Pin-Chuan Chen
The Critical History of Taiwanese Independent documentary
My research is about the history of Taiwanese independent documentary. The main research questions are what is the independent documentary in Taiwan and how to define the meaning of Taiwanese independent documentary in different terms.
There are less researches analyse the independent documentary after 1990s in Taiwan because most of researches were finished by the year of 2000, and the concept of independent documentary has appeared, or claimed by documentarians in Taiwan comprehensively after 2000s, when the independent documentary production got compelling achievement in the commercial film market, and became a noticeable phenomena in the matter of film production or the social practice. However, I suggest that the mode of independent documentary production, actually, has existed since 1980s and continued changing its definition along with the social and political circumstances in Taiwan.
In addition, the mode of independent production contrast with the film studio and television channel production, became the dominant mode for making documentary in Taiwan, thus the ‘independent documentary’ became the dominant form of Taiwanese documentary production after 2000s, also led that less noticed on how it forms and what’s the difference between the documentary made in the film and television system and the mode of independent production in Taiwan.
Moreover, after 1980s declined of the Taiwan’s film industry, the independent production became the current mode of film production, eventually, the discussion focused on the documentary in general and ignored that the mode of independent documentary production in Taiwan which apparently reveals numerous meaning in the development of the film industry and the development of documentary in general in Taiwan.
For addressing the definition of Taiwanese independent documentary and pursue the connection between the social circumstances and independent documentary production, I aim to establish a history with critical discourse for Taiwanese independent documentary written in chronological. To explain the cause and effect of the appearance of independent documentary in different period and argue the changing of definitions of the Taiwanese independent documentary, to elaborate how the independent documentary is fashioned by the changing of social and political environment in terms of the historical respect of seeing the documentary is the part of the mechanism of society, from the respect of the history to examine the changing of documentary production mode and related with the matter of Taiwan’s society and politic, to reveal the shape, characteristic and territory of Taiwanese independent documentary.