Red Sea Film Festival; Taiwan’s Funding & Global Production Hub Status: Part Two

As promised, this edition of Streamlined concludes a two-part deep dive into Taiwan, looking at series production; reasons behind the soft power push; and what Taiwan is wisely not doing as it positions itself as a global production hub. The first part focused on co-production funding for features.

I’ve just returned from Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and will talk more about the festival’s funding activities in the next edition of Streamlined. This week, I’m only going to mention the presence of a large number of Hollywood stars at the festival, which was honestly quite jarring given that the death toll in Palestine and Israel is approaching 20,000.

But it also raised questions (for me anyway) about the future value of Hollywood talent. Coming out of the SAG-AFTRA strike, these actors must be starved of cash and exposure and badly needed the fees and flashbulbs provided by the festival (irony alert). But what surprised me is how packed the masterclasses w…