Documentary’s golden decade
From the 1950s to the mid-1960s, the mainstay of Taiwanese documentary cinema was government-sponsored fare. Although these educational films recorded some aspects of life in Taiwan, they failed to capture the actual lives of common people. In 1967 Richard Yao-chi Chen took an entirely new approach in Liu Pi-chia, a film that told the story of a military veteran working on the construction of a dam in Fengtian, Hualien County. The director examines the conditions of the veteran’s life and attitudes through a series of interviews. Chen’s socially conscious approach and his examination of the life of a toiling everyman caused a sensation in the art world. It was the first Taiwanese documentary to employ this modernist approach.
No discussion of documentary filmmaking in the 1960s would be complete without mentioning Theater Quarterly, the first issue of which was published on January 1, 1965. The Taipei-based magazine focused on contemporary avant-garde film and theater.
It introduced important periods of Western theater and cinema, from ancient Greek tragedy to French New Wave directors like François Truffaut and Alain Resnais and films like The Virgin Spring (1960) by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. It also introduced the public to important directors and screenwriters of that influential artistic period, including Richard Chen, Chiu Kang-chien (aka Yau Kong-kin), Li Chi-shan, and Huang Hua-cheng.
The 1960s was a wellspring for all kinds of modern art in Taiwan. Aside from film and theater, the period saw the publication of Modern Literature, a pioneering literary journal, and the rise of the Fifth Moon Group of modernist painters. Cross-disciplinary influences became something of a hallmark of the period. The writers Chen Yingzhen and Liu Daren, for example, also acted in Theater Quarterly’s experimental film version of Waiting for Godot. The magazine’s influence also spread to Hong Kong when celebrated Hong Kong writer Xi Xi was invited to act as the editor of its ninth issue. The experience inspired her to make The Milky Way (1968). Her brother at the time was working at a TV news station, and Xi Xi collected discarded newsreel footage and then reedited it into an alternative record of the times.
Theater Quarterly also influenced Long Sih-liang’s 1967 documentary Getting Ready for the Festival. Although the short film is only five minutes long, it reveals the activities of ordinary people preparing for the Lunar New Year festival. It was featured in Theater Quarterly’s second film exhibition, held the same year.
The publication influenced numerous other works too: Chang Chao-tang’s documentary Modern Poetry Exhibition (1966) features the work of Huang Hua-cheng, Long Sih-liang, and Huang Yong-song, who all participated in the exhibition that is captured in the film. Huang Hua-cheng’s stage play The Prophet was directed by Richard Chen, who adopted a highly experimental approach. Pai Ching-jui’s work showed a debt to Neorealism after he returned from studying in Italy. In A Morning in Taipei (1964), the filmmaker records the sights and sounds of Taipei at dawn, including the crowds, the buildings, and the urban ambiance. In an age better known for popular Huangmei Opera films and the melodramas of the author Chiung Yao, these experimental works opened up an entirely new mode of cinematic expression.
Richard Yao-chi Chen filmed a military veteran working on the construction of a dam in Fengtian, Hualien County, in Liu Pi-chia (1967). (courtesy of the Taiwan Film Institute)