For the month of May in honor of AAPI Heritage Month, LACMA hosted a virtual film series called Dreaming Impossible Dreams – Taiwanese-Language Films from the 1960s. Curators Hanna Huang and Joshua Martin selected six restored films from the Golden Age of Taiwanese language cinema, covering a wide range of genres from fantasy to martial arts (wuxia), romantic comedy musical to spy thriller.
Known by the Mandarin name “taiyupian,” over 1,200 of these black-and-white Taiwanese language films were made between 1955 and 1981, but as of yet, only 200+ have been identified. Many are incomplete or damaged, however with more recent scholarly interest in taiyupian, the Taiwanese Film and Audio Visual Institute is continuing to restore found films.
Produced on shoestring budgets and shot and edited often over the course of weeks, these films were initially seen as commercial products, but they really resonated with their Taiwanese-speaking audience. Unfortunately, as the martial-law-era government focused their film promotion on Mandarin language films, taiyupian was slowly pushed out, but the remaining films show us an invaluable snapshot into a special cultural period of Taiwanese history.
Learn more about what goes into curating an exhibit and the individual films themselves with an exclusive Q&A by TACL Director of Programming Erica Brozovsky with curators Hanna Huang and Josh Martin. Video edited by Amy Fan.
Film descriptions provided by Hanna Huang:
The Husband’s Secret 丈夫的秘密 (1960)
Dir. LIN Tuan-Chiu, Taiwan, 102 min, Taiwanese with English & Chinese Traditional Subtitles
Description: Tshiu-Bi reunites with her old classmate and friend Le-Hun, a destitute single mother. When Le-Hun falls ill in the middle of the street, Tshiu-Bi takes her in, not realizing that her friend and her husband had a past history. Unwittingly shaking up their comfortable middle-class marriage, more secrets emerge from this complicated love triangle.
Fantasy of the Deer Warrior 大俠梅花鹿 (1961)
Dir. CHANG Ying, Taiwan, 87 min, Taiwanese with English & Chinese Traditional Subtitles, Action Fantasy Fable
Description: A completely unique Taiwanese fantasy-fable-melodrama about the interactions between various animals in the forest. What makes this so unique is that the animals are played by actors dressed in rather inexpensive costumes. Oddly fascinating and involving.
Little Heroes vs. Two Masked Villains 雙雄大鬥雙假面 (1962)
Dir. SHAO Luohui, Taiwan, 106 min, Taiwanese with English & Chinese Traditional Subtitles, Wuxia
Description: King Gui’s two daughters become the victims of the Demon Society as the villains try to seize King Gui’s treasured Dragon and Phoenix Swords. When King Gui is at his wit’s end, Jhuge Shiro and Zheng Ping, two young swordsmen, turn up and solve the crisis. Made in the era of Taiwanese-language cinema, the traditional music and dance are incorporated in the film; moreover, the masks the gangsters wear have become a unique trademark. Since comic artist Yeh Hung-chia started publishing the comic series, Jhuge Shiro, in 1958, this production was the first live-action movie made based on the story and the only Taiwanese-language Jhuge Shiro movies that has survived.
Romance at Lungshan Temple 龍山寺之戀 (1962)
Dir. PAI Ke, Taiwan, 98 min, Mandarin & Taiwanese with English & Chinese Traditional Subtitles, Romantic Comedy Musical
Description: Hsiao-fang Chin, a recent Chinese immigrant to Taiwan who loves to sing, quits school to work and earn money to treat her father’s illness. As she faces rejection from other Taiwanese (also known as benshengren 本省人) while trying to find work, she comes across two seemingly unrelated men who develop feelings for her and try to win her affection. Director PAI ke uses this romantic comedy to address the cultural and ethnic divide of Taiwan’s Han-ethnic majority populations.
The Best Secret Agent 天字第一號 (1964)
Dir. CHANG Ying, Taiwan, 102 min, Taiwanese with English & Chinese Traditional Subtitles, Spy Thriller
Description: Star-crossed lovers Cuiying and Lingyun are caught in the crossfires of the politically turbulent period of the Sino-Japanese War. As the struggle of love and patriotism keeps getting more complex, a mysterious Special Agent 001 runs amok sabotaging the Japanese. This first ever Taiwanese-language spy movie produced in Taiwan is often compared to the 007 movies. The Best Secret Agent is a remake of a 1945 movie of the same name that caused a sensation in Shanghai.
Six Suspects 六個嫌疑犯 (1965)
Dir. LIN Tuan-Chiu, Taiwan, 109 min, Taiwanese with English & Chinese Traditional Subtitles, Spy Thriller
Description: A private eye spies on his ex-lover, who is the personal assistant for a steel company chairman. He knows various people’s dirty secrets and decides to start blackmailing them. But when his ex is found dead, he starts to investigate the suspects. This noir adaptation of a Japanese film was never released in the 1960s, but now we have the chance to appreciate this edgy and disturbing depiction of Taipei’s seamy underside during the Martial Law era.