John Hsu: Last News

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Golden Horse Film Festival, which operates the premier awards in the Chinese-language film industry, has teamed up with Cannes’ Marché du Film to showcase a handful of new films and projects under the banner Golden Horse Goes to Cannes. To be presented May 16, the five films comprise new works from directors Chen Yu-hsun, Yang Ya-che, Huang Xi, Giddens Ko and John Hsu, with such high-profile producers as Lee Lieh, Sylvia Chang, Aileen Li, Jeffrey Chan and Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Taiwan‘s major awards body Golden Horse will have a consolidated presence at Cannes‘ Marché du Film for the first time, under the umbrella ‘Golden Horse Goes to Cannes’.

EXCLUSIVE: In yet another of a recent string of intriguing local-language projects, Sony Pictures International Productions is teaming with Taiwan’s Activator to co-produce paranormal comedy Dead Talents Society. SPIP has also acquired worldwide distribution rights in addition to closing a deal for global remake rights.

The “White Terror” period in Taiwan’s history, during which thousands were executed by order of the repressive Kuomintang (KMT) authorities, has been little explored in film. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “A City of Sadness” is one exception, and Edward Yang’s “A Brighter Summer Day” makes oblique reference to it. But away from the arthouse, depiction of the state’s violent, decades-long suppression of “dissident” activity, has been all but taboo. John Hsu’s “Detention” is designed to address that lack in a populist format: the film is an ambitious, if not entirely successful mix of haunted-house horror, monster movie, love story, historical reckoning and sentimentalized call for the national remembrance of a period many would prefer to forget.