from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China to make films about the current situations in those three areas. Other films in the project include “People Exchange” directed by Hong Kong director Yu Lik-wai (余力為) and Hsu Hsiao-ming’s “Wandering to Tamsui” (流浪到淡水), a look at the gap that separates the old and young, and also urban and rural people. Through the project, CHIAO has expanded the scope of her career to be a producer bent on expanding the market for Chinese-language films. She is hoping to help nurturing the next generation of filmmakers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China.