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ArchivesPutting It on Film
 An exhibit of Peinan culture at the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung, eastern Taiwan. Taiwan: A People’s History from 2007 examined local life from prehistory to modern-day Taiwan. (Photo by Chang Su-ching) A new book examines the development of documentary filmmaking in Taiwan. Taiwanese documentary filmmaking has thrived over the past 20 years, yet scholars have been slow to incorporate the study of the genre into their research agendas. Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries begins to remedy this scholarly dearth, filling a gap in film studies and Taiwan studies in particular. The volume was spawned by an American Council of Learned Scholars-funded workshop titled Documenting Taiwan on Film held at the University of Oregon in the United States in the summer of 2009. Documenting Taiwan on Film is the ninth volume to appear in the Routledge Research on Taiwan series, an indication of the growing significance of Taiwan studies in Anglophone scholarly research. The latest addition gives an indication of the success of the development of documentary filmmaking in Taiwan and the healthy pluralism of Taiwanese opinions on a variety of historical and contemporary issues, but also raises questions about recent developments in Taiwanese documentary filmmaking and society in general. The introduction by editors Tze-lan D. Sang (桑梓蘭), an associate professor of Chinese at the University of Oregon, and Sylvia Li-chun Lin (林麗君), an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, is especially helpful for tracing the history of Taiwanese documentaries and introducing the eight chapters that follow. Sang and Lin find that the history of documentary filmmaking in Taiwan is telling of the relations between the Taiwanese people and their government. The earliest traditions of documentary filmmaking in Taiwan developed during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945). Following the First Sino-Japanese War and Japan seizing control of Taiwan, Japanese colonial authorities produced films documenting the Japanese empire’s feats in bringing progress to their new territory and of Taiwan’s benefits for the Japanese homeland. After the end of World War II, the Kuomintang (KMT) government continued the tradition of official promotion, using documentaries for National Day celebrations and in extolling public works projects. 
A still from Viva Tonal: The Dance Age. Critics question the film’s emphasis on nostalgia given its backdrop of Japanese colonial rule. (Photo by Public Television Service Foundation) Documenting Taiwan on Film takes issue with these official, unproblematic portrayals of Taiwan during the colonial period and first decades of KMT rule. Sang and Lin find the origins of a modern, critical Taiwanese documentary film tradition in the mid-1980s and the era of political democratization. The seminal event in the genesis of a diagnostic, unofficial documentary filmmaking tradition was the unauthorized return of dissident Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) in November 1986. Hsu had been living in exile in the United States following the Kaohsiung Incident on December 10, 1979 (Human Rights Day), during which pro-democracy demonstrators and government forces clashed. The videotaped record of Hsu’s arrival at the airport in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan by the “Green Team” opposition media was instrumental in demonstrating that government forces provoked violence at the airport, not the thousands who had come to witness Hsu’s return. The underground media group supported democratization in Taiwan through documentation of government repression. The Green Team’s guerilla style of filmmaking resulted in the production of videotapes that allowed the opposition to contradict the government’s official story of the episode. Green Team videos also publicized opposition candidates. As Lin and Sang explain, “Green Team’s pioneering documentary endeavor not only helped hasten the demise of the Nationalist government’s authoritarian, one-party rule but also breathed new life into documentary filmmaking in Taiwan.” Democracy, Documentary Just as democracy benefited by documentary filmmaking, Taiwan’s democratization allowed the genre to flourish as filmmakers chose to produce films on formerly taboo subjects. These included the 228 Incident—the February 28, 1947 anti-government uprising that was violently repressed by the KMT government—and the White Terror era, during which political repression and martial law continued into the 1980s. The trend toward finding indigenous Taiwanese subjects within academia accelerated, allowing for novel, local topics for film documentaries. The genre of documentary filmmaking has thrived as independent film producers have taken up the calling and the Public Television Service has provided funding and a viewing platform. Moreover, the biennial Taiwan International Documentary Festival gives documentary filmmakers a chance for recognition. 
As a record of the lives of three elderly farmers in a small agricultural town, Let It Be: The Last Rice Farmers raises issues about authenticity and the “real” Taiwan. (Photo by Public Television Service Foundation) Yet, despite a generation of Taiwanese documentary filmmakers having thrived under an increasingly democratic political system and greater interest in Taiwanese topics, the genre still faces challenges, some inherent, others specific to circumstances in Taiwan. Documenting Taiwan on Film does a masterful job of understanding both the accomplishments and strengths of locally made documentaries and these problematic aspects. In the eight chapters that follow the introduction, individual scholars—all based in either Taiwan or the United States—provide perspectives on Taiwanese documentaries, mostly by focusing on one particular documentary as representative of a distinctive trend within Taiwanese documentary filmmaking. The first three chapters of Documenting Taiwan on Film deal with problems of historical reinterpretation and the role of history in the nation’s contest for identity. Taiwan, which saw multiple waves of settlement and was colonized a number of times before KMT rule began in 1949, has several competing national identities. As one of the contributors notes, the questions of where the nation’s origin lies “and what counts as the Taiwanese people’s shared memory are all the more unsettled and pressing.” Lee Daw-ming (李道明), an associate professor in the School of Film and New Media at Taipei National University of the Arts, examines the making of the landmark historical documentary television series Taiwan: A People’s History (2007), a Public Television Service Foundation production for which he served for a time as production supervisor. Lee uses film theory—with definitions for the non-specialist—and provides well-known examples of North American historical documentaries to measure the relative success of Taiwan: A People’s History. Lee candidly elaborates on the difficulties associated with historical documentaries, including the constraints of time, an inherent elitist bias despite the noble attempt of trying to incorporate the perspective of ordinary people, and the simplicity of historical documentaries as compared with historical writing. Lee questions whether dramatization or narrative voice-over is better suited for historical documentaries. As resources ran short for the making of Taiwan: A People’s History and viewership was disappointing, with only about 32,000 viewers per episode, Lee has doubts about the success of the series. Yet the reader learns to appreciate Taiwan: A People’s History for attempting to indigenize Taiwanese history and for aiming at a broader audience. To be fair, written academic histories have similar problems of limited perspective and meager circulation. 
The biennial Taiwan International Documentary Festival provides a viewing platform for local directors. (Photo Courtesy of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts) Lin’s essay focuses on Why Don’t We Sing? (1996) directed by Guan Xiao-rong (關曉榮), a documentary on the period of White Terror, when the KMT arrested and tortured suspects for alleged pro-Communist or anti-government activities. Although sympathetic to the effort, Lin doubts whether Why Don’t We Sing? adequately represents the complexity of the White Terror. As Lin notes, “the film too is a victim of the White Terror, for the imposed collective amnesia that lasted four decades meant an unavoidable ignorance among many Taiwanese about their country’s past.” Interviewing victims and their families raises questions of culpability and reliability. In choosing to focus on the anti-Communist persecutions of the 1950s, Why Don’t We Sing? overlooks the repression that continued into the 1980s. Considering the duration of martial law in Taiwan, documentary historians have a long story to tell. Why Don’t We Sing? might form the first chapter in that story. Nostalgia and Identity Nostalgia in Taiwanese documentaries can be especially problematic given the fissures within Taiwanese perceptions of national identity. Sang examines Kuo Chen-ti’s (郭珍弟) Viva Tonal: The Dance Age (2003), a study of Taiwan’s popular music business in the 1930s and 1940s. The film focuses on the success of Columbia Records Co. in Taipei, the female singer Chun-chun (純純) and the songwriting of Chen Jun-yu (陳君玉) and includes interviews with surviving singers and company employees. The music industry in Taiwan was surprisingly successful, representing both local (Taiwanese language) and transnational (Japanese colonial, and globally successful) components. Viva Tonal tells of a 1930s colonial Taipei that appears modern and portrays Taiwanese women of the era as cosmopolitan and sophisticated. Sang provides a masterful discussion of the further possibilities for examining gender in colonial Taiwan. Viva Tonal’s emphasis on creative aspects of Japan’s imperial project in Taiwan was bound to garner controversy. As Sang notes, “Linked to political discontent, nostalgia in recent Taiwanese discourse has often worked to undermine the legitimacy of the Chinese Nationalist regime through an idealization or retroactive lionization of Japanese colonial rule.” As Sang points out, despite an amazing list of colonial milestones achieved under Japanese rule, the modernity and prosperity of the 1930s had shallow roots in Taiwan. As acknowledged in Viva Tonal, the sophisticated cultural spaces of colonial Taiwan evaporated with the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the Pacific War in 1941 as the Japanese imperial authorities attempted to incorporate Taiwanese music into the war effort. The second half of Documenting Taiwan on Film addresses films that tackle contemporary social and political issues. Like documentaries dealing with Taiwan’s history, the film representation of contemporary Taiwanese identities and polemics raises questions and provokes controversy. The latter part of the volume also records a recent shift by Taiwanese documentary filmmakers away from films that are overtly political in nature. As Taiwan has modernized, Taiwanese have developed a “longing for authenticity” that has sometimes been satisfied by documentary films. Bert Scruggs, an assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Irvine, analyzes Let It Be: The Last Rice Farmers (2004) by directors Yen Lan-chuan (顏蘭權) and Jhuang Yi-zeng (莊益增). The film is a study of the lives of three elderly rice farmers in what is now Houbi District in Tainan City, southern Taiwan. Scruggs finds many complex images in Let It Be’s portrayal of rural Taiwan. Meant for urban viewers, douli bamboo hats and water buffalo provide symbols of the rural, “real Taiwan.” Scruggs explains that these images offer an imagined authenticity. The documentary provides “an experimental moment wherein the cinematographic and documentary representation of a vanishing community of cultivators cultivates an indigenizing, emerging Taiwanese community.” Yet Houbi District is not only a place of old-fashioned hard work and rural rhythms, but also pesticides and politics—a less idyllic place than city folks might envision. 
Members of the school sports team featured in the movie Jump! Boys at a practice in 2006. The feel-good movie contrasts with overtly political documentaries from the 1980s and 1990s. (Photo by Chang Su-ching) Hsiu-Chuang Deppman, an associate professor of Chinese at Oberlin College, Ohio, examines the 2005 documentary Jump! Boys. A story about training a boys’ gymnastics team, Jump! Boys was a local box-office hit. Deppman analyzes the aesthetics and ideology of Jump! Boys and finds the film to be more than just a feel-good story as the audience-friendly work also engages viewers using sophisticated techniques. As Deppman describes, the director, Lin Yu-hsien (林育賢), “makes film a medium of communal expression. He begins by being inclusive, speaking with coaches, gymnasts, parents, and teachers to make a positive emotional connection with the viewer.” While Lin and other young directors aspire to attract larger commercial audiences, in contrast with the political agenda of documentaries of the 1980s and 1990s, Deppman explains that the new generation’s films are also socially engaging, allowing for the civic involvement of viewers. Chiu Kuei-fen (邱貴芬), distinguished professor of Taiwanese literature and transnational cultural studies at National Chung Hsing University in Taichung, central Taiwan, examines the ethical questions involved in recent Taiwanese documentaries. After a generation of using documentaries to “provide a counter-vision to official narrative,” new issues have arisen to complicate documentary filmmaking. As Chiu explains, the relevant question has shifted from being one of subaltern studies—“How can I use my camera to represent them?”—to a matter of documentary ethics—“Should I put down the camera?” Chiu examines Hsiao Mei-ling’s (蕭美玲) film Somewhere over the Cloud (2007), a home video that documents the development of Hsiao’s daughter Elodie. Elodie’s father is French. After his return to France, a webcam becomes the means by which father and daughter communicate. The story is a complex one of machines, people and distance. Chiu notes that Somewhere over the Cloud represents the challenges and increased sophistication of contemporary Taiwanese documentary filmmaking, a movement that has become self-critical and aware of the problematic relationship between subject and filmmaker. The subject of Christopher Lupke’s essay is Tsui Shu-hsin’s (崔愫欣) Gongliao, How Are You? (2004). Tsui produced the film between 1998 and 2004 to record the opposition of ordinary Taiwanese in Gongliao, a township on Taiwan’s northeast coast, to the construction of Taiwan’s fourth nuclear power plant. Lupke, an associate professor of Chinese and film studies at Washington State University, addresses the film’s reflexive techniques and motivation to raise awareness of the dangers of nuclear power. In Tsui’s account, neither of Taiwan’s biggest political parties appears to address the safety concerns of the people of Gongliao. Her documentary expands the politicized films of the 1980s and 1990s into a more sophisticated realm. Although admiring of Tsui’s goals, Lupke notes that Gongliao, an advocacy film, does not try to present all sides of the argument, as the documentary dismisses the economic reasons for building nuclear plants in resource-bereft countries like Taiwan. Narrow, Frivolous, Narcissistic 
Jump! Boys was a hit at local box offices, a surprising feat for a documentary. (Photo Courtesy of Lin Yu-hsien) Kuo Li-hsin (郭力昕), an associate professor in the Department of Radio and Television at Taipei’s National Chengchi University (NCCU), provides the harshest reproach to Taiwanese filmmakers of any of the authors in Documenting Taiwan on Film. The professor, who seems to long for the hard-edged, guerilla political documentaries of the 1980s and 1990s, says recent Taiwanese documentaries, with their sentimentalism and depoliticized humanitarianism, “help construct and reinforce Taiwan as an inward-looking society, further isolated from international communities and with narrower concerns and visions.” In Kuo Li-hsin’s view, filmmakers have missed their opportunity to engage the public in questions that might result in positive institutional or societal change, but instead focus on overmatched individuals who triumph against the odds. “Stand-up-and-cheer” documentaries, as he calls them, mask the deeper problems in society and politics. Viewers escape into individual heroism, but problems remain, reinforcing Taiwanese society’s “incessant inward-looking tendencies, self-pity, and self-contentment.” As Kuo Li-hsin explains in his critique, recent documentaries have contributed to the “narrow, frivolous, and narcissistic navel-gazing vision” of contemporary Taiwan, where entertainments and diversions triumph over other concerns. In the professor’s view, politicians of both of Taiwan’s primary political parties have given their encouragement to nonpolitical documentaries, happy to foster complacency: “Not only are these sorts of elements or messages harmless and safe to the ruling class and the state, but the overemphasis on human tenacity or victims’ perseverance helps divert the viewer’s attention away from the government’s political responsibilities,” he writes. Given the conformist tendencies of modern society and the Taiwanese younger generation’s alienation from politics, the NCCU professor’s argument will resonate with some readers. The editors of Documenting Taiwan on Film believe that one should not study the growth of Taiwanese documentaries in isolation from global trends. The authors’ awareness of international, particularly North American, precedents in filmmaking adds to the chapters. The non-Taiwanese reader is thus given the chance to understand Taiwan’s burgeoning documentary film tradition alongside more familiar examples, such as Baseball (1994) or The Civil War (1990) by well-known American documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. A welcomed filmography lists Taiwanese documentaries, with names in English translation, romanized Chinese and Chinese characters, along with the foreign documentaries referenced. As the editors note, other nations less advanced in critical documentary filmmaking or more reluctant to address authoritarian legacies should be inspired by the Taiwanese example. “These chapters and the films examined address a variety of subject matter that is not only unique to Taiwan but also relevant to the larger community of documentary filmmakers,” they write. Documenting Taiwan on Film includes a basic chronology of Taiwanese history, an indication of the documentary genre’s importance to understanding the nation’s past as well as a reminder of the growth of the genre in relation to historical change. Documenting Taiwan on Film is a sophisticated, yet readable, foundation for Taiwanese film studies, useful to scholars yet accessible to general readers interested in Taiwanese culture. The proliferation of documentary films in Taiwan bespeaks the nation’s tremendous progress toward a healthy, pluralistic society, albeit one with a few problems. Like the documentaries themselves, Documenting Taiwan on Film provides insight into Taiwanese society and history and raises questions as to how one might best document the history of a vibrant, sometimes contentious society. ____________________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Eaton |
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