The Outsiders (孽子), Taiwan’s pioneering 1986 gay film, was screened in London on Friday as the opening film of the Queer East Festival.
The 4K restoration of The Outsiders was screened to a full house at London’s Barbican Centre, opening the festival’s seventh edition.
The film was adapted from Taiwanese author Pai Hsien-yung’s (白先勇) novel Crystal Boys (孽子), which shares the same Chinese title.
Photo: CNA
The story follows Li Qing (李青), a young man who is kicked out of his home by his father after being expelled from school for having a relationship with a male classmate in 1973.
Li then begins spending time in Taipei’s New Park, now 228 Peace Memorial Park, which was known in the 1970s and 1980s as a gathering place for gay men, where he meets several of the story’s central gay characters.
At Friday’s screening, audience members were able to watch previously cut footage from the film, as well as the restored version in high definition.
The movie was censored during Taiwan’s Martial Law era, which lasted from 1949 until 1987 under the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
To mark the screening at the London festival, the film’s director, Yu Kan-ping (虞戡平), addressed the audience in a pre-recorded video message.
Yu said the original film was required by the government to remove 11 sections.
The 75-year-old filmmaker said that in the 40 years since the movie’s release, he had seen social acceptance change drastically in both Taiwan and much of the world.
However, Yu said that no matter how times change, he would always be interested in stories about marginalized people.
That includes Taiwan’s gay community in the 1980s, whose members had to hide who they were in a society that he said was unfair and bound by traditional morality.
Yu added that the support the film received from fans and investors in the face of government censorship at the time made that support even more meaningful.
Meanwhile, Queer East director and programmer Wang Yi (王裔) said he had long wanted to introduce the film to British audiences because of the courage it took to make it in Taiwan in the 1980s.
However, Wang said he had been unsure whether he would ever have the chance to screen the film until last year, when the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute announced that the restoration had been completed.
Running from Friday to June 6, the Queer East festival features LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia in venues across London.
In addition to The Outsiders, several other Taiwanese works will also have their UK premieres at the festival, including The Spring Outside of the Fence (竹籬笆外的春天) and The Fantasy of Deer Warrior (大俠梅花鹿).
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