Archiving past and present
Television and radio now fall within the TFAI’s remit. As Lan acknowledges, piecing together fragments of memory isn’t easy. However, “if we don’t make an effort now, it will be even harder in the future.”
Until 1989, Taiwan was oblivious to the preservation of images, Lan observes. “As a result many cultural assets and social memories have vanished irretrievably. Even if you have personally witnessed the beauty of it all, you won’t see it again.”
The TFAI is seeking to collaborate with the Voice of Han Broadcasting Network, the Police Broadcasting Service, and Taiwan Television to provide open access to their cultural resources. “We don’t want to over-interpret Taiwan’s historical trajectory. What the TFAI aims to do is simply to preserve and restore what used to be.”
This task includes collecting interviews with professionals. “We’ll ramp up our efforts to interview professional practitioners in the film and audiovisual industries while they are still among us, so as to create an oral history archive. We very much hope they’ll help us reconstruct the history of Taiwan’s audiovisual culture.”
Lan mentions his own interviews with film director Wang Tung, which were published as a book in 2010. Before working in the film industry, Wang had trained in art and design. Lan’s interviews—an indispensable primary source for researchers—reveal the depth and breadth of Wang’s art, covering his set construction, camera movements, symbolism, casting, musical arrangements, language, and more.
“I always think of my career as a bridge,” says Lan, waxing lyrical. “At one end, I marveled at the gorgeous landscape of the 1960s to the 1980s. Now, in 2020, people at this end of the bridge don’t know what it was like at the other end. My job is to bring the scenes from the other end of the bridge over to this side so that people can know the splendor of the past.”
Many Taiwanese people share fond memories of going to the cinema in Ximending when they were young. (courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs)