The easing of censorship laws in the 1970s allowed a group of young Taiwanese directors, among them Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien (
"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.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE GOLDEN HORSE FILM FESTIVAL
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 (
The former is autobiographic. The latter is a nostalgic movie about young love.
Edward Yang's acclaimed urban critique Terrorist (
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 (
"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 (
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
RSS