From provincial to international: Competing imaginings and representations of taiyupian in news reports between 1956 and 1958

Abstract

As Taiwan’s film policy reform was taking place between 1956 and 1958, the definition of guochanpian (domestically produced films) and the qualification of taiyupian (Taiwanese-language films) as guochanpian were debated by the KMT party and the film administration. The press also engaged in the controversy by publishing special issues, opinion pieces, and meeting minutes in newspapers. In this essay, I investigate the formation of the meanings of taiyupian in the journalistic field between 1956 and 1958. The discussion focuses on the special issue published by Lianhe bao (United Daily News) in 1956 and the meeting minutes by Zhengxin xinwen (Credit News) in 1957 that displayed the conflicting tendencies to provincialize taiyupian and modernizing, localizing, internationalizing taiyupian. Through analyzing narratives and rhetoric employed to position taiyupian in news reports, this essay differentiates between imaginings and (re)presentations by two organizing concepts, Sinocentric Chinese nationalism and cosmopolitanism. This discussion concludes with an analysis of The First Taiyupian Festival in 1957, as it realized the imaginings of taiyupian that emerged in the meeting held by Zhengxin xinwen and generated a spectacular industrial, social, and discursive phenomenon that made taiyupian a vigorous discursive force in the discourse of modernity and national cinema.