20, carefully selected, films from a variety of genres have been chosen to be ‘shown’ digitally at 2020’s Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh.
Taiwanese Hokkien-Language cinema, also called Taiwanese cinema from the literal translation of Taiyupian, refers to Hoklo-speaking films produced in Taiwan between 1955 and 1981. The term is used to differentiate these Taiwanese films from the Mandarin-speaking cinema in Taiwan, Amoy-dialect cinema in Hong Kong, and Hokkien cinema in other South-eastern Asian countries.
Thanks to the huge success of the first Taiwanese Hokkien-Language film shot in 1955, numerous film studios were soon established and produced more than 100 films a year during the prosperous period between 1965 and 1969. Relying mostly on private investment, the studios thrived and exported large number of titles oversees.
Taiwanese Hokkien-Language cinema includes a wide range of genres: detective, thriller, opera, musicals, romance, comedy, fantasy, wuxia, and literary adaptations.