The development of Taiwanese documentaries began after lifting of martial law in 1987 and the rise in popularity of small electronic camcorders, as well as the support and promotion provided by the Taiwan Council for Cultural Affairs.

Films played a vital role in enabling the larger colonial project of imperialization or cultural assimilation of Taiwanese subjects into the Japanese empire.

For example, the use of a benshi (narrator of silent films), which was a very important component of the film-going experience in Japan, was adopted and renamed piān-sū[5] by the Taiwanese.

The first Taiwanese benshi master was a musician and composer named Wang Yung-feng, who had played on a regular basis for the orchestra at the Fang Nai Ting Theatre in Taipei.

He was also the composer of the music for the Chinese film Tao hua qi xue ji (China, Peach girl, 1921) in Shanghai.

Lu Su-shang, is not primarily remembered for his benshi performances, but mainly for writing the inestimable history of cinema and drama in Taiwan.

The most famous benshi of all was possibly Zhan Tian-ma, whose story is told in a recent Taiwanese biographical film, March of Happiness (Taiwan, 1999, dir: Lin Sheng-shing).

[6] Benshi masters frequently were intellectuals: many spoke Japanese, often traveled to Japan and/or China, and some were poets who wrote their own librettos for each film.

[8] Taiwanese directors would vividly revisit the legacy of this process of cultural annexation in such films as Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness (1989) and The Puppetmaster (1993), as well as Wu Nien-jen's A Borrowed Life (1994).

[9] Taiwanese cinema grew again after 1949, when the end of the Chinese civil war brought many filmmakers sympathetic to the Nationalists to Taiwan.

The government focused strongly on the economy, industrial development, and education, and in 1963 the Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC; see 中影公司) introduced the "Health Realism" melodrama.

This film genre was proposed to help build traditional moral values, which were deemed important during the rapid transformation of the nation's socioeconomic structure.

The author Chiung Yao is especially famous for the movies made in this time period which were based on her widely read romantic novels.

For instance, Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness portrays the tensions and the conflicts between the local Taiwanese and the newly arrived Chinese Nationalist government after the end of the Japanese occupation.

Chen Kunhou's 1983 film Growing Up provides a nuanced perspective on the experience of a very young boy, from an ordinary family, getting into progressively more trouble.

For example, Tsai Ming-liang's Vive L'Amour, which won the Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice Film Festival, portrays the isolation, despair, and love of young adults living in the upscale apartments of Taipei.

His early films Pushing Hands (1991), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) focus on the generational and cultural conflicts confronting many modern families.

The recent films Eternal Summer (2006), Prince of Tears (2009) and Winds of September (2009) have pushed the boundaries of Taiwanese film-making and broken the island's long-standing taboos about the depiction of controversial subject matter.

[14] Some notable films that led the revival of Taiwanese cinema are Secret (2007), Taipei Exchanges (2010), Monga (2010), Seven Days in Heaven (2010), Night Market Hero (2011), Love (2012).

In 2012, Giddens Ko's romance You Are the Apple of My Eye (2012) earned about NTD 425 million, making it the 4th highest grossing domestic Taiwanese film of all time, followed by Fung Kai's Din Tao: Leader of the Parade (2012) which earned NTD 317 million, making it the 8th highest grossing domestic Taiwanese film of all time.

[21] Such films include Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin (2015),[21] Yu Shan Chen's Our Times (2015), Giddens Ko's You Are the Apple of My Eye (2012), and The Wonderful Wedding (2015).

The ROC regained its footing in Taiwan, which was acquired from Japan in 1945 and the 1931 law still applies to the Fujian islands of Kinmen and Matsu.

Members of the commission shall be representatives of government agencies, and scholars and experts having academic or practical experience in related fields.

[36][37] Article 10 maintains if motion pictures and their advertisements violate restrictions or prohibitions laid out in law, the central competent authority shall not grant a rating.

The Ministry of Culture established by the Executive Yuan further specifies that not more than one third of the committee members can come from the Bureau of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development.

[38] The rating system was expanded into five categories on October 16, 2015 per regulations (Chinese: 中華民國104年10月16日文影字第10420350091號令修正發布) drawn up in accordance with the Motion Picture Act.

[39] Article 9 of the regulations specifically mentions the Restricted rating will be issued under the following scenario: Where the sale or use of illegal drugs, robbery, kidnapping, killing, or other illegal activities are detailed in the plot; where there is concern that such activity could be mimicked; where terrorism, bloody events, violence, or perversion are particularly vivid and could still be acceptable to persons over age 18; where sexual imagery or innuendo is portrayed vividly in animation, images, language, text, dialogue, or sound, but does not elicit feelings of shame or disgust in persons over the age of 18.

Article 235 of ROC's Criminal Code also penalizes the distribution, broadcasts, sale, publicly displays of obscene video record.