Preserving the Fuhsingkang Film Production Studio, Taipei – Its Roots Stretch Back to Shanghai

IThe old Fuhsingkang Film Production Studio is in Taipei. It is not used anymore and, though the last film made there was 1995, its heyday was really the 1950s and 1960s. As with everything about the early days of the Republic of China in Taiwan it was under the control of the military – specifically the Ministry of Defense Political Warfare Division. It is also the case that the history of the Fuhsingkang Film Production Studio is intertwined with that of Shanghai.

After 1949 of course some of the stars, directors, screenwriters and technicians associated with the Shanghai cinema industry remained in mainland China and took their chances with the new communist leadership (invariably that did not end well!). Many went to Hong Kong and that story is well known I think. Only an estimated 5% of the Shanghai film industry went with the KMT to Taiwan and (according to James Udden’s informative No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien) most of those were people who had worked on educational and propaganda films. Udden says this meant Taiwan got a lot of technical equipment and fair amount of expertise but rather less creative talent. However, some classics were produced – Storm Over the Yangtze River (1969 – pictured below), The Story of Tin-Ying (1970).

Now the Taipei authorities are about to decide whether to bulldoze the old site and build a new film studios (though some might say that Taipei’s  Beitou District is a little too crowded for a major studio?) or turn the existing buildings into a museum of Taiwanese cinema and a film school. I rather hope the latter personally.