Taiwan’s recent situation and the future of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry are facing major challenges. At this critical moment, director Xiao Juzhen, who has won two consecutive Golden Horse Awards for Best Documentary Awards, took five years to launch his latest masterpiece “Orangemaker – The Bet of the Century”. The official poster of the documentary was released today, which also revealed the story: How Taiwan, a small island that only covers two-tenth of the earth's land area, gains global dependence and attention with its chips, and how the semiconductor industry has gone from scratch to the world's number one story. The title of the film “Originator” is written by the famous calligrapher Dong Yangzi. It is rich and powerful, as if it also outlines the determination of Taiwanese people to not admit defeat or give up in the face of turbulent situations.
Looking back at the shooting process, director Xiao Juzhen admitted that this documentary was the first time since she made the documentary that she had faced such an unsettling but unsatisfactory subject. Whether it was the shooting that was in a turbulent competition in the global semiconductor industry, or the technological confrontation that extended the U.S.-China trade war, AI applications emerged later in the shooting, and even encountered a greater global crisis during the post-production period. Faced with the ever-changing challenges, she asked herself more than once: “If I could predict all the difficulties Taiwan would face at this time five years ago, would I dare to shoot this topic back then?”
When the director faces a series of filming pressures, she always remembers that half a century ago, when the country was in trouble, a group of people carried the national flag and shouldered the task with the determination and courage to protect their country… This story once moved her and also led to the shooting of this documentary. Therefore, she always convinced herself not to compromise easily because she knew that “this history cannot be forgotten! It is not just a story about Taiwan's semiconductors, but also a difficult path for the island of Taiwan in the face of survival.” She also thanked Shi Qintai, former director of the Institute of Engineering Research Institute, and two producers with a background in technology, Chen Tianshun and Jiang Xianbin, to complete the documentary.
