Uploaded 15 September 1998
Situated in downtown Taipei, five minutes walk from the central train station, the Taipei Archive is an invaluable resource for scholars interested in Chinese Film. The Archive was founded by the Motion Picture Development Foundation with the assistance of the Government Information Office in 1978, and then the archive became a foundation itself in 1991. It was the commitment of the historian and restorer, Professor Ray Jing, to the preservation of Chinese film, especially films made in Taiwan, that led to this remarkable collection. Professor Jing’s successor as Director of the Archive, Edmund K.Y. Wong, is a teacher, writer and critic. His work spans theater as well as film, giving him a widely informed perspective on cultural production in contemporary Taiwan.
The Archive is a private foundation, but is seeking public support in order to survive. The collection needs constant maintenance to preserve old film stock, posters, and stills. Money and space are urgently required, ideally from government funding and support, but any donations or ideas from other sources would also be welcomed. The situation looked hopeful in 1997, when a government grant of $1,000,000 ($33,000,000 New Taiwanese) allowed the Archive to proceed with the restoration of Mandarin and Taiwanese dialect films from the 1960s and 1970s. The Archive is currently pushing for the establishment of a mandatory deposit system, whereby they would receive a copy of every new film produced in Taiwan. In addition to its central commitment to restoration and preservation of Mandarin and dialect films, the Archive manages to offer a comfortable and friendly viewing service for local residents and scholars. International visitors are also made welcome, and given whatever help they require in selecting films to view. Membership is on a six monthly or annual basis, and includes a subscription to the in house journal Film Appreciation.
A beautifully produced and scholarly magazine, the journal reflects and enhances other in-house activities: festivals, courses, programs. Recent issues include: “Japanese Film masters in melodrama”; “Jarman vs. Greenaway, the directors who paint on screen”; and “Transcendentalism, Ozu, Bresson, and Dreyer.” The Chinese documentary scholar, Lu Hsin Yu, recently gave a talk at the Archive, as did the French director, Alain Robbe-Grillet. So, this is a lively, intellectual space for film scholars to use and enjoy. It is run by enthusiasts, who are also, crucially, professionals. Their engagement with film is reflected in the holdings, which cover fifty years of Taiwanese film production, as well as a fair sample of Chinese mainland films (from before and after 1949), Hong Kong productions from the past thirty years, and an eclectic and intelligent collection of non-Chinese language titles. The Taiwanese collection is the most important, as it represents a film industry which is generally under-represented elsewhere.
Familiar names, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang, are there – but in sometimes unfamiliar guises. The titles, Yang’s A Brighter Summer’s Day, Hou’s A City of Sadness, Puppetmaster, which went international in the 1980s and 1990s, are here supplemented with early shorts and first features. (The great discovery, for me, was Hou’s short, Sandwich Man (His Son’s Big Doll [1983].) As always, access to directors’ complete works allows one to construct a perspective on their interests and development, as well as a firmer understanding of their thematic focus. The 1980s filmmakers’ innovations, or rather their responsiveness to changing historical contingency, is much easier understood when viewed alongside films of the 1950s and 1960s. Romantic adaptations – often of popular novels – are filmed with a rather plastic sense of history, and landscape, happening elsewhere.
The main difference between new Taiwanese film and the films of the 1950s and 1960s is that the real interest in the earlier films is in a particular version of Chinese history. In the 1970s and 1980s new wave films the interest shifts to contemporary Taiwainese realities. So, in Wanchun Grows Up (Li Hsing, 1965), the eponymous beauty and her suitors are involved in southern skirmishes for national unity, and two end up training as officers in the National Military Academy in Shanghai. Liuying de Erzi (Ma Hsuwei, 1958) is an urban streetkid-musical (for want of a better genre) but again one that relies heavily on a fantasy – read studio – Mainland cityscape.
Having seen these films it is enormously exciting to find Taiwanese filmmakers in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s who are really concerned with Taiwan as a social landscape with cinematic potential. Working in various systems of higher education, we, and our employers, rely on the services of enthusiastic professionals such as Ray Jing and Edmund Wong. Unfortunately, however, there is often little governmental (financial) appreciation of their contribution to the international community of scholars. As my own work has been facilitated through the Archive’s holdings, I am keen to advertise it widely.
For further information, contact :
Chinese Taipei Film Archive,
F4 No 7 Ching-tao East Road,
Taipei, Taiwan, ROC,
telephone (02) 23924243,
fax (02) 23926359,
contact: Teresa Huang.
Dr. Stephanie Donald,
School of Media Culture and Communication,
Murdoch University, Western Australia