Experiencing “Internationalized precarity” in inter-Asian film production: A case study of Seediq Bale

Abstract

Seediq Bale, one of the most expensive and most successful inter-Asian co-productions in Taiwanese film history, received attention locally and internationally for its cinematic quality and theme. During the film’s production, Taiwanese, Japanese, South Korean, and ethnically Korean Chinese crewmembers worked together. How did these film workers experience precarity in the highly international and cross-border production of Seediq Bale? Based on the author’s on-site participant observation and interviews with film workers between 2009 and 2011, the current study explains the ways in which crewmembers experience precarity—such as insecurity in border-crossing and networking—in the labor process of a Taiwan-based inter-Asian film production. The article explores the international dimensions of precarious labor, or “internationalized precarity,” in the film’s production, evidenced by the heavily freelance- and network-based work and by how film workers cope. This research contributes to media production studies vis-à-vis labor studies by demonstrating how precarity is intensified and negotiated in an internationalized, precarious production site in Asia.