This post started when someone shared this Letterboxd List of Taiwanese Noir Films from the 1980s on Bluesky. Then I read (in the description of that list) that most of the films came from a podcast on the same topic. Further research showed that the podcast itself was inspired by a 2005 film of the same name (台灣黑電影 in Chinese). You can see a 17 minute preview of the 60 minute film on YouTube. There is also a short article about the film saved in the internet archive. When I have time I hope to track down the original film and some of the films that inspired it, but for now I just wanted to bookmark everything so I could find it later.
More info:
- A Q&A with the director on Facebook (in Chinese)
- A 2023 dissertation on these films: Cho, Ting-Wu. 2023. Taiwan Pulp! the Emergence and Consumption of Taiwan Exploitation Film in the Trans-Asian Cultural Cold War (1970s-1980s). New York University
- English descriptions of many of the films from an online film festival hosted by Anthology Film Archives in New York.
And here are links to many of the films on YouTube: