Documenting Taiwan on Film

Issues and Methods in New Documentaries

Sylvia Li-chun Lin, Tze-lan Deborah Sang, Tze-Lan Deborah Sang

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136345432
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

To date, there is but a handful of articles on documentary films from Taiwan. This volume seeks to remedy the paucity in this area of research and conduct a systematic analysis of the genre. Each contributor to the volume investigates the various aspects of documentary by focusing on one or two specific films that document social, political and cultural changes in recent Taiwanese history. Since the lifting of martial law, documentary has witnessed a revival in Taiwan, with increasing numbers of young, independent filmmakers covering a wide range of subject matter, in contrast to fiction films, which have been in steady decline in their appeal to local, Taiwanese viewers. These documentaries capture images of Taiwan in its transformation from an agricultural island to a capitalist economy in the global market, as well as from an authoritarian system to democracy. What make these documentaries a unique subject of academic inquiry lies not only in their exploration of local Taiwanese issues but, more importantly, in the contribution they make to the field of non-fiction film studies. As the former third-world countries and Soviet bloc begin to re-examine their past and document social changes on film, the case of Taiwan will undoubtedly become a valuable source of comparison and inspiration. These Taiwanese documentaries introduce a new, Asian perspective to the wealth of Anglo-American scholarship with the potential to serve as exemplar for countries undergoing similar political and social transformations.

Documenting Taiwan on Film is essential reading for all those interested in Taiwan Studies, film studies and Asian cinema.

1

Introduction

Tze-lan D. Sang and Sylvia Li-chun Lin

On November 30, 1986, several thousand people gathered at the Taoyuan International Airport, near the Taiwanese capital city of Taipei, to welcome the unauthorized return of a dissident, Xu Xinliang, who had been exiled to the United States after the 1979 Formosa Incident.¹ They were met by fully armed police, MPs, and anti-riot tanks, standard regalia of a government crackdown on any large-scale public demonstration. In the crowd was a small group of young men, led by Wang Zhizhang, who called themselves Green Team (Lüse xiaozu), generally considered the only organized opposition media group during the martial law era.² Green Team recorded the Nationalist government’s heavy-handed manner of dealing with the opposition. Over the next few days, the official government-owned or - controlled media unanimously reported the scuffle as one of rioters attacking military police; Green Team’s video, however, showed the people to be the true victims of state-sponsored violence.

No one could have known at the time that Green Team’s documenting effort would mark the beginning of a new and sharper-edged style of Taiwanese documentary. One thing was clear, though: the video met with an unprecedentedly enthusiastic response from its audiences, which then spurred the group to make more documentaries on opposition movements, which they screened and sold at political rallies featuring candidates from the opposition camp. Ultimately, Green Team would go on to make 2,000 videotapes (in VHS), documenting and then presenting a narrative that directly contradicted the government’s version of events.

After Green Team’s unexpected success, documentary films began to enjoy increasing importance and popularity in Taiwan. These films capture images of Taiwan in its transformation from an agricultural island to a capitalist economy in the global market, as well as from an authoritarian system to democracy. It has taken two decades for the genre to change from a guerrilla type of filmmaking to one that includes nearly every kind of documentary film that has been made in the West. As a form of artistic expression (e.g. Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North), a medium to recapture historical memories (Ken Burns’s Civil War), or a vehicle for an activist agenda (Michael Moore’s Sicko), documentary films have long been the subject of scholarly study in America and the United Kingdom. By contrast, the field of Chinese studies has been slow in catching up, even though non-fiction film has become a favorite form among young filmmakers, owing partly to the recent advent of the handheld digital camera, particularly in Taiwan. The current volume will address this deficiency.³

Documentary filmmaking has a long history in Taiwan, beginning with the Japanese colonial government, which occupied Taiwan in 1895 after the Qing imperial court was defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War. As a means to advertise its imperial expansion and a demonstration of the enlightenment project of scientific knowledge, newsreels and, later, short documentary films on its newest territorial acquisition were produced for domestic consumption. After Japan’s surrender in World War II, Taiwan was turned over to the Nationalist government (of the Republic of China) in 1945, which, following the excolonizers’ lead, continued to make non-fiction films for various occasions, such as the National Day Celebration, and publicizing government projects. In its effort to consolidate power and ensure total control of the island populace, the Nationalist government instituted an intricate system of censorship and, as a result, its documentary films, more often than not, carry a propagandistic purpose of promoting the government’s agenda or presenting an unproblematic portrayal of Taiwanese society. It is only natural that such documentary films were relegated to a secondary position in the minds of film audiences and in Taiwan’s film history

The authorization rule of the Nationalisd government, paradoxically provided the oportunity of the revival of documenty films. Scholars have credited the resurgent popularity to social, cultural, and political changes occurring in post-martial-law Taiwan. The Nativist movement has helped promote the search for a native Taiwanese identity; the democratization process has prompted the reexamination of Taiwan’s history; and economic development and its concomitant problems have triggered an investigation of society’s underprivileged and marginalized. This new crop of films, often referred to as new Taiwanese documentaries, however, owe their resurgence in no small part to the serendipitous, seemingly accidental success of amateur documentarists. In the waning years of the martial law era, Taiwanese society witnessed an increasing number of mass protests against the government, sometimes escalating to the brutal beating of protestors. 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. Furthermore, it introduced a political and politicized angle that was heretofore unexplored territory. The subsequent years saw the emergence of non-fiction films dealing with such formerly taboo topics as the February 28 Incident and the White Terror.⁴

Following the Green Team’s lead, increasing numbers of young, independent filmmakers began to produce films that covered a wide range of subject matter, in contrast to fiction films, which have been in steady decline in their appeal to Taiwanese viewers (though there are recent signs of revitalization). Several factors have contributed to the growing popularity of documentary film as a creative, artistic project and as a form of entertainment. The launch of the Public Television Service has provided funding and screening venues for new documentary films; the biennial Taiwan International Documentary Festival has offered unknown filmmakers an opportunity for recognition; and the inclusion of documentary filmmaking in the education system has helped produce a new generation of young documentarists.⁵ Documentary films in Taiwan now have a relatively complete chain of operation, from the training of filmmakers to the funding of filmmaking to the screening of the final products.

With the advent of handheld digital cameras and democratization, documentary filmmakers have been able to tackle various issues stemming from Taiwan’s social, political, economic, and cultural changes: indigenous Taiwanese culture, education reform, gay and lesbian communities, the decline of agriculture and the fortunes of rice farmers, popular Taiwanese music in the colonial period, mass demonstrations, foreign guest workers, ecology, people with disabilities, Taiwanese businessmen and their families in Mainland China, and many more. Issues and controversies invariably arise regarding techniques and contents of such visual documentations of Taiwanese society. For instance, Happy or Not (2002, dir. Wu Tairen/Wu Jingyi), the chronicle of a single mother and her two mentally disabled children, was excoriated by a reviewer for the disrespectful treatment of the family. One of the main concerns was the question posed by the documentary filmmaker, who, according to the reviewer, lacked sophisticated knowledge of mental illness and tactful interviewing skills, resulting in the victimization of her social actors (interviewees). In another example, the highly acclaimed Viva Tonal—The Dance Age (2003, dir. Chien Wei-ssu and Kuo Chen-ti), represents on screen Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, when young men and women lived a “modern” life of dancing, singing, and coffee drinking. Some have considered Viva Tonal to be a moving documentary that rescues “cultural legacies and historical memories from oblivion,” while others have criticized it for glorifying the period by not dealing with the Japanese colonizers and their harsh treatment of the Taiwanese.⁶

These are but two cases that illustrate the minefield that Taiwanese documentary filmmakers have to negotiate and the volatility of documentaries in Taiwan (and elsewhere, to be sure). As technology hastens the pace toward an increasingly visually oriented way of recording changes, the role played by documentaries in shaping our understanding of the world in which we live and our memory of the past will become more important. We need to analyze the nature and means of knowledge; that is, we must examine not only what we gain from documentaries but also the ethics of such inquiry. Yet current scholarship on documentaries from Taiwan remains scant and fragmented, with a paltry few scholars forging ahead in their study of this burgeoning corpus of works. The present volume provides a venue for scholars from both sides of the Pacific to address a number of critical issues regarding documentaries produced over the past two decades.

It should be immediately apparent to readers that this volume is not meant to be a comprehensive study of documentary films from Taiwan; rather, 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. As was mentioned earlier, the process of Taiwan’s democratization has made these films possible. When increased creative freedom was accorded to the filmmakers (as well as to artists working in other media), a multitude of documentary styles and themes began to emerge. On one hand, this volume intends to capture the creative energy and the cacophony of films that document contemporary Taiwanese society, with a focus on several crucial and pertinent issues: reinterpreting the past, refashioning Taiwanese identity, and environmental protest. On the other hand, the contributors also explore the promises and limitations of documentary film as a representational tool, as best evidenced in the chapters probing documentary ethics, innovative techniques, and the pitfall of excessive emphasis on human interest stories.

This volume begins with three chapters that tackle the issue of historical representation. Since the lifting of martial law and the advent of the Nativist movement, the reexamination of history has become an important collective endeavor in Taiwan, drawing the competing efforts of historians, writers, filmmakers, political activists, other intellectuals and artists, as well as many ordinary citizens who wished to tell their personal or family stories in autobiographical form. As both a theorist and a practitioner of documentary, Daw-Ming Lee reflects upon the problems in and benefits of representing history visually. He asks pointedly whether documentary film can be used as a valid medium for recording and representing history. After considering the differences between filmed history and written history, as suggested by Hayden White, Robert A. Rosenstone, and others, Lee leans toward the view that “historiophoty” (the use of images to construct a historical discourse) is a feasible alternative to historiography, even though documentary film often leads to a single interpretation of events because of the need to compress the past within filmic time constraints, and despite the fact that images do not lend themselves to abstract, broad reasoning as easily as does written discourse. Citing Rosenstone, Lee asserts that historical documentary “refers to an actual world of the past, and is at the same time always positioned, ideological, and partisan.”

Taking the six modes of representation in historical documentaries, as theorized by Bill Nichols as useful tools for analyzing how filmmakers construct historical discourse, Lee examines the making of Taiwan: A People’s History, a landmark historical documentary television series. According to Lee, Taiwan: A People’s History—for which he served as the production supervisor—was the first historical documentary in Taiwan to overwhelmingly rely on dramatization, reconstructing nearly all visual elements, such as historic figures, gestures and facial expressions, costumes, sets, and props, and the atmospheres of different eras. Such heavy use of reconstruction and reenactment in historical documentary is still rare in Taiwan, where the most common form of historical documentary typically employs a mixture of elements—a voice-of-God narration, memories of historical witnesses (usually through interviews), experts’ analyses of historical events, archival footage, and music. Yet ultimately, Lee considers Taiwan: A People’s History conservative in formal experimentation, for it presents a fusion of expository, observational, and participatory storytelling, which, for Lee, are not as innovative as poetic, reflexive, or performative types of narrative strategies. And just as the series is limited in its breaking of new ground in form, so too its attempt to present ordinary people’s (instead of the social elite’s) views of Taiwan’s volatile political and social histories achieves only partial success.

While Lee’s example is a project that constructs a macro-history of Taiwan, Sylvia Li-chun Lin zooms in on a documentary work about the White Terror in 1950s Taiwan and its ramifications in the present. Focusing on Why Don’t We Sing?, she explores how visual representations of government atrocity use personal testimonies to restore traces of history and tackle accountability. Wary of the fact that “historical documentary films … run the risk of becoming the tool of mythologizing and creating monolithic interpretation” in our increasingly image-oriented world, Lin nevertheless believes it is imperative to scrutinize historical documentaries on a case-by-case basis instead of rejecting them categorically as either an all-powerful or an inadequate medium for transmitting meaningful history.

As Lin’s analysis shows, between witness (seeing the event) and testimony (telling the event) lies an unbridgeable temporal and experiential gap. Thus, the challenge for Why Don’t We Sing? “is not only to retrieve irretrievable memory but also recalling the dead to tell their stories.” Studying the omissions, substitutions, moments of uncontrollable emotion, and points of contradiction in the testimonies given by six victims or witnesses, Lin teases out the ethical issues inherent in the filmmakers’ opening up of the victims’ old wounds forty years later and subjecting the victims to probing questions and the impersonal gaze of the camera. The filmmakers’ desires to know what happened in the past and to make sense of incomprehensible cruelty and suffering in a broader historical context implicate them in double roles: seekers of truth and justice for the victims on the one hand, and on the other hand facilitators of a master narrative about the indomitable force of history that turns the victims’ stories into mere illustrations.

Like Lin, Tze-lan Sang examines a documentary film about a highly controversial part of Taiwan’s past, shifting our attention, however, from postwar politics to the Japanese colonial period. Moving away from the usual questions about the accuracy and authenticity of historical documentaries, she asks, instead, how historical representation on film articulates yearnings for the present and the future. Studying the visual and aural evidence presented by Vival Tonal: The Dance Age for the existence of a burgeoning Taiwanese popular music industry in the 1930s, one that had both transnational and local characteristics, Sang discerns a strong desire on the part of the filmmakers to uncover a legacy of Taiwanese cultural ingenuity and agency, a desire expressed, paradoxically, through what appears to be postcolonial nostalgia. According to Sang, however, the nostalgic veneer is deceptive, for the film in fact retains a critical edge in exploring the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized during the course of Taiwan’s modernization under Japanese domination. Emphasizing the creative space that the Taiwanese enjoyed in the interwar period, the film nevertheless exposes this space as having been largely confined within the cultural sphere by political constraints. Moreover, free-spirited Taiwanese popular songs were promptly appropriated by the colonial government and transformed into imperialist propaganda for the purpose of drafting young Taiwanese men to the war front once Japan plunged into an all-out war against China and the Allies.

After the examination of historical representation by Lee, Lin, and Sang, this volume turns to the various ways in which new Taiwanese documentaries have engaged with contemporary social, cultural, or political issues. The topics discussed include configuring Taiwaneseness; young documentarians’ narrative innovations as strategies for building communities as well as market share; reflexivity and documentary ethics; representing political and social dissent; and, last but not least, the oversentimentalism and depoliticization of mainstream Taiwanese documentary.

It is no exaggeration to say that identity has been a central obsession of the Taiwanese for at least 400 years, since southern Chinese began to settle in Taiwan. Divided by language, dialect, geographic origin, and race (Han Chinese versus indigenous peoples versus the Dutch), the inhabitants of Taiwan were divided into many communities, among which there were often serious tensions if not outright hostility. In modern times, the issue of identity has gained another layer of complexity and become even more fraught. The Qing Dynasty, which ruled Taiwan from 1684, ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895, thus beginning a fifty-year period of Japanese colonial rule of the island. After World War II, instead of gaining independence, Taiwan was retroceded to China. When the Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan as a consequence of losing the Chinese Civil War to the Communists in 1949, the Taiwanese were subjected to a vigorous campaign of re-Sinicization. At present, Taiwan’s status as a nation is either bracketed or denied. It can neither forcefully claim itself to be the legitimate representative of China (since the People’s Republic of China, or Communist China, has normalized its diplomatic relations with an overwhelming majority of nations since the 1970s) nor openly declare independence from China (because the PRC views such a move as fracturing national unity and has vowed to use military force to prevent such a development from ever occurring). Indeed, the Taiwanese people’s century-long pursuit of nationhood has landed Taiwan in a state of limbo. And the citizens of Taiwan have constantly had to look for commonality amid their mutual differences in order to build communities on the national and local levels or around specific issues.

In light of the Taiwanese hunger for a clear national identity, Bert Scruggs examines the way Let It Be (dir. Yen Lan-chuan and Juang Yi-tseng) captures a seemingly timeless agrarian Taiwan by chronicling the lives of three old rice farmers in southern Taiwan. As Scruggs’s reading reveals, this pastoral, folkloric Taiwan is largely a romanticization, for even this carefully crafted glossy film with a fetishistic tendency contains many fissures through which the audience can catch glimpses of the environmental degradation and global politics threatening the existence of the idyllic farm life. Scruggs argues that, perhaps more important than documenting a marginalized way of life on the verge of disappearance, Let It Be cultivates a Taiwanese consciousness and subjectivity among its urban spectators through a careful manipulation of symbols, metonyms, and the Taiwanese topolect. Although the community captured by Let It Be may be exploited and vanishing, the film nevertheless encourages urban viewers to identify with the tradition represented by this community, defined by finitude and death, thus enabling them to experience a sense of authenticity and belonging.

Hsiu-Chuang Deppman examines the way young documentarians in Taiwan have reached out to a general audience with innovative narrative strategies not u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Romanization and name
• A chronology of Taiwan
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Re/making histories: on historical documentary film and Taiwan: A People’s History
• 3. Recreating the White Terror on the screen
• 4. Reclaiming Taiwan’s colonial modernity: the case of Viva Tonal: The Dance Age
• 5. Cultivating Taiwanese: Yen Lan-chuan and Juang Yi-tseng’s Let It Be (Wu mi le)
• 6. The politics and aesthetics of seeing in Jump! Boys
• 7. “Should I put down the camera?” Ethics in contemporary Taiwanese documentary films
• 8. Documenting environmental protest: Taiwan’s Gongliao Fourth Nuclear Power Plant and the cultural politics of dialogic artifice
• 9. Sentimentalism and the phenomenon of collective “looking inward”: a critical analysis of mainstream Taiwanese documentary
• Chinese glossar
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index