And she belonged to a circle that organized private screenings of films such as Kurosawa's Red Beard, then forbidden by the censors of the Kuomintang dictatorship.

[8] In 1978, Huang Yu-shan began reading Pudovkin, Vertov, Eisenstein, André Bazin, Dudley Andrew and others whose writings she obtained in English.

After she had worked as script writer for three movies of the film director Lee Hsing (李行) in 1977–1979, she went to study film-making at the University of Iowa and later, transferred to New York.

Students organized big song events in the Taipei New Park, inviting folk singers considered subversive by the regime.

In view of her South Taiwanese roots, it is clear that Huang Yu-shan objectively shared a closeness to the regionalist culture with the blind old singer of protest songs, Chen Da, with the four Tamsui-based political activists Lee Shuang-tze (李雙澤 pinyin: Li Shuāngzé, a young composer of songs considered subversive by the KMT government), Lee Yuan-chen (李元貞; the founder of Women Awakening), Liang Jingfeng (梁景峰) (who published under the pseudonym Liang Demin in the pro-democracy journal Summer Tide that was suppressed in 1979), and Wang Jinping (scholar and activist) (王津平).

[citation needed] And – subjectively – even more with Annette Lu (呂秀蓮 Lu Hsiu-lien pinyin: Lǚ Xiùlián – another pioneer of the women's lib movement in Taiwan), with the progressive Chengchi University teacher and later political activist Wang Tuoh (王拓) and with the Hakka author Chao-cheng Chung (鍾肇政) whose novel Chatianshan zhi ge later on became the basis of one of her feature films.

But she was courageous enough to discuss Lu Xun (魯迅|s鲁迅|) (still a forbidden writer) with young authors and to write an article about the novelist Yang Kui (楊 逵 , 1905–1985), a forerunner of Nativist writers like Chen Yinzhen, and a man whose commitment to social justice had resulted in a dozen short prison sentences during the Japanese occupation and imprisonment for 12 years on Green Island, the KMT regime's concentration camp.

to direct her first feature, Autumn Tempest, which starred the famous Korean actress Kang Su Yeon (姜受延).

It was the atmosphere of New York, and contact with people from the film-makers cooperative that encouraged Huang Yu-shan to become an independent film maker, rather than to rely permanently on the state-controlled Central Motion Picture Corporation.

[13] Since the 1990s, Huang Yu-shan has directed a number of other noteworthy films, such as Peony Birds, Spring Cactus, The Strait Story, The Song of Cha-tian Mountain, The Forgotten and Southern Night.

Her horizon is wider than that, and socio-cultural issues, including her sustained insistence on the cultural specificity of the South Taiwanese heritage, remain prominent in her oeuvre.

Yang's A Brighter Summer Day appears noteworthy to her because it “deals with the political history of Taiwan in the ‘60s in an art film style.” Huang is the noteworthy “feminist director” whose film Twin Bracelets was “internationally acclaimed.”[16] Twin Bracelets critiques the suppression of women that women justly revolt against, not only in East Asia, but in many parts of the world.

Wei noted in 2011, that “she remains an important voice” whereas, obviously, “her works are long overdue a retrospective.”[15] Offering an alternative to feminist critical discourse and feminist reasons for a positive evaluation of her movies, film critic Prof. Lai (Taipei University) values Huang's work above all for its aesthetic qualities as well as the fact that it is rooted in the history of Taiwan.

Its employment of poetic visual language does not aim to convey a sense of self-pity but to transcend the historical traumas that this island has experienced.”[19] In addition to her achievements as a film director, Huang Yu-shan has been instrumental in developing platforms for feminist issues and for independent cinema.

[20] And subsequently, she was instrumental in starting the South Taiwan film festival which features works of independent filmmakers from many countries.

English title: The Petrel Returns (on the painter Huang Ching-cheng) – 1997 Shìjì nüxìng táiwan dì yi—Xu Shìxián.

– The Forgotten: Reflections on Eastern Pond – 2008 Luòshan feng [Chinook] – Autumn Tempest – 1988 Shuang zhuó – Twin Bracelets – 1989 Mudan niao – Peony Birds – 1990 Zhenqíng kuáng ài [Cactus] – Spring Cactus – Alternative English title: Wild Love – 1999 Nánfang jìshì zhi fúshì guangying[Chronicle of the Ukiyo Southern Light] – The Strait Story / Alternative English title: Chronicle of Restoring Light – 2005 Chatianshan zhi ge – The Song of Cha-tian Mountain – 2007 Ye ye [Night night] – Southern Night – 1988 Andrew Grossman, “Better Beauty Through Technology.

Ann Arbor MI (UMI) 2009 (Ph.D.Thesis) Lingzhen Wang, “Chinese Women’s Cinema”, in: Yingjin Zhang (ed.

Brighton, UK (Wallflower Press) 2011 Andreas Weiland, “‘The Strait Story’, a feature film directed by Huang Yu-shan", in: Art in Society (ISSN 1618-2154), No.12 [8] Women Right[s] Promotion Foundation (ed.

Azed Yu, “Frauenfilme mit literarischem Touch“, in: Art in Society (ISSN 1618-2154), No.12 [10] Yingjin Zhang (ed.