Launched in 2014 by the Ministry of Culture as a successor to the Chinese Taipei Film Archive, TFI has collected around 17,500 titles in predominantly the Holo, also known as Taiwanese, and Mandarin languages. One of its most important ventures in recent years has been the Taiwan Cinema Digital Restoration Project, which utilizes modern techniques to revolutionize how local films are restored. Funded by the MOC and Ministry of Science and Technology, the program has so far remastered more than 30 classic films.
Examples include social critique “Dangerous Youth” (1969) and thriller “The Bride Who Has Returned from Hell” (1965) directed by Hsin Chi; comedy “Brother Wang and Brother Liu Tour Taiwan” (1959) and romantic drama “The Young Ones” (1973) by Lee Hsing; as well as martial arts classics “Dragon Inn” (1967), “A Touch of Zen” (1971) and “Legend of the Mountain” (1979) by King Hu.
Comparison of a scene from martial arts classic “Legend of the Mountain” (1979) before and after digital restoration.
According to former TFI Director Chen Pin-chuan, digital techniques are more effective than traditional approaches to restoration, enabling audiences to experience classics with the same clarity as modern productions.
After several years outsourcing restoration, TFI launched its own in-house team in July 2017. Its first assignments comprised some of the earliest existing newsreels about Taiwan, shot shortly after the end of Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945), as well as a 1966 documentary “The Mountain” about local youths. One of the team’s latest efforts, romance “The Wheel of Life” (1983) co-directed by King Hu, Lee Hsing and Pai Ching-jui, opened to theaters last July in Singapore.
Chen said restoration projects are typically a race against time due to the challenges of preserving aging film negatives. “Precise temperature and humidity controls are required,” he said, adding that directors sometimes make the mistake of holding on to their works rather than placing them in an archive, not realizing the difficulties of keeping reels in usable condition.
Films are stored on the shelves of TFI’s archive at Shulin Industrial Park in New Taipei City.
Case in point is “Super Citizen Ko,” a 1995 film centered on a former political prisoner searching for the tomb of a friend he inadvertently betrayed. Its director Wan Jen was shocked to learn the poor state of the film’s negatives after storage in suboptimal conditions. Considered a modern classic, the film underwent digital restoration in 2015 and returned to theaters the following year.
Chen’s successor at TFI is Wang Chun-chi, board director of Taipei-based Taiwan Women’s Film Association. According to Wang, one of her priorities is bringing screenings of TFI’s digital restorations into local communities.
The full catalogue of restored movies is available for screenings at bookstores, coffee shops, cultural venues and museums around the nation, Wang said, adding that providing residents with easy access to Taiwan’s classic films is key to keeping the country’s cinematic legacy relevant to future generations. (E) (By Pat Gao)
Martial arts tale “Dragon Inn” (1967) is among the films digitally restored by TFI.
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(This article is adapted from “Preserving the Past” in the January/February 2018 issue of Taiwan Review. The Taiwan Review archives dating to 1951 are available online.)