Episode Details

Vanessa Hope is the director of Invisible Nation, a documentary film that takes a look at the presidency of Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's first female president and events that happened during her tenure. We talked about what first brought Vanessa to Taiwan which meant that she was there in 1996 during the inauguration of Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan's first directly elected president. Then in 2016 after Vanessa came to Taiwan with an international delegation to observe Taiwan's presidential elections and witnessed the election of Tsai Ing-wen, she came up with the idea for a film about Tsai Ing-wen's presidency.

Related Links:

https://talkingtaiwan.com/invisible-nation-director-vanessa-hope-discusses-her-documentary-about-tsai-ing-wens-presidency-ep-284/

Vanessa's first feature length documentary, All Eyes And Ears examined relations between the U.S. and China through the stories of U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, his adopted Chinese daughter Gracie Mei, and blind legal advocate Chen Guangcheng.

When I asked Vanessa about her experience making a documentary film in China, she recounted a story that explained why she personally related to the backlash and pressure from China that Chou Tzu-yu, a Taiwanese member of a K-pop band has faced.

We also talked about the challenges in making Invisible Nation over a seven year period, Vanessa's personal motivations for making the film and where Invisible Nation is going to be screened in the near future.

Here's a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:

· What brought Vanessa to Taiwan and got her interested in Taiwan

· What Vanessa observed when she was in Taiwan for the inauguration of Lee Teng-hui, the first directly elected president of Taiwan

· The first time she dabbled in filmmaking

· How Vanessa wrote and recorded the podcast, Love Is a Crime, which tells the story of her family's connection to film

· The state of the film industry which Vanessa's husband Ted Hope writes about on Substack

· How Vanessa came up with the idea for the film, Invisible Nation

· Vanessa worked at the Council on Foreign Relations

· Vanessa came to Taiwan with an international delegation to observe Taiwan's presidential elections in 2016 and witnessed the election of Tsai Ing-wen

· How Vanessa secured a grant focused on women, peace and security

· How film producer Sylvia Feng helped Vanessa with submitting a proposal to President Tsai's office regarding her idea for a documentary film

· How they filmed an interview with Chen Chu before hearing an answer from President Tsai's office about the documentary film proposal

· How Vanessa originally envisioned working a film about Taiwan's first female president

· The backlash President Tsai received from China initially

· The discrimination that Taiwan faces internationally

· How Taiwan has been excluded from international organizations like the WHO, the United Nations, the Olympics and others

· How Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlighted concerns about the threat Taiwan faces from China

· How Xi Jinping has said that he will not renounce the use of force against Taiwan