I’ve been preparing for the pride parade in Taiwan for months, if you include the time I spent filming and practicing at the Chicago Pride Parade in the late spring. Taipei has hosted a pride parade for 17 years now, it’s the biggest in East Asia. This year was different. 2019 marked the first year that Taiwan has legalized same-sex marriage drawing supporters of the LGTBQ+ community and members from Taiwan and other countries alike to celebrate the win. The ’18 pride parade was attended by 20,000 people. The MC of this year’s event however, announce the crowds that came this year was not what they expected. Past participation nearly doubled causing the event to at times seem a little unorganized. I wanted to document the Taiwanese LGBTQ+ community on how the legalization of same-sex marriage has impacted their lives, so I decided filming the event would be a good place to start.
There was a lot more preparation required for filming at Taipei’s pride parade rather than Chicago’s. For starters, I panicked because I didn’t know what I would be considered if I attended the parade with the intent to film and if I needed another visa or form of verification to film. Was I the equivalent of a Youtuber trying to make a small documentary, a student filmmaker (even though I really am not a student at all anymore- weird right?), or was I a professional if you took into account the year I worked on a documentary and commercials and label myself as a sort of professional? This resulted in me reaching out to not only to the Taipei Film Office, who were very kind, but also past producers I’ve worked with who have experience producing abroad. I came to the conclusion that as long as I wasn’t in anyone’s way, that I could film without a receiving different visa. Seeing as my project is almost a one person show, with the amazing help of Sean and his amazing Chinese teachers, I didn’t think it would be a “professional” production at all.
The next hurdle was the need to translate any question I wanted to ask into Chinese and become familiar enough that I could pronounce them correctly and hopefully ask without reading off a sheet of paper. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Originally, I had been so excited. A speaker and alumni of Sean’s Chinese program at the National Taiwan University works in broadcast, specializing in simultaneous translation. To top it off we checked out his Instagram and found he was either an ally or member of the LGBTQ+ community and fully supported the legalization of same-sex marriage. We emailed multiple times. Sending over a project summary, a statement of purpose, list of equipment we had available, and my own resume we gave him everything to make an informed decision to work with us. After meeting with Sean at a coffeeshop in which only Chinese was spoken, we received a sad email. Although the man supported and loved our idea, he didn’t think that he had the “available time” to contribute to the project. I understand where he was coming from. He works a broadcast job and translates for evets at National Taiwan University when he can; a small documentary would just add a lot to that. I kept trying to convince him asking only for his assistance during the pride parade for the interviews, but in the end he wasn’t able to participate with us.
Sean wasn’t about to give up on finding someone or at the very least finding someone to help us. When both his classmates decided to take separate vacations over the course of a week leaving Sean the only student, he used those classes to translate and check our interview questions. The teachers were so helpful to look over everything multiple times, multiple drafts, and even checking that we were utilizing colloquial LGBTQ+ terms that would not upset any possible interview subjects. My own Chinese teacher helped me develop a short introduction of myself and the project that I could say while I asked parade goers if I could interview them. I spent every night of the week leading up to the parade pouring over the questions (9 questions in all with multiple parts).
I packed my bags for Taipei before school, double checking I had every piece of equipment. I had my camera, external hard drive, charging cables, three batteries, three different lenses (you get the idea). I even packed the new microphone that was bought specifically for these interviews so improve our audio quality that I had been practicing with. There was no way I could carry anything more with me on the 4.5 hour train.
The morning finally came. The parade started officially at 1:30, with the “Rainbow Market” (a square of shops offering rainbow paraphernalia and information on gay right advocacy groups) opening at 12:00. Having learned my lesson at the Chicago Pride Parade with the crowds, I decided to get to the parade way before it officially opened. I left around 10:00 for Taipei City Hall, the starting point, to get as many interviews as possible before the event officially started. The first couple interviews were a little awkward as I worked out the kinks of the new mic, the camera settings, and the focus. The more interviews we did the better we were at asking the questions. We faced one big challenge: every so often the audio would cut out while the subject was talking. Seeing as it is a new mic we couldn’t tell if it was the mic losing its connection with the wireless receiver attached to the camera which can happen due to the close proximity to other wireless equipment, or if it was the headphones plugged into the unit that was disconnecting. In the best decision of the day we switched to my old mic, trusting that although the quality isn’t as good as the new mic, it was definitely more reliable.
We interviewed people in the parade, those who traveled from other Asian countries to attend, and even some people who were participating for the first time. We tried to be as caring and open as we could, stopping any interview early if we though the subject was getting uncomfortable with our questions. We even made up some questions on the spot or took a different route to the questions if the subject was found to not by Taiwanese. The interview process gave me so much more confidence in my own speaking ability. Not only was I able to ask the questions without pulling out my “cheat sheet”, but I was also able to understand portions of their answers. I had created a “cheat sheet” in which all the translated questions were written only in characters, so if a subject couldn’t understand me or Sean I could pull it out and show them what I was attempting to say to them. So, you could say my Chinese is getting pretty good.
Once the parade actually started it was a much different experience. Instead of all the dancing and music blasting, which they had- it just wasn’t common, it was more like a political march. The was a blurred line between who was a parade attendee and who was “in” the parade. People from the street could just start marching and that’s sort of what it looked like. The impact seemed to be more dependent on the attendance and the actual political change that has been happening and less on the celebration of love. You still can’t have a gay pride parade without shirtless men or speedos, and Taipei delivered in that category as well. I believe the atmosphere and response of the parade goers to seem more like they were marching than celebrating might also be impacted by Asian tradition to be more reserved. Therefore, despite the seriousness of the supporters, they still had music and a balloon unicorn float as well to balance it out. It was a balance of Western ideas of gay pride and Eastern tradition. That is what Taiwan is, a mix of liberal ideals and eastern tradition coming together to create a country of support love and a deep history.
Taiwan’s President said is the best: “the legalization of gay marriage is a step towards a BETTER Taiwan.”
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