Asian cinema in the early 1960s was growing in international prominence, with the British colony of Hong Kong becoming a hub for Chinese-language film. Taking note, the government on Taiwan began focusing its efforts on film production, leading to the establishment of the Golden Horse Awards in 1962 and the re-organisation of Taiwan’s biggest film company, the state-owned Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC).

For nearly two decades, Healthy Realism was a genre of film that dominated Taiwan’s major production companies. Focusing on positive themes and the traditional moral values, the genre was used by the Nationalist government under martial law as a form of propaganda.

In 1964, the CMPC would release the first Healthy Realist production to significant acclaim – Lee Hsing and Lee Chia’s Oyster Girl. The first domestic colour film, it featured a melodramatic story line in an idyllic rural setting. The film took inspiration from the style of Italian Neorealism, yet with a deliberately uplifting appeal. An immediate box office success, the film would win the Best Feature Award at the following year’s Asia Film Festival.

It was only a year later that another of Lee Hsing’s works would again find success in Beautiful Duckling, another melodrama set in a blissful rural village - with several of the film’s shots being based off watercolour paintings of the Taiwanese countryside by Ran In-Ting. The release of the two films set off what is considered a “Golden Age” of Taiwanese cinema, lasting from the 1960s to 1970s.

Another one of the island nation’s major film producers at the time was Pai Ching-jui, who had studied film in Italy from 1960 to 1963 and had worked with Lee Hsing previously. His 1970 production Home Sweet Home was another example of Healthy Realism follows the stories of a number of plane passengers arriving in Taipei. Though melodramatic, Pai Ching-jui’s work engaged more often than Lee Hsing’s with the new urban space that was appearing as Taiwan economically developed.

Pai Ching-jui’s Accidental Trio is an example of how Healthy Realism could include urban spaces as well as rural ones. Focusing on the story of three families navigating the morally dubious spaces of the modern city, the film served to reinforce traditional values. A number of films produced as adaptions of the author Chiung Yao’s novels also gained popularity during the period of Healthy Realism – though academics still debate whether these melodramas are technically a part of the genre.

Accidental Trio, Credit: Ministry of Culture, Taiwan

By the 1980s, films focusing on traditional moral values and the agricultural space were becoming less “realist”, as the lived experience of many Taiwanese was now based in the country’s urban metropoles. Healthy Realism would eventually give way to a new generation of film makers, and Taiwan’s New Wave cinema.