In colonial times, cinema is a vital tool to promote government orthodoxy and to preserve the civilization of the governed. The present study considered cinema’s attractive qualities and the logistics of perception in the process of documenting and perpetuating the cultural genocide of indigenous peoples through film. This study used a historiographical method to generalize historical materials and the cinema viewing experiences of indigenous peoples in Taiwan in the early Japanese colonial period. Furthermore, this study focused on two historical dimensions. The first dimension considers film viewing as a virtual tourism activity driven by the colonizers; films became the tools of the colonists’ cultural expansion. The other dimension concerns images of military suppression of indigenous peoples; army cameras entered the territory of indigenous peoples like a weapon, recording brutal battles and witnessing the colonists’ violence. Finally, the indigenous film experiences reflected the colonizers’ policy of appeasement of the Tsou people in the south of Taiwan and subjugation of the Atayal people in the north.