Old films made new again

The easing of censorship laws in the 1970s allowed a group of young Taiwanese directors, among them Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), to make movies with a new level of sophistication. That movement is now known as New Taiwan Cinema (台灣新電影) and it made Taiwan's film industry an international force.

"None of us thought about revolution when we were making those movies," director Chen Kun-ho (陳坤厚) recalled. "We just wanted to make films that were different from our teachers' films."

The advent of New Taiwan Cinema lifted local filmmaking from the staid genres of martial arts, romance and propaganda to a new level that questioned official views of Taiwan's society. In examining the effects of rapid urbanization on traditional society, it gave voice to a new representation of a modern, mutli-ethnic Taiwan.

A retrospective of 40 films entitled Twenty Years of New Taiwan Cinema will examine the legacy of those films two decades later.

Three of Hou Hsiao-hsien's movies will show at the retrospective. They are The Sandwich Man (兒子的大玩偶), based on the stories of novelist Huang Chun-ming (黃春明), and his masterpieces The Time to Live and the Time to Die (童年往事), and Dust in the Wind (戀戀風塵).

The former is autobiographic. The latter is a nostalgic movie about young love.

Edward Yang's acclaimed urban critique Terrorist (恐怖份子) and Chen Kun-ho's Growing Up (小畢的故事), a story about a boy growing up during the turmoil of the 1950s, will also be shown. Growing Up won three Golden Horse awards and was a box office hit as well.

A similar retrospective will also take place at Busan's international film festival, from Nov. 14 to Nov. 23. From New Wave to Independent: Taiwanese Cinema 1982-2002 will see Taiwan's acclaimed director Hou Hsiao-hsien present 20 Taiwanese films at Asia's largest film festival.

These retrospectives are a time to celebrate and also a time to reflect on the current state of Taiwanese cinema.

"At that time [20 years ago], a not-so-popular film of mine made NT$7 million at the box office," Chen Kun-ho said. "But now, when a local film makes more than NT$2 million it's considered a big hit and the crew corks open a bottle of champagne."

Sunny Yu (游安順), who played the lead role in Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Time to Live and the Time to Die, said it was a lucky coincidence that he entered the industry when he was 17.

"By the time I got used to things, the industry was shrinking and now it has disappeared," Yu lamented.

Yu left the film industry in 1991 to work in television as an actor and producer.

Actress Wen-ying (文英) has been acting in Taiwanese films for 20 years. She says that 20 years ago the budget for a film was around NT$8 million and the price of a movie ticket was NT$60. Tickets now cost at least NT$200, but "we still have budgets of NT$8 to NT$10 million. This isn't even enough to buy lunch boxes for the crew," she said.

In addition to 28 films selected as representative of New Taiwan Cinema, the screening will include the films of 12 successor filmmakers such as Ang Lee (李安), Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮), Ho Ping (何平) and Chang Tso-chi (張作驥).