Taiwan’s LGBT Cinema Thrives as It Celebrates Marriage Equality

Jay Lin is the CEO of Taipei-based GagaOOLala, Asia’s first LGBT-focused film streaming platform.

Taiwan just held the largest, and possibly proudest, ever LGBT pride parade in Asia’s history.

On Saturday, October 26, over 200,000 people from the LGBT community marched from City Hall to the Presidential Office in the country’s capital, Taipei. It was the first time in the parade’s 17-year history that attendees marched between these two iconic monuments.

Organizers changed this year’s route not only to accommodate the vast number of people who will flood in from all over the region, but to say thank you to these two offices for their part in Taiwan’s landmark LGBT rights win earlier this year: In May, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to recognize same-sex marriages.

Thousands of same-sex couples have got married since the legislation, and LGBT people across the country have reported feeling more welcome among their family, friends, and society as a whole.

As Taiwan basks in the glory of its regional lead on human rights, its battle-hardened activists are also sharing knowledge and tactics with those campaigning for equality around the world. Furthermore, in a post-same-sex marriage Taiwan, LGBT-themed arts, culture and cinema is thriving like never before, cementing its place as a regional hub for LGBT creativity.

It was nearly impossible for most LGBT Taiwanese to imagine such a time in the sun as they prepared for pride last year. Taiwan was just about to hold referendums on whether to change the country’s Civil Code and bring genuine marriage equality to same-sex couples. Well-funded anti-LGBT groups had organized a petition to hold a nationwide poll on whether Taiwan should instead introduce a separate law, and curtail some of the rights full marriage equality could bring.

The LGBT community responded with record numbers last year. More than 100,000 pro-LGBT people came on the streets to push for equality. The LGBT community and allies made astonishing efforts and sacrifices to persuade voters to support the freedom to love. Many young LGBT Taiwanese came out to family and friends in an effort to counter the extensive misinformation put out by anti-LGBT groups on television, in the newspapers, and on social media.

Taiwan’s voters voted overwhelmingly against their LGBT community and in favor of a separate marriage law. Two years earlier, the country’s highest court had ruled failing to recognize same-sex marriages was unconstitutional and set a May 2019 deadline for government to rectify the situation. After a lot of wrangling in parliament, a compromise bill that afforded most of the rights of marriage provides was passed.

The LGBT community largely accepted the compromise, still licking their wounds from unprecedented negative attention in segments of the country’s press. And all evidence suggests that not only did Taiwan survive the battering of the last few years, for the most part, they also continue to thrive.

In the last few years, Taiwan became the largest exporter of queer cinema in Asia with more than 20 LGBT-centered feature films and series released since 2017. Among them are the mother-daughter documentary Small Talk (2017) awarded the Teddy Award for Best Documentary, and Dear Ex (2018), Taiwan’s entry this year for the Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards and globally distributed by Netflix.

The Teacher (2019).

Next month, The Teacher (2019), a feature film co-produced by the streaming platform GagaOOLala and which follows the fall-out after a Taiwan teacher openly voices support for marriage equality, will premiere at the Golden Horse awards—often dubbed the Chinese-language Oscars.

GagaOOLala, Asia’s first LGBT online streaming service, now offers more than 1,000 queer titles to 21 countries in the region. GagaOOLala is working with local cinematic talents to produce its own original content. In addition, the platform is working with international filmmakers to co-produce queer content from everywhere in the world with titles like the surrogacy documentary Made in Boise (US), the hook-up feature Boy Meets Boy (Spain, Germany), the BL sequel Present Still Perfect (Thailand) or the lesbian melodrama Matcha and Vanilla (Japan). In this month alone, it has released two stunning regional films.

Handsome Stewardess, a romantic-comedy featuring a good-looking tomboy Taiwanese lesbian who starts a new life as a flight attendant in Singapore, premiered in Taipei last week.

Gentleman Spa, meanwhile, was also released in time for pride. It depicts the daily life of an overweight janitor (at a Taiwanese gay massage parlor who falls in love with one of their customers.

The theme of this year’s pride parade in Chinese means “good neighbor.” As thousands of members of the region’s often-overlooked LGBT community marched in the streets, organizers wanted to emphasize that Taiwan’s LGBT community is as much a part of society as any neighbor.

Perhaps more significantly, Taiwan’s queer cinema boom is proof of what creativity people can achieve when you grant them the rights they have long deserved.

(All photos courtesy of GagaOOLala.)