However, in 2019, Janus Films and the Criterion Collection announced a 4K restoration of Taipei Story . They released a gorgeous Blu-ray and began streaming it on the Criterion Channel. At that point, the Internet Archive version became a moral thorn.
Edward Yang’s second feature film explores the alienation of urban life during Taiwan's economic boom in the 1980s. The narrative follows Chin (Tsai Chin), a modern career woman navigating the corporate ladder, and her childhood sweetheart Lung (Hou Hsiao-hsien), a former Little League baseball star clinging to past glory and traditional values.
Orphaned works are copyrighted materials whose owners are difficult or impossible to identify or locate. For most of the 2000s and 2010s, Taipei Story fit this description perfectly. No major distributor claimed it. The studios that produced it had folded or been absorbed. Consequently, users began uploading digitized versions of their personal copies to the Internet Archive. taipei story internet archive
Taipei Story centers on the crumbling relationship between Lung and Chin, childhood sweethearts whose divergent perspectives on life mirror the rapid transformation of their city. Lung (played by fellow New Wave master Hou Hsiao‑hsien) is a former Little League baseball star who now runs a traditional textile shop. He is tethered to the past, spending his days watching old baseball tapes and clinging to a sense of honor and loyalty that feels increasingly out of step with the bustling, neon‑lit Taipei of the 1980s. In contrast, Chin (Tsai Chin, a popular singer whom Yang later married) is an ambitious executive in a real estate firm, eager to buy a modern apartment, climb the corporate ladder, and emigrate to the United States.
Preserving a Masterpiece: The Legacy of Edward Yang’s Taipei Story on the Internet Archive However, in 2019, Janus Films and the Criterion
In the pantheon of world cinema, few films capture the melancholic pulse of a city in transition quite like Edward Yang’s 1985 masterpiece, Taipei Story (青梅竹馬). For decades, this slow-burning elegy to urban alienation was notoriously difficult to find. Plagued by poor VHS transfers, a lack of official digital distribution, and a near-total absence from Western streaming platforms, the film existed primarily in the memories of cinephiles and grainy bootlegs.
For collectors, finding Taipei Story meant purchasing out-of-print Taiwanese VCDs or pan-and-scan VHS tapes from the 1980s. This scarcity created a vacuum. And into that vacuum stepped the Internet Archive. Edward Yang’s second feature film explores the alienation
The answer is complicated. The film is still under copyright in Taiwan (life of the author plus 50 years; Edward Yang died in 2007, meaning copyright extends to 2057). In the United States, under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, restored copyrights apply to foreign works. Legally, these uploads are infringing.
A search for today yields several results: a 720p rip from a Japanese laser disc, a standard-definition transfer from a Taiwanese broadcast, and fan-restored versions with hard-coded English subtitles. These files are free to borrow or download. For a student in Iowa or a critic in São Paulo, the Archive became the only way to experience Yang’s vision.
The very philosophy of the Internet Archive—open access, long‑term preservation, and resistance to digital decay—mirrors the mission of organizations like the World Cinema Project. Just as Scorsese’s project rescues decaying film stock, the Internet Archive rescues digital content from link rot and platform obsolescence. In an age where streaming licenses expire and physical media becomes scarce, having a robust public digital archive is crucial for cultural memory.
In 2020, a significant event occurred. The Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI) finally released a 4K digital restoration of Taipei Story . It played at the Berlin International Film Festival and eventually hit MUBI (a streaming service) in select regions. One would expect this to result in a takedown order against the Internet Archive. It did not.