Archival Dispatch, Oral Portraits – Huang Mingchuan on the Documentary of Yang Kui

In the early 1980s, debates over what “Taiwanese literature” referred to were rampant in the literary world. Established in November 1982, Avanguard Publishing House primarily focused on publishing works of native literature, with historical and political commentaries as supplements. It held a prominent position in Taiwan’s literary publishing industry. In its early days, Avanguard Publishing House had a close relationship with opposition movements. According to its founder Lim Bun-kim, many books were sold from vans at the scenes of opposition movements. After martial law was lifted, Avanguard Publishing House issued a literary series titled “Litterateurs’ Complete Works in Taiwan” from 1988 to 1993, consisting of 50 volumes featuring works by 57 writers. It included literary works from the 1920s to the 1990s, spanning the first three generations of post-war literature. This series was the “first Taiwanese literature complete works with a comprehensive perspective” and distinctly marked the crucial role of Avanguard Publishing House in the institutionalization of Taiwanese literature.

In 1988, Huang Mingchuan returned to Taiwan after a decade in the United States and completed his first feature film, “The Man from Island West,” at the end of 1989. This marked the beginning of his career as an “independent filmmaker.” After viewing “The Man from Island West,” Lim Bun-kim proposed to Huang Mingchuan the idea of making literary documentary films, leading to the release of the first batch of literary documentary films in Taiwan, the “Taiwan Literature” Literary Documentaries Series, by Avanguard Publishing House. This series consisted of four films: Dong Fang-bai (1994), Lai Ho (1994), Lin Shuang-bu (1995), and Yang Kui (1997).

Huang Mingchuan, who studied art in the United States in the late 1970s and established a commercial photography studio in Manhattan, New York, in the early 1980s, published “An Obscure Exposure: On a Brief History of Taiwan Photography” in “The Lion Art Monthly” in 1985. This was Taiwan’s first article examining the power relations of photography and industrial technological development, colonial modernity, and the “gaze.” The article emphasized the serious issues that needed clarification at that time: photography is both the original data recording reality and one of the interpretative data reproducing history, and its duality and blind spots must be clearly distinguished. Based on this, the interview first asked director Huang Mingchuan to discuss the topic of “Images and Historical Perspective,” starting from the awareness raised in the article “An Obscure Exposure.” From a critical and highly historical perspective, the discussion focused on how Huang approached the filming of the documentary on the deceased literary figure Yang Kui in the 1990s, involving the dispatch of a large number of historical archives and conducting extensive oral interviews.

In 1997, Avanguard Publishing House released the documentary “Taiwan Literature Literary Documentaries: Yang Kui.” The visual materials benefited from a large collection of life photos of Yang Kui during his time at Tunghai Garden. Through editing, a rich montage of Yang Kui’s images was created. This is the level of imagery. On the level of sound, the documentary portrays the image and personality of Yang Kui through the oral narratives of others, presenting a unique and complex portrait of Yang Kui. I refer to this as “oral portraits.” The extensive network of communication spanning language, generations, and political positions, as well as the target audience for resistance across class differences (communicating with the working class, allowing the bourgeoisie to hear, and making the ruling class vigilant), intertwined in Yang Kui’s extensive discourse system. Through the recollections of over twenty interviewees in documentary “Yang Kui,” the documentary meticulously paints the character of Yang Kui frame by frame. Among the interviewees, those close to Yang Kui, such as family members, scholars who lived or frequently visited Tunghai Garden, and those more distant, such as historians/reviewers without personal acquaintance, spoke Mandarin, Hokkien, or Hakka. These languages represent their identities, life experiences, and the unique life journey that intersects with Yang Kui’s historical spectrum. For documentary viewers who cannot hear Yang Kui speak, these diverse interviewees, spanning language, generations, identities, and political positions, allow the audience to construct Yang Kui’s position in the discourse of social movement language and writing.