TAIPEI (TVBS News) — The Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute (國家電影及視聽文化中心), the island's national archive for cinematic and audiovisual heritage, has made public what historians believe is the earliest surviving motion picture documentation of Taiwan. The institute uploaded the rare historical footage, titled "Formosa" (福爾摩沙), to its official YouTube channel on Friday (July 18), making this cultural treasure freely accessible to global audiences. The remarkable film, which experts date to approximately 1917 during Taiwan's Japanese colonial period (1895-1945), provides an invaluable visual record of early 20th-century Taiwanese society through its artificially tinted frames depicting period architecture, traditional cultural practices, agricultural activities, tea cultivation operations, and rare footage of Taiwan's Indigenous communities.
The historically significant footage originally came to Taiwan through international cultural cooperation when the Eye Filmmuseum in the Netherlands, one of Europe's premier film archives, transferred the early documentary to the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute in 1991 as part of growing recognition of the importance of repatriating cultural artifacts. Running approximately seven minutes in length, the short documentary bears the title "Formosa," derived from the Portuguese word meaning "beautiful" or "beautiful island" — the name Portuguese sailors gave to Taiwan in the 16th century that remained in common Western usage for centuries. Despite its historical importance, researchers have been unable to definitively identify the filmmaker or confirm the exact filming date with absolute certainty.
Li-Chin Du (杜麗琴), who serves as the executive director of the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute, noted with particular satisfaction that the concept of "return of images" — the practice of repatriating historical visual materials to their places of origin—has now been formally incorporated into the ethical framework governing members of the International Federation of Film Archives, the global organization of film preservation institutions to which Taiwan's archive belongs. Du highlighted the institute's continuing dedication to scholarly research and contextual interpretation of Taiwan's visual historical record, emphasizing the importance of democratizing access to these materials as a means of restoring narrative authority over Taiwan's own historical representation to its people. ◼