Taiwan Finds Its Voice--Documentaries Go Mainstream

In the early hours of 21 September 1999, a major earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale shattered tens of thousands of homes. Taiwan mobilized as a whole to come to their aid. After the rescue work came to a close and the volunteers returned home, however, renowned documentary director Wu Yi-feng stayed behind with members of his company Full Shot. They would spend the next five years recording the true-life stories of how four families that had lost homes and family members recovered from the pain and got back on their feet again.

Documentaries "are not meant to be made and just put on a shelf somewhere." In hopes of "having more people see them, and to drum up support," Life would veer from the path taken by most documentaries. It wouldn't be played in communities for free, nor would the makers accept the standard NT$2,000 to have it played once on television. The makers would take the courageous step of showing it on commercial screens, thereby challenging audiences' traditional tastes in films.

How Are You Doing, Kungliao? Portrays a group of fishermen from Kungliao, a village in Taipei County. With youthful determination, they take the protection of their homes into their own hands.

The era of Internet links

In August of last year, Wu Yi-feng ran into brick wall after brick wall when he asked theaters around Taiwan to show his film. He felt he had no choice but to fork out his own money to book Taipei's President Theatre and screen his film on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the September 1999 earthquake. He had no idea what a boost the Internet and informal screenings would be.

Wu's good friend, psychiatrist Chen Feng-wei, was also in charge of the url.com.tw Internet portal. He came up with the idea of issuing invitations over the Internet to writers for e-newspapers, news stations, websites, and blogs to watch Life for free on the condition that they post movie critiques on the web.

After being stunned by what he saw on a film trailer, Chunghwa Telecom chairman Ho Chen-tan put up the costs for booking the President Theatre. What's more, Sony brought in a couple of DV projectors to Taiwan and politicians like President Chen Shui-bian and Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou endorsed Life. Ticket reservations in the Taipei area alone reached 20,000.

After Life proved to be a hit in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Yunlin, and Taichung cinemas jumped on the bandwagon to show it. In the end, it became Taiwan best-selling locally produced film for 2004 with NT$10 million in box office sales, a record for a Taiwan documentary. Life was the first box office climax in the dialog between audiences and documentaries.

But this was not the first encounter between documentary films and commercial theaters in Taiwan. Academia Sinica ethnographer Hu Tai-li, who has three documentaries under her belt, points out that documentary makers face a variety of problems and challenges when they try to show their films commercially. Not only do documentary directors have to seek out capital and sponsors and convince theaters to show their films, they have to work with the news media for film exposure and publicity. This is especially true with today's diversified media which consists not only of traditional print media but of increasingly influential Internet media. Selling her films was much more involved, complex, and exhausting than producing them.

Hu's 1997 documentary Passing through My Mother-in-Law's Village, the story of a visit by Hu to her in-laws' home, was the first documentary film to make it on the big screen in Taiwan. After that film's grossing NT$500,000 and becoming the top grossing Taiwanese film for its one-week, one cinema run, Hu insisted that her next movie Sounds of Love and Sorrow and this year's Stone Dream be shown in cinemas. Having spent years making them, she doesn't want to see them end up like somebody's dissertation, put on a shelf never to be heard of again. She wanted them made available to the general public.

Hu's experience in selling her documentaries to commercial cinemas demonstrates that the times have changed. In the past, Taiwan audiences thought of documentaries as black-and-white films on serious, depressing, sleep-inducing subjects. They felt that the films didn't make any money, because they were aimed at a miniscule market segment, so directors didn't waste their time on publicity.

Rapid advances in technology, however, have made advanced digital video (DV) available to all. The subject matter and story lines of documentaries also differ sharply from those of the past. After shaking off stereotypical propaganda themes like the National Day military reviews of the 1960s and social protest themes of the late 1990s, the new generation of documentaries have become more diversified and closer to life, and employ story tension. The general public is becoming increasingly willing to pay money to see them at the theater.

Lee Daw-ming, associate professor in the Taipei National University of the Arts Graduate School of Filmmaking and a well-known documentary director, points out that developments in documentaries over the past few years are a global phenomenon and can be regarded as a reaction to and a rejection of Hollywood's flashy, superficial films.

In the United States, for example, only one or two documentaries at most used to make it into the theaters each year, but diversification, sophistication, and trends toward interdisciplinary production (e.g., incorporating animation) are drawing increasingly large audiences. Last year, documentaries like Fahrenheit 911 and Supersize Me blazed on marquees throughout America. Despite their antiestablishment and anti-business motifs, they use humor and multimedia technology to present the serious subject matter. They raked in over US$100 million in revenue. Today, many major US cities boast cinemas dedicated to showing documentaries.

Passing through My Mother-in-Law's Village depicts the impact of modernization on ethnographer Hu Tai-li's in-laws. Sounds of Love and Sorrow reminisces about the song of youthful love through legends of the Paiwan people. Stone Dream explores the lives of war veterans living along the banks of Hualien's Papaya River. Hu worked hard to ensure that each of her films be made available to the public in cinemas.

Uncertain box office figures

Although documentaries and business in Taiwan didn't hit it off right off the bat (despite the success of Passing through My Mother-in-Law's Village), they did serve to encourage later documentary makers to promote their works to the general public via commercial theaters.

Documentaries are faced with unprecedented challenges as they strive to break into the mass market. Full Shot Communication Foundation CEO Tsai Ching-ju explains that in addition to the arduous and complex tasks of hunting down capital and publicizing films, directors have to dig into their own pockets to rent projecting equipment which they then lend to theaters (whose equipment isn't suited to showing documentaries). They even have to pay weeks of rent up front, because their poor box office showings make cinemas loath to accept commissions from box office proceeds as payment for showing documentaries.

At first, director Wu Yi-feng's insistence that Life be shown in commercial theaters almost caused a mutiny within his company. Tsai explains, "Nobody expected Life to be a hit or to make NT$10 million. All we knew was that if the film didn't do well, Full Shot might go belly up!"

Yang Yi-che, producer of the Public Television documentary Taiwan's Student Movements, explains that not only is scraping up money difficult, advertisers for mainstream commercial movies are reluctant to invest in documentaries, because it's difficult to judge whether or not they will get any return on their investment. Documentary directors have to wear many hats-raising capital, producing, shooting, and editing films, as well as later selling and publicizing them. It's a rocky road.

Passing through My Mother-in-Law's Village depicts the impact of modernization on ethnographer Hu Tai-li's in-laws. Sounds of Love and Sorrow reminisces about the song of youthful love through legends of the Paiwan people. Stone Dream explores the lives of war veterans living along the banks of Hualien's Papaya River. Hu worked hard to ensure that each of her films be made available to the public in cinemas.

A question of survival

Not only are they under pressure to produce and sell their films single-handedly, Taiwan's documentary filmmakers invest years in producing films, so they cannot work other jobs to make a living.

Tsai Ching-ju explains that documentaries are not made with the goal of making money in mind. Although Full Shot Communication Foundation does all it can do to help out, if it experiences financial problems, the foundation warns directors that "it's time to make some money" and advises them to "put together a short publicity clip!"

Chang Chao-wei studied documentaries in Britain and took part in the shooting of PTV's Green Silicon Island and Taiwan's Student Movements. He is now with the Singapore Broadcasting Company where he helps produce programs for the Discovery Channel. He explains that the budgets available to directors in Taiwan to produce documentaries are pathetic. Once when shooting a two-episode documentary over a period of six months in Taiwan, the copyright fees for just one old photo he needed set him back NT$7,000-almost one-quarter of his income.

Chang sighs, "In comparison, documentary production budgets elsewhere, including the PRC, are two to three times what they are in Taiwan."

After Chang posted his resume in the documentary section of a headhunter's website last year, Singapore's Moving Visuals liked what they saw and asked him to join their multinational team. He worked with them to produce Asia in 60 Minutes: Roman Ruins in China, a historical documentary shown on the Discovery Channel this past February.

This experience showed Chang how documentaries are made abroad and the advantages of the methods they employ. All tasks, from script outline and imaging to film editing, production, and marketing, are performed by specialists. What's more, a hefty profit was made from the film, which only required two weeks of shooting to finish. He was struck by the multinational team's resource integration capabilities.

Chang believes that in Taiwan, the excessive number of television channels diffuses resources and the lack of standards forces everyone to do their own thing, making it impossible to improve the technology or techniques used.

"Documentary makers in Taiwan painstakingly shoot every frame of their films on location, unlike their counterparts elsewhere who take advantage of cutting-edge computer synthesizing technologies, which saves time and is more efficient," points out Yang Yi-che.

Let it Be directors Yen Lan-chuan and Chuang Yi-tseng were classmates in university and work together like a hand in a glove.

Tug-of-war between ideals and reality

Directors have long dreamed of documentaries being shown in commercial theaters and on TV, but as this dream approaches realization, they are faced with a tug-of-war between their ideals and reality.

After all, not every documentary can make it into the theaters. Audiences watch movies for entertainment. No entertainment value means no box office earnings. This has theater owners concerned.

The same is true of television. Tsai Ching-ju puts it this way, "There are televisions in every home, but TV stations cannot survive without commercials. Documentaries can't be shown straight through without interruption, so it's hard to hold onto audiences, to keep them tuned to your program. Documentaries don't have tight story lines or lay the action on thick to win audiences. They really aren't suited to TV, because they focus on the details of normal, everyday life and culture."

National Geographic Channels International vice president Bryan Smith led a delegation to Taiwan last year to solicit documentaries. He laid it on the line to the audience, explaining that the National Geographic Channel's goal was entertainment. "Don't try telling audiences what they should or should not be watching. Imagine people watching TV after working all day. How might you keep them from changing channels?"

Lee Daw-ming also stresses that in the battle for viewers, TV channels have formulaic ways of thinking and of producing films to ensure a certain degree of composition and watchability in each documentary. Imperceptibly, this has put a straightjacket on experimentation and originality, boxing up the creativity of documentary makers.

Documentaries are an important genre in Taiwan movies-Burning Dreams depicts three generations of Shanghai dancers, Viva Tonal-The Dance Age portrays popular Taiwanese songs of the 1930s, and Jump! Boys is the story of little gymnasts. These films all serve to preserve the sounds and images of Taiwan.

Professionals vs. amateurs

"Are documentary makers ready? Can they rise above the bush league to produce films of artistic and professional quality?" Lee expresses his doubts as some strive to push documentary films into the mainstream in an era marked by the increasingly widespread use of camcorders.

Documentary makers in China have encountered a bottleneck. The mainland started developing documentaries over a decade ago and the timing couldn't have been better. It was the time of reform and opening up. As long as you didn't step on the government's toes, good, moving subject matter was there for the taking by anybody willing to put in a little cerebral effort. The times were ripe for documentary films. They were shown on China Central Television and due to the lack of competition, often enjoyed the highest ratings.

But the PRC's economy has since taken off and TV programming has become increasingly diversified, giving audiences much more to choose from. Documentaries no longer lead the pack and this has caused many documentary producers to reflect and strive to improve.

"This setback is a good thing, because no matter what the latest trends, documentaries have to return to their roots. They are, first and foremost, expressions of their makers' personal viewpoints," asserts Lee.

Chuang Yi-tseng and Yen Lan-chuan worked to bring Let It Be into theaters, but they were not looking entirely for box office figures. They hoped that after witnessing the painstaking labor of the Taiwanese farmers recorded in Let It Be, people would buy Taiwanese rice the next time they went grocery shopping.

Documentaries are an important genre in Taiwan movies-Burning Dreams depicts three generations of Shanghai dancers, Viva Tonal-The Dance Age portrays popular Taiwanese songs of the 1930s, and Jump! Boys is the story of little gymnasts. These films all serve to preserve the sounds and images of Taiwan.

Meeting unmet needs

"Response is hoped for with any creative work. You need people to see your film, before you can get a response," asserts Yang Yi-che. He hopes that last year's box office hit Life will make audiences take documentaries seriously, rather than consider them a flash-in-the-pan sensation.

Commercial theaters naturally have limitations, explains Tsai Ching-ju. They can't offer interaction between audience and filmmaker the way the traditional method of showing documentaries to live audiences can.

Full Shot promoted its film How Are You Doing, Kungliao? this last April. They opted against taking the commercial theater route, deciding instead to return to the traditional approach-showing their documentary in schools and other organizations throughout Taiwan to give director and audience the opportunity to interact face to face.

"Life discusses an experience common to all, so when shown in the cinema, it induced a response. How Are You Doing, Kungliao?, on the other hand, is about the feelings people have for their land. Not everyone can identify," says Tsai Ching-ju. It is a narrow subject more appropriate for use as a tool for social education. It is better suited to live audiences to allow for interaction. We are hoping for a positive response. What more could we ask for? A sense of accomplishment is perhaps the reason some are willing to tighten their belts and produce documentaries.

Lacking other channels, most documentaries in the past were only shown to small audiences. Many people were unaware that Taiwan's documentaries were flourishing and were of outstanding quality. Those few that took the courageous step of showing their documentaries this year deserve a round of applause. If we can rid audiences of past biases, perhaps documentaries can become a new outlet for Taiwanese filmmakers.

How Are You Doing, Kungliao? Portrays a group of fishermen from Kungliao, a village in Taipei County. With youthful determination, they take the protection of their homes into their own hands.

Amber heads of grain shimmer in the sunlight. A farmer's eyes, filled with hope for a plentiful harvest, peer out of a crinkled face.

Five years after the fact, Life, a record of the trauma caused by the 921 Earthquake, allowed audiences to once again see that although life is capricious, it always provides a way.

When Let it Be was being shown in Taipei cinemas, the film's leading actor Kun Pin-po brought "lucky pouches" filled with rice grown by his family in Tainan and distributed them to members of the audience.

Shooting documentaries is a long-distance run that tests both body and mind. Director Wu Yi-feng and his Full Shot team spent five years completing Life.

Passing through My Mother-in-Law's Village depicts the impact of modernization on ethnographer Hu Tai-li's in-laws. Sounds of Love and Sorrow reminisces about the song of youthful love through legends of the Paiwan people. Stone Dream explores the lives of war veterans living along the banks of Hualien's Papaya River. Hu worked hard to ensure that each of her films be made available to the public in cinemas.

Documentaries are an important genre in Taiwan movies-Burning Dreams depicts three generations of Shanghai dancers, Viva Tonal-The Dance Age portrays popular Taiwanese songs of the 1930s, and Jump! Boys is the story of little gymnasts. These films all serve to preserve the sounds and images of Taiwan.

Following an informal screening, audience members penned their feelings of concern onto postcards which they then mailed to villagers of Kungliao.