Taiwan film institute releases rare footage from Japanese colonial era

Taipei, July 18 (CNA) The Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI) has released what it believes to be the earliest documentary filmed in Taiwan, offering a glimpse of the island's landscape and society from as early as the 1920s, when it was under Japanese colonial rule.

The 7-minute silent short, "Formosa," captures scenes of labor in colonial-era Taiwan -- including workers picking tea leaves on mountain farms and hauling bamboo on trailers -- as Japanese authorities promoted cash crops and extracted natural resources from the island.

Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, following the Qing Dynasty's ceding of the island under the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

Prior to that, the Dutch occupied the southern part of the island from 1624 to 1662, while the Spanish held territory in the north for a shorter period around the same era.

The film also documents the transformation of Taiwanese society and landscape over time, featuring Indigenous peoples in traditional attire traversing rugged mountain paths, along with tile-roofed stone houses and temples with flying eaves built by Chinese immigrants.

Footage from the film, now available on TFAI's YouTube channel, is believed to have been shot in the 1920s, according to the latest research commissioned by the institute.

While the film appears to have been made for educational purposes and is attributed to the "Hollandsche Film Universiteit," available evidence suggests the footage may have actually been shot by American photographer Herford T. Cowling during his travel to Taiwan, as part of his broader Asian tour.

According to TFAI, a copy of the film was gifted by the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam -- the institute's Dutch counterpart -- in 1991.

Details about the film's origin, however, remained largely unknown until recent research brought some of them to light, TFAI said in a news release Friday.

TFAI Executive Director Du Li-chin (杜麗琴) said the release of the film to the public, along with its accompanying research, is part of a broader effort to "decolonize the visuals" of Taiwan's colonial past and to restore Taiwanese society's agency in shaping its own narrative.

The research was featured in the latest issue of TFAI's Film Appreciation Journal, released on July 11.

Du added that TFAI, which is responsible for preserving the nation's audiovisual archives, continued to call for the "return" of early images and footage related to Taiwan's Indigenous peoples from global archive institutions.