Taiwan Movies
Mauricette Atencio
From the late Japanese colonial period to martial law in Taiwan, the development of Taiwanese film was dominated by the official camp studio development. The film produced during that stage was mainly news footage taken by the government-run studio (Taiwan film companies, the Central Motion Picture Corporation, China Film Studio) and political propaganda. Even today, the Taiwanese government maintains a "Film Fund" to financially support the film industry of the country. The fund is somewhat controversial yet is still well supported.
After the documentary about Taiwan's traumatic earthquake in 1999 Life (生命, 2004) garnered then record-high 30,000,000NT at the box office, documentary films from Taiwan have also become more popular. The development of Taiwanese documentaries began after lifting of martial law in 1987 and the rise in popularity of small electronic camcorders, as well as the support and promotion provided by the Taiwan Council for Cultural Affairs. Documentaries also receive support from other government agencies and private corporations. A variety of film festivals and awards have been established to encourage the production of documentaries.
Taiwanese documentaries often deal with themes related to the filmmaker or their family, and explore serious social or political issues. These documentaries have started to gain international attention gradually, and many have gone on to win awards at international film festivals.
The first film was introduced into Taiwan by Toyojirō Takamatsu (高松豊次郎; see 高松豐次郎) in 1901. Taiwanese cinema was the first, and from 1900 to 1937, one of the most important of Japan's colonial film markets during the era of Japanese rule. In 1905, Takamatsu raised 10,000 Japanese yen in donations to the Japanese military from the proceeds of films screened in Taiwan about the Russo-Japanese War. By 1910, the Taiwan Colonial Government coordinated the efforts of independent filmmakers such as Takamatsu and others to establish a more organized approach to the production of film in the colony of Taiwan. Films played a vital role in enabling the larger colonial project of imperialization or cultural assimilation of Taiwanese subjects into the Japanese empire. The first silent film produced in Taiwan was An Introduction to the Actual Condition of Taiwan, a propaganda documentary that Takamatsu directed in 1907.[3] Takamatsu noted that early films were produced mostly for Japanese audiences rather than for local Taiwanese. Hence, early films tended to be educational in nature, lauding Japan's modernizing presence on the island. Other films catered to Japanese audiences exotic desires for Taiwan as a place of adventure and danger such as Conquering Taiwan's Native Rebels (1910) and Heroes of the Taiwan Extermination Squad (1910).[4]
Unlike Japanese-occupied Manchuria, Taiwan never became an important production market for Japan but rather was a vital exhibition market. Japanese-produced newsreels, shorts, educational, and feature films were widely circulated throughout Taiwan from the mid-1920s through 1945 and even after decolonization. As in Japan's other colonial film markets, the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 marked the beginning of an era of enhanced mobilization for the Japanese war effort throughout Asia and Taiwan's film markets were purged of American and Chinese films as a result. The Japanese strove to transform the locals into Japanese citizens, giving them Japanese names, a Japanese education, encouraging them to wear Japanese clothes and the men to cut their long hair. Films such as Japanese Police Supervise a Taiwanese Village (1935) illustrated how "proper" imperial subjects should dress and act as well as promoting their superior farming skills thanks to the Japanese overlords.[8] Taiwanese directors would vividly revisit the legacy of this process of cultural annexation in such films as Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness (1989) and The Puppetmaster (1993), as well as Wu Nien-jen's A Borrowed Life (1994).[9]
Taiwanese cinema grew again after 1949, when the end of the Chinese civil war brought many filmmakers sympathetic to the Nationalists to Taiwan. Even then, the majority of films were still made in Taiwanese Hokkien and this continued for many years, with over a thousand Taiwanese-language films being made from 1956 to 1981.[10] In 1962, out of a total of 120 films produced, only seven were made in Mandarin; the rest were made in Taiwanese. However, the production of films in Taiwanese began to decline due to a variety of reasons, ranging from limited scope and waning interest for such films, to the Nationalist government's promotion of Standard Chinese in mass media and its deeming of Taiwanese as too "coarse". In 1969, more films were produced in Mandarin than in Taiwanese in the country for the first time.[10] The last movie filmed entirely in Taiwanese was made in 1981.
The 1960s marked the beginning of Taiwan's rapid modernization. The government focused strongly on the economy, industrial development, and education, and in 1963 the Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC; see 中影公司) introduced the "Health Realism" melodrama. This film genre was proposed to help build traditional moral values, which were deemed important during the rapid transformation of the nation's socioeconomic structure. During this time, traditional kung fu films as well as romantic melodramas were also quite popular. The author Chiung Yao is especially famous for the movies made in this time period which were based on her widely read romantic novels.
By the early 1980s, the popularity of home video made film-watching a widespread activity for the Taiwanese. However, the Taiwanese film industry faced serious challenges, including the entry of Hong Kong films into the Taiwanese market. In order to compete with Hong Kong films, the CMPC began an initiative to support several fresh, young directors. In 1982, the film In Our Time (1982), which featured four young talented directors (Edward Yang, Te-Chen Tao, I-Chen Ko, and Yi Chang), began what would be known as the rejuvenation of Taiwanese cinema: the New Taiwanese Cinema.
In contrast to the melodrama or kung-fu action films of the earlier decades, New Taiwanese Cinema films are known for their realistic, down-to-earth, and sympathetic portrayals of Taiwanese life. These films sought to portray genuine stories of people living either in urban or rural Taiwan, and are often compared stylistically to the films of the Italian neorealism movement. This emphasis on realism was further enhanced by innovative narrative techniques. For example, the conventional narrative structure which builds the drama to a climax was abandoned and the story progressed at the pace as it would in real life.
Due to its honest portrayal of life, New Taiwanese Cinema films examined many of the important issues facing Taiwanese society at the time, such as urbanization, the struggle against poverty, and conflicts with political authority. For instance, Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness portrays the tensions and the conflicts between the local Taiwanese and the newly arrived Chinese Nationalist government after the end of the Japanese occupation. Chen Kunhou's 1983 film Growing Up provides a nuanced perspective on the experience of a very young boy, from an ordinary family, getting into progressively more trouble. Edward Yang's Taipei Story (1985) and A Confucian Confusion (1994) talk about the confusion of traditional values and modern materialism among young urbanites in the 1980s and 1990s. His nearly four-hour film A Brighter Summer Day (1991), considered by many to be his masterpiece and the defining work of the New Taiwanese Cinema, deals with Taiwan's struggle in the 1960s to find its identity after the Kuomintang took control of Taiwan and brought numerous Chinese immigrants to the new republic, who expected to return to China once the Communists had been defeated.[11] The New Taiwanese Cinema films therefore create a fascinating chronicle of Taiwan's socio-economic and political transformation in modern times.
The New Taiwanese Cinema gradually gave way to what could be informally called the Second New Wave, which are slightly less serious and more amenable to the populace, although just as committed to portraying the Taiwanese perspective.
For example, Tsai Ming-liang's Vive L'Amour, which won the Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice Film Festival, portrays the isolation, despair, and love of young adults living in the upscale apartments of Taipei. Stan Lai's The Peach Blossom Land (1992) is a tragi-comedy involving two groups of actors rehearsing different plays on the same stage; the masterful juxtaposition and the depth of the play's political and psychological meanings helped it win recognition at festivals in Tokyo and Berlin.
Taiwanese cinema faced difficult times competing with Hollywood blockbusters in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Box office for local films dwindled to less than 20 films annually and many Taiwanese viewers preferred watching Hong Kong or Hollywood productions, causing the country's film industry to be dominated by foreign repertoire.[citation needed] Taiwan's film industry went into decline in 1994 and collapsed in 1997 because of the growing popularity of movie piracy.[12] The high box office takings of Cape No. 7 (2008) by Wei Te-sheng and Taiwanese films after 2008 proved that the local film industry had recovered from its slump. Cape No. 7 was so popular in Taiwan that on 1 November 2008 it became its highest grossing domestic film, second in the country's cinematic history to Titanic (1997). It raked in 530 million TWD (US$17.9 million) domestically, setting an all-time box office record for a Taiwanese film, and is currently the highest grossing Taiwanese domestic film of all time.[13] It has won 15 awards to date, such as The Outstanding Taiwanese Film of the Year at the 45th Golden Horse Awards in 2008.
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