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Good Men, Good Women  /  Goodbye South, Goodbye

June 20, 2015 - 7:30 pm

Good Men, Good Women  (Taiwan, 1995)

Hao nan hao nu

In this moving and formally rigorous historical epic, director Hou Hsiao-hsien pays tribute to those individuals who resisted Chiang Kai-Shek's martial law in the "White Terror" of the 1950s.  Dramatizing the making of a film about one such leader, he simultaneously details the anxieties of the actress who will play her, implicitly lamenting the anomie and alienation that have filled the gap left by men and women of conviction. 

Producer: Ichiyama Shozo, Mizuno Kastuhiro, Ben Hsieh, His Hsiang, Okuyama Kazuyoshi, Michael Yang.  Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien.  Screenwriter: Chu Tien-wen.  Inspired by Lan Po-Chou's Song of the Covered Wagon.  Cinematography: Chen Huai-en.  Editor: Liao Ching-sung.  Cast: Annie Shizuka Inoh, Lim Giong, Jack Kao, Vicky Wei, His Hsiang.  35mm, color, in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese and Japanese with English subtitles, 108 min.

Goodbye South, Goodbye  (Taiwan, 1996)

Zai jian nan guo zai jian

A stylish riff on the gangster genre, re-tooled for a modern Taiwanese context, director Hou Hsiao-hsien's film profiles the lives of a group of crooks with dreams of surfing the Taiwanese economic miracle—if only they can figure out how.  A comedy of inertia, with overwrought scheming glacially leading to hilariously bungled schemes, the almost non-starting plot is a hilarious showcase of behaviors and suggests a larger national story of haphazard economic experience.

Producer: Ichiyama Shozo, Mizuno Kastuhiro, Ben Hsieh, His Hsiang, Huang Chung, Okuyama Kazuyoshi, Michael Yang.  Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien.  Screenwriter: Chu Tien-wen.  From a story by Jack Kao and His Hsiang.  Cinematography: Mark Lee (Ping-bin).  Editor: Liao Ching-sung.  Cast: Jack Kao, Hsu Kuei-ying, Lim Giong, Annie Shizuka Inoh, His Hsiang.  35mm, color, in Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles, 112 min.

Preceded by

La Belle Epoque  (Taiwan, 2011)


A young woman receives a meaningful gift carrying profound memories.

Producer: Liao Ching-sung.  Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien.  Screenwriter: Hou Hsiao-hsien.  Cinematography: Yao Hung-i.  Editor: Liao Ching-sung.  Cast: Shu Qi, Mei Fang.  Digital video, b/w and color, in Taiwanese with English subtitles, 6 min.