Back to the year of 2008, the Taipei Film Festival was entering its tenth year, and the Festival organisation kicked off a trophy redesign process of the Taipei Film Festival to symbolize a significant milestone in the history of Taiwanese film. With Taiwan’s heavyweight film director Wang Toon, who has won the Golden Horse Award for Best Art Design Award, is also the original concept creator of the Taipei Film Festival logo, and Documentary Director Hsiao Chu-chen, who has won the Golden Horse Award for best documentary for two consecutive years, serving together as the trophy design leaders, design director Silvio Huang of FONTANA, Master of Product Design at DUMOS in Milan, Italy, was invited to design the trophy and to implement the production in order to create a brand-new image of the Taipei Film Festival. At that time, Janine Chang, who served as the film ambassador in 2008, believed that Taiwanese films will take off again, just like the logo butterfly of the Taipei Film Festival will become more beautiful and move towards transformations. This belief has been once again pointed out by the Director Wang Toon joyfully at the 2021 Taipei Film Awards, that the most beautiful butterfly from Taiwan is the most appropriate symbol for Taiwanese films. The metamorphosis process of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly is painful, just like the painstaking journey of filmmaking. Nowadays, Taiwan’s film genres are so diverse that they have all appeared like butterflies at the Taipei Film Festival over the years. He is deeply gratified by the amazing transformations and displays every year.
The golden trophy rises from a pentagonal base, rotates, and transforms into a shining star, symbolizing the brilliance of the film industry. With the gesture of flapping wings, this design follows Film Director Wang Toon’s visionary butterfly image for the Taipei Film Festival and makes his dream come true. When the butterfly is reflected on the starlight mirror, reality and illusion are mapped to each other, capturing the intertwined nature of illusion and reality of the film, and that moment becomes eternal in an instant. Holding the rotating part of the trophy when winning the prize means receiving the blessing of having the courage to grasp the transformation.