Skip to main content

Previously unreleased works of Taiwanese film pioneer to be screened in the U.S.

  • Date:2020-09-25~2020-09-27
Previously unreleased works of Taiwanese film pioneer to be screened in the U.S.

The cinephilia in the United States will be able to watch Taiwanese pioneer director Mou Tun-fei's (牟敦芾,1941-2019) first two feature films that were banned in Taiwan during the 1960s – "I Didn't Dare to Tell You (不敢跟你講)," and "The End of the Track (跑道終點)" via the video-sharing platform Vimeo from Sept. 25 to 27.

Graduated from the National Taiwan College of Arts, the predecessor of the National Taiwan University of Arts, Mou produced his first feature film "I Didn't Dare to Tell You" in 1969 and "The End of the Track" in 1970. The two cinematic works were banned for their "sensitive content" and other reasons that remain unknown.

Mou spent the following years in Hong Kong before he settled in the United States. The director passed away in Philadelphia in 2019, a year after the two films were screened for the first time in Taiwan.

"I Didn't Dare to Tell You" follows a primary school student who works a night job to pay off his father's gambling debts, leading to the protagonist, who is timid in nature, constantly dozing off during his classes in the day. As the teacher intervenes and investigates the situation, a series of family disputes ensues.

"The End of the Track," meanwhile, is a film that implicitly depicts homosexuality – a topic often considered taboo at that time. It is centered on two inseparable friends Hsiao-tung and Yong-sheng. Hsiao-tung's world crumbles and is forced to confront the nature of his relationship with his close friend after Yong-sheng dies in an accident during a track-and-field practice.

Following the two feature-length films' screening at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival in 2018, where the films were enthusiastically reviewed, the two were shown in Bangkok, London, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, and Sydney.

Adam Piron, film curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), said that the audiences are more familiar with some of Mou's later works with controversial content than his earliest films that are mostly complete unknowns to the public.

"They were to me, which as a film curator, is a dream to program," said Piron.

"Mou's career is really fascinating in that it provides not only a look at an artist who was finding his voice…but also a look at how he was pushing themes that were really ahead of their time, culturally," Piron said.

"These films also provide an essential part of a larger survey of a then-burgeoning scene of independent and avant-garde filmmakers that's unique to Taiwanese Cinema," he concluded.

The screening is made possible by the Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles and the LACMA, the largest art museum in the western United States. For more information please visit here