In Taiwan: Sneaking into the Central Motion Picture Company Studio Lot

Apologies for the recent quiet but I have been on my now annual excursion to Taiwan for the kids' summer Mandarin camp. This is the second year we've done it and last year I also took half day lessons. However, it left me with no time so this year I opted instead to keep my time free for exploration and spent my time sweltering in the heat and generally having a nice time walking the streets and surrounding countryside.

One of my main objectives this year was to visit some of the Taiwan sites of a couple of the films I have already covered on this blog. Actually, there are only really two I was concerned with: The Sand Pebbles and The Chairman. The Taiwanese sites of The Sand Pebbles was brought to my attention earlier in the year when I was contacted by a chap about identifying the various locations for his own blog - now deleted. Sadly, I was only able to identify one location myself (the Zhuzihu site) but was still party to various emails flying around for the identification (or not) of some of the other sites. Anyway, keep an eye open here for a few posts of those sites definitively identified over the coming weeks. With regards to The Chairman there were only really two sites that I could properly identify. This latter film suffered from the political climate of the time and so the locations are a mish mash of HK, Taiwan and Wales. I've already done the few HK ones (all filmed surreptitiously) and the Taiwan locations will also follow in due time.

Anyway, to get the Taiwan theme up and running I figured a bonus post regarding a famous film studio in Taiwan would be a good start. A few weeks back I was walking back to Shilin station from the National Palace Museum and wandered past the old CMPC studio lot. The gate was open and no one was around so I sneaked in to have a look and take some pictures.

The studio lot seen from the opposite side of Zhi Shan Road

CMPC Main gate

The Central Motion Picture Company officially started life in 1954 when two earlier organisations weremerged. It seems that the direct consequence of being formed at this time - only five years since the fall of the nationalist Govt and its retreat to Taiwan - was that much of its earlier output was essentially propaganda films on behalf of the Govt and its military. I'm not much of a Taiwan film history expert at all, but I do know that in 1975, as a way to promote Taiwanese film, the Chinese Culture Town was opened up to tourism inside the studios. This was basically a large film set made up of a large number of traditional style Chinese buildings. I believe it was also used as a bonafide film set but was also open to the public as a tourist attraction. It operated up until around 2006 when the studios closed it for renovation and rumours started up that it was about to be redeveloped into luxury housing. It wasn't redeveloped but was reopened for several more years before finally closing and left standing in the rotten state that you'll see in the following photographs.

Although the studio as a whole still seems to be in operation - there was plenty of stuff going on as I wandered through - I understand its days are numbered. The "Culture Town" has been left to rot and I believe the last proper movie to use the facilities was Martin Scorcese's Silence back in 2014. I'm not an expert on these studios at all and will have to rely on HKMDB to provide a list of films that the studio company produced. However, it would be nice to find a list of all the films that were also shot at the location here. I'm sure there is a bunch of 1970's and 80's kung fu movies that utilised the various lots here. With regards to films on this blog, I have a sneaking suspicion that the studio scenes from The Chinese Stuntman were filmed there, but I'm not 100% certain.

In the meantime, here are the photos. The first few show the buildings immediately next to the front gate, so the top photo was taken looking straight down from the main gate and the following ones (including the archway) were taken as I turned to my left.

The picture above was taken just through the previous white archway and show a couple of the sound stages look to have been turned into exterior sets. Does anyone recognise them from any films? Beyond these two buildings was a large open space being used as a car park and the Chinese wall is at the other side of that. This is the start of the old China set/tourist attraction I mentioned above. You can't go through any of the gates so I had to sneak around a gap on the far left of the wall.

The next couple shots show the other side of the wall immediately as you go through the gap at the side. Lots of roof tiles piled up in stacks and a structure occupying the centre of the site that is well beyond its best days. That structure is made of steel girders so I suspect it was a sound stage or storage building made to look like a more traditional building from the outside and I wonder if the stacked roof tiles were taken from that structure?

The Chinese wall and gates are in a really poor state of repair, as is the rest of the site and bits are breaking off to reveal how it was constructed (in case you were wondering if it was real brick).

After walking down the interior side of the wall I turned left and head down the main "street". Both sides had traditional style buildings in various states of dereliction.

Looking back towards the wall 

At the end of the lot I turned around and walked back along the other side. There wasn't much left on this side and it sits very close to a residential street on the north side of the site.

After spending about 15 to 20 minutes walking around I popped back into the car park via the same gap I came in by and made my way out. So these are a few shots of the same areas I had been but just from the opposite viewpoint.

 As I mentioned, the studio looked to be still in operation and I think the company still runs films camps. I did read that the post-production facilities are still very useful and back in 2005 it contained one of only two Dolby sound studios in the whole of Taiwan. I guess it's more likely that the useful bit (the sound studios and post production facilities) will remain and the back lot with the Chinese village on it will be sold and get redeveloped. I guess it's just a sign of the times and is something that Hong Kong has already undergone since cooperation with large Mainland studios and their associated facilities makes it cheaper to film elsewhere.

If anyone has any further information to add about the place any comments would be welcome. It would be nice to know about specific films using the various structuires I photographed and of course what the future plan might be for this place.