This 87-minute black-and-white feature directed by Wu Fei-jian was, therefore, typical of many films made in the 1950s to 1970s for its vivid portrayal of social phenomena. Twenty of these films are being shown in 114 screenings around the island over the next five months as part of the Fifty Years of Classics--A Retrospective of Films in Taiwanese celebration. Organized by the Government Information Office--the agency that publishes this newspaper--and Chinese Taipei Film Archive, and running through March 31, 2007, the event is dedicated to commemorating and reviving the fading memories of movies made in the local Holo language.
A number of the actors from these films who are still alive will be touring Taiwan with the films, making appearances and talking with audiences at the screenings. To kick things off, the GIO held a reunion party for returning actors Nov. 7 at the Spring City Resort in Taipei's Beitou district, which was once a flourishing film studio.
For some, this was a little ironic as the government--albeit not today's administration--including the GIO, was active in censoring the movie industry, as well as promoting the Beijing dialect-based "national language" of Mandarin as the Taiwan standard. During the period of Japanese colonization (1895-1945), Taiwan's citizens had been educated in Japanese but spoke mainly aboriginal, Hakka or Holo languages in their homes and local communities. Similarly, in the postwar years, the newly arrived ROC administration promoted Mandarin in government and education, but there was still strong popular demand for films made in local languages, particularly Holo, also called Taiwanese, the language of around 70 percent of the island's people.
Today things are very different, with the government and, in particular, the GIO making great efforts to promote Taiwan's distinctive languages alongside Mandarin.
The opening festivities were more than an opportunity for Taiwan's senior generation of actors to return 30 or 40 years later to the location where their masterpieces were filmed and to share their memories. The event was also the official celebration of a popular culture that portrayed people's daily lives and survived despite official discouragement.
As actor Chang Hsi-kuei recalled, "I was first introduced to audiences at the age of 28 when a director gave me a break in a movie called 'Highland Girl Gets Married.' Getting into a performance troupe was difficult, so I was lucky to be noticed by the director." This kind of audience interaction was typical of the time, with actors appearing at the movie interval to greet the audience. It gave the screenings a special appeal, particularly for those members of the audience who wished to meet their movie idols in person.
In those days, the filmmaking equipment was not as sensitive as today, and generally the actors re-recorded their lines in the studio afterwards. Chang, who later became better known as Kang Ding for his 1969 leading role, admitted that sometimes people with better articulation were hired just to do the voice-overs. As for himself, he said that as soon as he had mastered performing in Holo, the language was banned by the government and career prospects for actors like him became very limited. "Because I did not speak Mandarin," he said, "I could not host a television show. Even though I am talking in Mandarin to you, at that time I could not speak a word of it." Many proficient performers were barred from leading roles, he claimed.
Following promulgation of regulations on broadcasting in 1955 as part of the "mobilization for the suppression of communist rebellion," which banned Taiwanese speech and song in public performance, local-language moviemaking also went downhill and had to rely on cheap equipment and underpaid workers to complete each production, Chang and others noted. For some viewers, the films are too rustic and dry in content, but for actress Wu Min, who started in black-and-white Taiwanese movies and went on to make Mandarin features and star on television, "Taiwanese movies are local treasures belonging to this island."
Noting that budgets for Holo television programs were about one-quarter of those for Mandarin soap operas, Wu added "we hope that the relevant authorities will give more encouragement and support." Such a situation meant that Holo programming was often not sustainable, and life was often hard for elderly actors. Nevertheless, she hoped that today's youngsters would appreciate the hard work of the senior actors and learn their professional spirit. With this in mind, she said, an occasion such as this was significant because it represented the transfer of Taiwan's cultural treasure from one generation to the next.
The 20 films to be shown at 16 locations islandwide include both documentaries and feature films. Audiences with an interest in history would learn much, the organizers said, from fact-based films like "Japanese Police Inspect an Aboriginal Tribe," "The War Against Japan" and "Formosa," which cover the period Taiwan spent under Japanese colonial rule. Those seeking entertainment, on the other hand, would enjoy dramas, such as "Wang and Liou Travel Around Taiwan"--which is probably the best known of all these films--"Last Train from Kaohsiung" and, of course, "Kang Ding's Tour of Taipei."
While these scenes from the island's Holo movie past would make a pleasant trip down memory lane for many elderly residents, as well as a shock, perhaps, to the elderly censors who fought hard to bring a unified language to the island, according to Chao Yung-sin, currently a popular actor and television hostess, the current fashion among young people is to slip back and forth between languages in daily conversation. "What we need now is a natural language. Taiwan is a place of multiple cultures, and our programs transmit this message: the more natural, the better."
Watching television variety shows on Saturday nights, this is clearly audible. With Mandarin Chinese increasingly taking its place as a world language, it remains to be seen what role mixed-dialect movies will play. Nevertheless, one thing that can be learned from this Holo-language movie retrospective is that where there is an audience, films will be made.