In the 1980s, Taiwan New Wave cinema gained global acclaim at festivals like Cannes and Venice, sparking a cinematic revolution not only in Taiwan but across the global film landscape.

After decades of authoritarian rule, Taiwan began to open up. The public thirst for high-quality entertainment posed a serious challenge to the stodgy Taiwan’s Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMP), a film studio closely tied to the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party.

This is a story that dramatizes how industry outsiders reshaped one of Taiwan’s most conservative film studios into an art-cinema powerhouse. Ming Ji, the general manager of CMP, made a bold move by hiring two gifted artists to breathe new life into the company. He recruited Wu Nien-jen, an independent screenwriter still completing his accounting degree in night school, and Hsiao Yeh, a part-time novelist who paused his PhD studies in the United States to return to Taiwan. The results were remarkable: Taiwan New Wave won global acclaim.

But what took place at CMP during those transformative years? How did these newcomers manage to produce such groundbreaking work amidst bureaucratic corporate culture and state censorship?

This book is an intimate account of the birth of the Taiwan New Wave, capturing the spirit and vision of revolutionary filmmakers. Sean Chuang, a renowned artist, collaborates with some of Taiwan’s greatest directors to understand the political and social atmosphere of 1980s Taiwan. In this story, idealism triumphs over ideology, authenticity over propaganda, and artistic freedom over censorship.

Local Heroes: Taiwan New Cinema is the first of a five-volume series that documents Taiwan's New Wave cinema of the 1980s.