Taiwan produces fewer feature films each year. But, paradoxically, more and more documentaries are being made here. In recent years, tens of films have been entered for various non-fiction film awards, such as the Golden Harvest Awards for Short Film and Video and the Annual ROC Documentary Awards. These have become the most intensely competitive film prizes in Taiwan.

For people living in this land, a record of their lives and feelings is also a precious cultural asset. The photo shows an outdoor performance by the Lanyang theater company of Ilan.

Has Taiwan reached the point at which "every citizen is a potential film maker"? What are these novices filming? Why do they want to make these documentaries? What images of Taiwan are portrayed through the lenses of these documentary-makers? Beyond the lens, what thoughts are provoked, and what values displayed?

Ah Mao (Huang Chi-mao) is a meteorologist at the Orchid Island Weather Station of the Central Weather Bureau. He has nothing but praise for this fascinating little island; in fact, he can't say enough about it. Huang, who had never before picked up a camera, three years ago joined the documentary film training class sponsored by the FS Film/Video Studio. After completing the course, he made A Record of Yami Life: The Afternoon Meal. The video declares: "If you want fish, you just go into the sea in front of your house and swim around a couple of times. For a staple crop, just go into the fields and pick up a couple of yam." He portrayed Yami life as being in happy harmony with nature.

Visual images are uniquely "true," but the film maker's subjectivity still comes through in such things as the selection of images to be filmed and the positioning of the camera.

Li Chin-kuo, a graduate of the Institute of Zoology at National Taiwan University, has always been concerned about wildlife. After the FS Studio class, he used the limited amount of money that he had been able to save during his compulsory military service to buy a digital video camera and a second-hand car, and headed off to fishing villages in search of material. He knew that it would be impossible to film and keep a job at the same time. So he allowed himself one year in order to make his documentary on the environmental impact of the Pinnan Industrial Park in Tainan County. No monopoly for professionals

Cameras are no longer monopolized by professional directors. Today's cameras are so easy to use that anybody can handle one.

The 1980s witnessed radical changes in filming technology which made filming widely accessible. As the price of a video camera dropped to less than NT$100,000, feature-film technical people left the movie industry and switched over to making videos. In the 1990s, video has moved into the digital age. With the use of computer editing, a documentary can be completed by a single individual. It no longer requires the extensive manpower it used to.

A decade ago, Wu Yii-feng, director of the FS Studio, who made his name doing documentaries, had already grasped the trend toward simpler and more convenient technology. Last year he went to Japan to participate in the bi-annual Yamagata Documentary Film Festival. There he saw the undeniable evidence of the spread of video film making throughout Asia.

What's the situation in Taiwan? The Golden Harvest Awards, which provide subsidies to prize-winning film makers, have been held for 21 years. This year, only three of the documentary entries were made with traditional feature-film cameras, while 35 entries were made with video cameras.

"If it cost several million to shoot a documentary, who would ever join the game?" asks Wu Yii-feng rhetorically. Today, the field is no longer limited to major directors or professionals.

At the same time as documentary makers have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by new technology, there has also been an infusion of social resources into documentaries.

The most obvious milepost came three years ago, when the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) began to provide financial support for FS Studio's "Local Documentary Film Makers' Training Program." Equipped with six cameras and six editing machines, the program is held in a different location each year for a term of six months. It was in Taipei in 1995, in Hualien in 1996, in Taichung in 1997, and in Kaohsiung in 1998. Each training session accepts 18-20 persons. Some of the students have long been involved in historical-cultural field work in their communities; others have been teachers or activists concerned about local or environmental issues. In the past most expressed their concerns through the pen and the still camera; now they are doing so through video.

Last year the CCA established a new Local Culture Video Prize in the hopes of implanting the documentary concept even deeper in mass culture.

The private United Daily News Culture Foundation last year began subsidizing documentary projects involving five film makers. Last year's theme was "On Watch in Eastern Taiwan." The main focus this year will be on young people.

Video equipment is getting lighter and simpler all the time, and videotapes can be issued en masse; video is another channel for expression of opinions.

The power of representation

Wang Wei-tsy, director of planning and promotion for documentary films at the CCA and a lecturer in mass communications at Tamkang University, compares the new technology to "those point-and-shoot cameras that focus for you." Because they are so simple, she expects the use of video cameras to become increasingly widespread. She emphasizes that video will be one of the core tools of education in the 21st century. Perhaps not anyone will be able to be a film maker, but it will be necessary to be open-minded to the importance of video.

With each person having the ability to make a video comes the problem of "the power of representation." "Whether you look at it from the point of view of anthropology or communications, whoever has the camera has the power to speak on behalf of the subject," says Wang. In the past, people in lower socio-economic strata, such as disadvantaged groups and aboriginal people, were largely excluded. Now people who were in the past only the subjects of documentaries have the power to control the camera and tell their own stories.

The FS Studio once trained a group of hearing-impaired people to use video to communicate with society. One student made a short film, entitled "Deaf Marriage," about her older brother's marriage to a woman with normal hearing. The bride, named Nan-nan, who had normal hearing, began to have second thoughts before the wedding: "When I saw a table of people conversing in sign language, I wondered whether I really wanted to join this family in which the majority of the people communicated with their hands."

The groom, who is hearing-impaired, had his own feeling of not fitting in: "Every time I go with Nan-nan to her parents' home, everybody is talking about family business, but all I can do is watch TV and sleep." It revealed the powerlessness to communicate that the hearing-impaired feel in a world dominated by the hearing.

The CCA subsidy has enabled the staff of the FS Studio to circle the island of Taiwan in the past three-plus years. They have trained 74 students, including 11 indigenous people. Students have made films about the traditional costumes of their tribes, the facial tattoo culture of the Atayal people, and their frustration at how aboriginal residential land has been turned into state-owned forest land.

"Having aboriginal people, who have always been the subjects of anthropological study, operating the camera themselves is a revolution in the history of documentary film making," exclaims Wang. It is of course a separate issue whether or not documentaries based on their own subjective points of view will be "better," but from a human rights point of view, granting the subjects of research the right to speak for themselves is definitely to be encouraged. What's more, with minority groups themselves running the cameras, they will likely produce more realistic portrayals than outsiders who come by once every few years for a short visit. One famous example of this is the use of self-produced videos by Amazon Amerindian peoples to communicate with the outside world.

"Having aboriginal peoples making their own videos involves the problem of interpretation," says documentary maker Li Tao-ming. In the past, outsiders often arrived with preconceived dichotomies like "mainstream vs. non-mainstream, or privileged vs. disadvantaged. They saw themselves as being in charge of the documentary effort, of being at a higher level than the subjects. This type of thinking must be smashed. Having aboriginal people themselves doing the filming is seizing autonomy back."

Now that the tools are available for everyone to use, the next question is: What should be filmed? Can one tell a story well and produce a good film just by being able to manipulate the machines?

Protectors and fighters

Wu Yii-feng emphasizes that the most unique characteristic of a documentary film is the relationship established between the film maker and the subject. "It's unavoidable that the camera will be an intrusion. The key thing is whether or not this intrusion is uncomfortable to people, or whether or not that which is captured on film was staged deliberately." This is why Wu often insists on taking several years to film a documentary, because "if you don't understand [the people], then you can't capture their feelings on film; those being filmed do not readily show their emotions to the camera, either."

Huang Chien-yeh, international coordinator of the Chinese Taipei Film Archive, agrees. Even if the film maker has become part of the action, what really moves us is the persistent dedication of the film makers and the steadfastness of the subjects as they struggle with the real world. One Japanese documentary maker spent 20 years following the story of people poisoned by mercury dumping.

At last year's 21st Golden Harvest Awards, judges discovered that, in terms of subject selection and methods of presentation, the documentaries were strikingly similar. Of the 20 works that won awards in last year's ROC Documentary Awards, 12 were on the subject of aboriginal people.

Wang Wei, one of the Golden Harvest judges, points out: "This year most of the films were on disadvantaged groups, the handicapped, and local culture. Although they weren't badly done, they were too similar, displaying a narrowness of perspective."

Indeed, as far as he is concerned, "It seems like the film makers were all being 'politically correct,' acting as if documentaries were only good for filming 'disadvantaged' groups in society. These subjects and people inevitably become documentary material, and the film makers just use them because they make easy subject matter," says Wang with sharp frankness.

But some people think that the narrowness of subject matter is only a temporary problem.

Huang Chien-yeh states that this phenomenon is understandable from the creative viewpoint. "It's difficult to film ordinary people and their workaday lives, which have no obvious drama to them." By focusing on indigenous people, the disadvantaged, women, or workers, and "allowing them to seek dignified recognition through the camera" all such documentaries "have significance in terms of promoting human rights." Later, when film makers reach a certain stage, they will become more mature and thoughtful, and will want to touch on more diversified subjects, and "seek the extraordinary within the ordinary."

He adds, "There's nothing inherently wrong with political correctness." Minorities, women, and homosexuals have long been repressed in human history. And anyway the focus on these groups need not last. For example, in the US in the 1960s the civil rights movement was the focus. But when the movement's demands achieved a certain level of acceptance, fewer people paid such close attention to the problem; a consensus had been achieved. Human history advances in just such a "two steps forward, one step back" way.

Record the present, enter history?

In the past documentaries were simply outsiders' observations. In an article entitled "Taiwan Documentaries and Cultural Change," Li Tao-ming notes that early Taiwan documentaries would occasionally appear on TV. At that time people in TV like Chang Chao-tang, Chuan Ling, Huang Chun-ming and Christopher Doyle expressed concern about folk culture in a highly emotional way. They filmed, for example, tens of thousands of Matsu worshippers, old residences, and the paper umbrellas of Meinung.

Some say: "When we begin to film something, or somebody, it means that the thing or that person is about to disappear." Things like traditional aboriginal clothing, knife-making culture, or archaeological relics are disappearing one by one, so what is the point of recording them? Each film finishes telling its story, but does it achieve anything except to leave the audience heavy-hearted?

Wang Wei-tsy argues that documentary film makers cannot control the disappearance of culture, nor do they need to accept such a weighty responsibility. The preservation of historical materials is meaningful as an end in itself, and the sense of mission of the film makers lies in their concern for the subjects they film.

Further, "at the very least they have let the audience know that they cannot ignore this group," says Huang Chien-yeh. For example, those who have seen a documentary on sexual orientation may be less likely to think of people with homosexual tendencies as "sissies."

On a more positive note, documentary films also may contribute to improving society.

From observation to participation, Taiwan documentary makers have turned videos into weapons of protest. This trend can be traced back to the formation of the Luse Xiaoxu ("Green Team") in 1986.

In that year, Taiwan saw its first competitive multi-party elections. Some leaders of the opposition led a group of supporters to the CKS International Airport in Taoyuan to greet returning opposition veteran Hsu Hsin-liang. A riot broke out as people clashed with police. The mainstream media reports were not favorable to the opposition, but a videotape of the event changed a lot of people's minds.

The Luse Xiaozu was composed of three young people. They used simple home video equipment to make a news video of the event, which they then reproduced en masse and released. Some people say that one big reason why the opposition was able to do so well in the elections that year is that the Luse Xiaozu broke the monopoly of the mainstream (pro-government) media.

From that point on the Luse Xiaozu began following specific stories, and completed nearly 100 videos over a period of several years. They focused on subjects of a controversial (usually anti-government) nature, such as protest movements among farmers, labor, women, aborigines, aged veterans, students, environmental and anti-nuclear activists, and relatives of victims of the February 28 movement.

Stay left

Whether the documentary is a tool or a weapon depends on whether one sees documentary making as "objective" and the value one places on "truth."

It was more than 100 years ago that the LumiËre brothers filmed scenes of street and factory life in France. Since then film has come to be seen as the most convincing of media, and has become a vital tool in the making of records and the reenactment of "reality."

But as theories of documentary film making have evolved, many pursuers of truth have come to doubt that visual images have the ability to capture "reality." Before WWII, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US all used documentary films as propaganda tools.

Yet, though documentaries can serve the established system, they can also serve the opposition. Li Tao-ming says that in many past cases-changes of regime in Nicaragua and El Salvador, the toppling of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, the South Korean student movement-videotapes fanned the flames.

It is often difficult to draw the line between news, propaganda, and documentaries. Documentary makers are continually striving to reduce subjectivity. For example, they want to avoid using narration, instead allowing the characters to speak for themselves; they also want to present large amounts of original sound from the scene. But some people assert that the film maker's subjectivity is always present-in the placement of the camera, in the editing of the images, and in other steps in the process.

With regard to the endless debate over objectivity and subjectivity, Wang Wei-tsy contends, "We have to break the idea that documentaries are objective, because my reality is not the same as your reality. There is no absolute truth, and documentaries can only provide another way of looking at a situation."

"Compared to fiction films, documentaries must work with the material that presents itself, because the environment cannot be completely controlled by the film maker. Documentary makers must come face-to-face with problems of morality, fairness, and justice," says Huang. Some people charge that "documentary films are always left-wing; they are by nature a call to arms."

Taking on commercial values

But if you want to change society, the prerequisite is that the general public see your work. Perhaps the biggest problem today is how to cultivate an audience for documentary films.

"Although more and more people are making documentaries, so it looks as if the field is booming, this is a boom that is taking place without any particular increase in the audience," notes Li Tao-ming. The audience remains tiny.

Li, while agreeing that TV played a rather important role in the historical development of documentary film making in Taiwan, says that the "formulaic" broadcasting pattern of TV today is not conducive to broadcasting documentaries. TV stations want each program to have a certain length, and to last for a number of regularly scheduled episodes. But that does not suit documentary making, which is irregular and takes a great deal of time.

TV is, after all, in the business of mass communication. "It seems that people were over-optimistic in hoping that the pluralization of the electronic media would lead to acceptance of a broader range of voices," says Huang Chien-yeh. Before the collapse of the political dogma that formerly ruled the airwaves, some in the media still felt a sense of mission to produce less commercialized programming. But now they openly aspire to commercial values. These commercial values, which producers think the audience wants to see, have too much subjectivity.

"People with talent can draw attention to culture," says Huang. The problem is that TV operators are not willing to build an the audience.

He cites the following example: Academia Sinica researcher Hu Tai-li made a documentary about the transformation of rural life in Taiwan. Its take at the box office exceeded that of all concurrently showing Taiwan-made commercial films. The reason was that people in the cultural community helped out by talking the film up.

Huang avers that there are two indicators for "good" video products: The first is production values, such as those in Hollywood films like Titanic, in which the sinking of the ship was only possible with advanced technology and enormous capital investment. Hollywood is a production line with high levels of quality control. But only American film makers can afford to have the highest production values.

However, besides form, content is also very important. The second criterion for judging a work is originality or creativity. So film makers from a poor country can still make a quality film. They have things to say and stories to tell, and have aesthetic values to put into the film. "The point is that films are not judged only by the quality of the media's technical level," he says.

Entering life

Documentaries can get high audience share, and even the PRC's Central Television Station, which has low production values, has been able to make a hit out of such videos.

Wang Wei-tsy went to the mainland to invite films to Taiwan for the bi-annual CCA-sponsored Taiwan International Documentary Festival. She says that the mainland's Central Television made a program called Eastern Time and Space (Dongfang Shikong) which included documentary works. The program attracted NT$1.3 billion in advertising revenue over the course of a year.

Having traveled around the world looking for entries, Wang has seen how documentaries can approach the diversity of life itself. For example, she says, in Hungary a camera was placed in a prison for juvenile offenders, and the inmates were encouraged to use it. The only condition was that they had to use a tripod, and couldn't monopolize the equipment. The first day, a child screamed strings of curses into the camera. But within a few days his attitude had changed. He talked about how badly he felt, and how what he had said before meant nothing. It really captured the feelings of this young offender.

One mainland film maker produced a story called "Elder Sister." The director did not say a single word, but merely allowed the camera to observe the interaction between a five-year-old twin brother and sister and their parents. The camera clearly showed the parents' pampering the boy while criticizing the girl for "not being helpful, and not giving in to your younger brother."

If you don't care about finding theaters to screen your film, then it is a simple matter to make a documentary. But while most ordinary persons can, at best, make a recording of some basic material, there is a lot more that is needed to make a good film, such as editing, originality, creativity, aesthetic input, sincerity, and permeation into real life.

Looking at the training class offered by the FS Film/Video Studio, 74 people received training, but not all of them have been able to carry on making films, or immediately completed one. In terms of both cultivating new skilled people for the field, or cultivating an appreciative audience, Wu Yii-feng says there have been successes and failures. But he remains optimistic that if seeds are sown, they will sprout. Hasn't the camera already been returned to the hands of the people, the community, and the tribe?