It's not uncommon for filmmakers to be upset about their work not being accorded the recognition it deserves, but Hou Hsiao-hsien had more reason to be livid than most when his film, A City of Sadness, failed to be named best film at Taiwan's Golden Horses in 1989. Months earlier, it had won the Venice Film Festival's top prize, the Golden Lion, and critics had predicted the film - thoroughly Taiwanese in content and crew, bar the participation of Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai - would emerge triumphant at home.
Hou was named best director, but the film was beaten to the top prize by Full Moon in New York, a Hong Kong-financed US-set immigration drama.
'The director couldn't contain his fury afterwards, saying the Golden Horses 'are crap'. Even Stanley Kwan Kam-pang, Full Moon's director, said he was astounded by the result.
A City of Sadness remains a powerful piece of work, and one of the most artistically and politically daring films ever to have been made in and about Taiwan.
Set in the late 1940s, Hou's magnum opus - which will be screened here next week as part of the Summer IFF - is the first film to portray the white terror Chiang Kai-shek's forces inflicted on the Taiwanese population as they consolidated their power on the island after the withdrawal of the Japanese colonialists at the end of the second world war. It's also the first film to explicitly address the 228 Incident, an anti-Kuomintang uprising that erupted after an illegal cigarette vendor was badly beaten by a policeman in Taipei on February 27, 1947. Massive rioting ensued the next day and the unrest provided the KMT with the pretext to crack down on dissent: tens of thousands died, among them the island's most prominent dissidents and intellectuals.
Two of A City of Sadness' protagonists are seen falling foul of the KMT. Lin Wen-leung (played by Jack Kao Jie) is falsely accused of treason, goes insane after brutal torture at the hands of KMT agents and is freed from prison only after his eldest brother, Wen-heung (Chen Sung-young), offers a bribe to officials. (Later, Wen-heung himself dies after an altercation that arises over a thug's remarks about Wen-leung.)
Meanwhile, the youngest of the Lins, the mute Wen-ching (Tony Leung, below centre), is first harassed by anti-KMT radicals for failing the 'language test' (a common ploy in which mainlanders are distinguished from the Taiwanese through their accents - Wen-ching's inability to speak is seen as suspect) and then arrested by the KMT authorities because of his friendship with his activist friend Hinoe (Wu Yi-fang).