TAIPEI - TAIWAN-BORN film director Ang Lee, known for such box office hits as Lust, Caution and Brokeback Mountain, is filming a comedy on Woodstock ahead of the landmark countercultural event's 40th anniversary, his spokesman said.

The film Taking Woodstock, based on a book by a man who allowed the hippie-dominated music festival to take place in 1969 before half a million fans, will be the director's first comedy and his third look at homosexuality.

Oscar-winning Lee is shooting the film with Focus Features near the Woodstock location in New York state with an eye toward releasing it next year, spokesman David Lee said.

The film follows the book Taking Woodstock, a True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life, by Elliot Tiber, who was instrumental in bringing the controversial concert of unprecedented scale to his region.

Lee found the movie theme when Tiber met him randomly in a San Francisco green room before a televised book promotion, said Mr Dan Bloom, a Taiwan-based writer who has interviewed sources close to the film.

'A lot of people are going to wonder how a guy born in Taiwan can do this,' Mr Bloom said. 'Ang Lee doesn't choose his movies. His movies choose him.'

Broadly speaking, Mr Bloom said, 'Taking Woodstock' is about sizing up one's own life and controlling one's own destiny.

Lee, 53, lives in the United States and has explored other symbols of Americana, such as cowboys in Brokeback Mountain and the comic book character Hulk in a movie of the same name. -- REUTERS