The film puts together four sequences shot on 35mm from 1920 to 1939 that show Indigenous people’s lives during Japanese rule, offering a glimpse inside the colonizers’ “civilizing mission”. Formosa (1920-1930) follows Japanese officials heading up to the mountain to check on the Indigenous peoples and the Formosans living nearby. Japanese Police Patrol “Savage” Villages (1930s) reveals Japanese police inspecting a civilized Indigenous community of the Malepa. Taichūshū Takasago Tribes Tour Japan (1936) documents the Indigenous chiefs’ trip from Keelung Harbor to the Port of Kobe. Sketches of the Takasago Tribes (1939) shows the content lives of Atayal’s (Tayal’s) Paran group and the Harvest Festival of the Amis’ Lidaw group.

Taiwan Film Institute digitally restored its own version of Formosa from an archived copy in EYE Filmmuseum, the Netherlands. The other three sequences have also been digitally scanned and preserved by TFI. The scenes of Indigenous life from the colonizers’ perspective were intended to declare sovereignty, and also to act as propaganda for Japan’s rule and mission. These sequences captured on film have become valuable visual data for the scenery, ecosystems, and Indigenous lives within that time period.

Note: In the later years of Japanese rule, Japan replaced the derogatory term Shēng fān, or savages, with Takasago-zoku to refer to Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples. Hoklo Taiwanese, Hakka and Pingpu (Peipo) peoples were called the Formosans.

Available Formats: DVD, Blu-ray and DCP