Taiwan Today

Old theaters around Taiwan are given a new lease on life.

One Sunday morning last November, movie fans in the central city of Nantou were excited for a special showing of the 2023 Taiwan movie “Be With Me.” The Mandarin title of the film refers to the powerful deity Xuantian Shangdi, who is believed to control the elements and command strong magic. Thus not only were the lead actors present at the screening, statues of the god were also brought to the 102-year-old Nantou Theater both from the city’s Caoweiling Shouming Temple and from Songboling Shoutian Temple in neighboring Minjian Township. The latter temple makes an appearance in the movie, which is set in southern Taiwan’s Chiayi City and Taipei City.
  “Collaboration on the screening supported a great domestic film and showed the connection between the area’s folk and pop cultures,” said Euroce Tsai (蔡杰峰), third-generation owner-operator of the theater. To that end, while “Be With Me” was released across the country, audiences who saw it at Nantou Theater had the particular good fortune to enjoy a billboard hand-painted for the occasion by the legendary Chang Yu-tsun (張玉村). The artist, based in the central county of Changhua, depicted the historical building of Shoutian Temple and its chief divinity in vivid detail, along with additional information about the temple’s nine-day December pilgrimage.

Cinema poster painters like Chang were in high demand from the 1950s to the 1970s, when movie theaters prospered across Taiwan. Nearly every township boasted one, as did each district in larger cities. According to a recent survey by New Taipei City Government-overseen Gold Museum, the total number of such venues stood at 826 in 1990. The museum administers the refurbished Shengping Theater in the mountainous coastal settlement of Jiufen, which reopened in 2011 as a venue for performances and exhibitions and is emblematic of a recent wave of movie theater revitalization.

  After a period of decline in recent decades, Taiwan’s once widespread multipurpose theaters now attract attention from the public and private sectors as potential centers of community regeneration. In 2018 a group of renovated theaters in Chiayi City and Chiayi County, as well as adjoining Yunlin County and Tainan City, began working to host a variety of events as part of the Summer Theatre Festival, a recurring attraction organized by the four local governments in southern Taiwan. The leading force in this theater alliance has been Wanguo Theater in Chiayi County’s Dalin Township.

Community Spaces
In 1968, Wanguo was established by a county councilor near Dalin’s main train station as the fourth theater in an area prospering due to the sugar industry and convenient road and railway transportation. Like others around Taiwan, the theater closed in the late 1980s due to the emergence of television and cinema chains. About a decade later, the empty theater caught the attention of Jiang Ming-he (江明赫), for whom the site stirred up fond childhood memories. He sought funds from what is now the Ministry of Culture (MOC) and began working with local residents to restore the building, which reopened in 2012 as a public venue.

  Two years later, Wanguo was selected as the setting for a TV drama partly funded by the MOC that told the story of Taiwan’s film industry during the 1950s. The completed work, called “The King of Drama” after the theater operator main character, premiered in April 2016 at Wanguo to great fanfare from the townspeople, followed by the well-received November 2020 debut of Japanese movie “Perfect Education Etude” that was primarily filmed at the theater. By that time, Jiang was a representative on the Dalin Township Council, which helped organize the latter event, inviting guests like Chiayi County Magistrate Weng Chang-liang (翁章梁).

Weng actively supports Wanguo as a repository of collective memory. Since the magistrate took office in 2018, he has participated in a variety of events at the theater such as folk music recitals, glove puppet shows and Taiwan opera performances, as well as modern stage plays and concerts by indie bands. His county government’s Culture and Tourism Bureau has worked to help revitalize other old theaters such as Yongcheng Theater in Tainan and Dafu Theater in Yunlin, both with Japanese colonial era (1895-1945) origins. Like Wanguo, they have been listed as historic buildings for conservation under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act.

  For Jiang, old places tell stories. He hopes to share these with both locals and visitors. “Historical structures can be utilized in many different ways,” Jiang said. “Old theaters can come alive with regional tours by performance troupes, many of which are searching for spaces to present their work on a regular basis.” Art platforms draw people to them and boost local economies, whether they are located in downtown areas like Wanguo in the center of Dalin or on the outskirts like open-house factories with additional leisure spaces, he added.

Still Growing
At present Jiang is considering a restoration plan for Xiluo Theater in the northern Yunlin township. The Japanese-era building, like Wanguo, is privately owned and listed as historic, but currently lies idle due to ownership issues. In contrast, public properties such as Shengping Theater do not face such problems, according to Wang Hui-chen (王慧珍), chief of the Gold Museum’s operation and promotion team. The theater was donated to the city government in 2009 and has been managed and maintained by the museum since the completion of its renovation. “It’s now part of the collection of heritage structures that survive as a testament to the once prosperous gold and coal-mining region spanning Shuinandong, Jinguashi and Jiufen,” Wang said, referring to what is now New Taipei’s Ruifang District.
  Shengping is more than just a relic of the past or a comfortable place for tourists to rest amid the endless stairs of Jiufen. The theater management is working on further operational and structural improvements in cooperation with the city government’s Cultural Affairs Department, Tourism and Travel Department and Department of Information. “After all, some local residents are eager to see Shengping staging plays all year round,” Wang said. Shengping is not likely to join Nantou Theater in screening first-run movies, although some old theaters do still show films. Jinri and Chuanmei—built in 1946 and 1950 in Tainan, respectively—are now second-run theaters that can claim a measure of fame for inspiring a teenaged Ang Lee’s (李安) love of film and subsequent career in the industry.

Tsai, who started running Nantou Theater three years ago, knows the importance of independently run theaters. The arduous process of restoration with funding from the MOC’s Private Old Buildings Preservation and Rejuvenation Plan and the creative thinking to compete with mainstream cinemas require a persistent vision that has resulted in events such as the invitation of divine statues to the star-studded screening of “Be With Me” as a means to promote domestic productions. Tsai is always keen to support and build close connections with different communities in his hometown. “We want to put great stories on the screen,” he said. “And more importantly, we want to create our own stories right here with the people around us.”
 

Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw