The Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s Taiwanese-language cinema restoration project

Abstract

Abstract This article presents the forty-year history of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s efforts to save Taiwanese language films, taiyupian, starting from collecting, preserving, and through to digital restoration. The TFAI’s project to restore taiyupian aims to make these films available in this digital era, so that they can be digitally projected, and give Taiwanese-language cinema a new life. These restored films are vibrant, possess modernist aesthetics, and are boldly creative. With the newly restored films, the styles of the important taiyupian directors can be re-examined and given the new recognition they deserve. Furthermore, the TFAI calls for a repositioning of Taiwanese-language cinema in Taiwan film history.