Amid a rapidly changing cityscape, the lives of a disparate group of swindlers, hustlers, gangsters, and expats collide, with a naive French teenager and a sensitive young local who tries to protect her caught dangerously in the middle.
A TV movie and part of groundbreaking Taiwan TV series “Eleven Women”
The startling contrast between old and new Taiwan is the subject of Wan Jen's epic of traditional identities coming into conflict with an urban life, emphasizing the situation of women.
CHEN Ming-chang, exposed to Western music, from The Beatles to Bob Dylan, often taught himself to play and sing with a guitar when he was young. In the closed social milieu of martial law in Taiwan, he became immersed in music and yearned for freedom, arousing his desire to become a musician. Later, he decided to set out on a journey to learn more about the music that has been passed down through generations. Traveling around Taiwan, he learns traditional opera music from prestigious musicians and integrates it into his artistic creations, composing music and stories that belong to Taiwan…
Xiaoyue finds that her mother has been working for a long time away from home when she receives the apples sent from her mother. Just entering her puberty, Xiaoyue comes from a new immigrant family from Vietnam. She is laughed at and bullied in school because her old father makes a living as a scrap collector. The rebellious Biyan always stands out for Xiaoyue. She even plans a three-day journey to see her mother with Xiaoyue. Ms. Chen is faced with a dilemma. She is going to retire but the after-school tutorial class in the community is the only place for her to care her students. For Xiaoyue and her friend Biyan, her class is their hope.
There are several anthology films at the beginning stage of Taiwan New Cinema. Ah Fu consists of three shorts, having directors from various backgrounds. The leading roles in the three films are all named Ah Fu. The stories are played by different actors and located in Hong Kong, China, and Taipei respectively.
Ip Cheung and her husband, a senior police inspector, had been happily married for 18 years. One day, Ip runs into her neighbour, a Taiwanese woman. As they are talking, three men suddenly appeared and tried to kill them. The Taiwanese woman is killed but Ip and the kid, Yen, managed to escape. At the same time, Ip's husband commits suicide. His superior suspected him of corruption. Ip finds out that the Taiwanese woman was her husband's mistress and Yen, his illegitimate son. Ip is given custody of Yen but they are unable to get along. However she will save his live when the gang go after him.
At an old age, a former political prisoner is determined to find out where his fellow sufferers have laid since their secret execution, while Taiwan embarks on a tumultuous path of democratization.
Three Chinese women with vastly different backgrounds get acquainted and become friends amid the social desolation of New York.
Taiwanese comedy film.
A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.
The heart-warming tale of a poor boy turns into a world-class baker, set in southern Taiwan and France. Pao-chun comes from a poor background, and realizes he must acquire a skill to provide for his mother. He leaves for Taipei and becomes an apprentice in a bakery, Finally, Pao-chun overcomes the odds and makes his dream red-bean bun, but disaster strikes when he loses both his childhood love and his mother.
A story of a girl haunted by the ghost of her mother, after witnessing her murder.
After falling in love with a traffic cop, a cab driver commits as many traffic violations as he can in order to see her again.
Hsu, retired, craves for grandchildren while his two sons still staying single. Preventing from losing memory, he takes a camera back to hometown to shoot an autobiography for his unborn grandchildren.
Richly illustrated with film clips and interviews, OUR TIME, OUR STORY tells the still-evolving story of the Taiwanese "new wave," from its rise in the early 1980s, as the island was democratizing after decades under martial law, through growing international recognition and domestic debate in the 1990s. Spearheaded in its early years by such filmmakers as Edward Yang, Ko I-cheng, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wan Jen, the movement revitalized Taiwan cinema through low-budget experiments that emphasized personal stories, political reflection and stylistic invention. Said filmmakers, writers and actors like Wu Nien-jen and Sylvia Chang, even "second wave" directors Tsai Ming-liang and Lin Cheng-sheng provide fond reminiscences and retrospective insights in this compelling account of one of the most distinctive national cinemas of the last quarter-century.
More than 20 years ago, there were three "Ban Dou" master chefs who dominated the catering business in Taiwan. However, the street banquet business has been in decline since Taiwan's economic boom. Master Fly Spirit wants to pass the family recipes and culinary skills on to his only child, Wan, but she desperately wants to run away from the family business and to become a film star.
A triptych reinterpreting Shakespeare's classic character Juliet. The three stories are directed by 3 different directors; Juliet's Choice (By Hou Chi Jan), Two Juliets (By Shen Ko Shang), and Another Juliet (By Chen Yu Hsun) Juliet's Choice : In the 70's, Ju worked in a printing store where a boy with a banned article changes her life. Two Juliets : Mei is told that in the 80's, a woman faked insanity to be locked up just to wait for her lover. Another Juliet : In 2010, "Juliet" tries to commit suicide but a TV commercial crew gets in the way.....
The story of an Indian boy named Pi, a zookeeper's son who finds himself in the company of a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger after a shipwreck sets them adrift in the Pacific Ocean.
10+10 is a project initiated by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival to demonstrate the solidarity between Taiwanese film-makers. 20 directors are invited to make a 5-minute short film each on the theme of the “Uniqueness of Taiwan,” but allowed total freedom in all other aspects.
'Such a Life' is quite a sad film. It is set in the sixties, in a village on the west coast of Taiwan, where many are succumbing to 'black foot', a disease caused by drinking contaminated well water. The only 'cure' is to amputate the afflicted limb, and to avoid drinking the contaminated water. Many in the village were already sick, and few could afford to have tap-water installed. At the center of the story is Ah Chung, who lives with his grandfather, who has already lost one leg to 'black foot'. In the same village also live an opera family, who are finding things increasingly difficult there, an oyster farmer, who complains that his oysters are being poisoned by a nearby pharmaceutical plant, and an assortment of children who enjoy swimming in the sea, and who bully Ah Chung. A significant portion of the action also takes place in the village school, where Ah Chung is having trouble keeping up with the fees.
A cute coed leaves her mother's home and gets involved with a pastry chef who has links to the local criminal element.
What happens when a costumed universal space hero is put out to pasture? Or, rather, the actor portraying him is?
The Bad Boy Squad, a variety of private detective agency, is composed of King (Ekin Cheng Yi-kin), Queen (Kristy Yeung), and Jack (Louis Koo Tin-lok), whose primary source of business is the reuniting of clientèle with their first flames, and when the trio of young operatives returns to Hong Kong from an assignment in Thailand and the Squad's next three customers supply photographs of lost loves, the women in the pictures appear to be the same individual.
Ann Ann was as active and curious as most middle school students. He would run off to explore the weathered area, egged on by his classmates. But he was shrouded by an invisible shadow. His father died of liver cancer, and hereditary liver cancer claimed his sister's life. His mother is the only family he has, but it is his classmate Aden who knows him best. When Aden was young, his mother ran off with someone else, and he and his sister became his father's punching bag.
Two friends who haven't seen each other for thirteen years reunite. One is a successful concert pianist just back from a European tour and the other has just started a new business.
For the past forty years, Ah Long has headed up a traditional Chinese musical troupe. But times are changing, and the troupe members leaving one by one, Ah Hui, is an aimless slacker with no plans for the future. Ah Hui’s best friend is Ah Gou, a young man who works as a welder making metal gates.