Dust in the Wind

Dust in the Wind (1986)

戀戀風塵

A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do they. They fail to see time and fate are beyond their control.

Date of release
1986-05-09
TMDB
7.6 / 10 (120)
Runtime
1h 49m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
Hou Hsiao-hsien

Casting

Interesting facts

Dust in the Wind is a 1986 Taiwanese film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. It is based on co-screenwriter Wu Nien-jen's own experiences, and is the first of a trilogy of Hou and Wu's collaborations, the others being A City of Sadness (1989) and The Puppetmaster (1993).

Production

The film features the master of glove puppetry Li Tian-lu (李天祿) in the role of the grandfather. Li became an iconic actor in Hou's films after he took a role in this film. This film is Li Tian-lu's debut film performance, and it is also Chen Ming-Chang 's first film soundtrack.

Wang Chien-wen, who played Ah Yuan, joined the production when he was about to graduate from the Department of Theatre Arts of Chinese Culture University in 1985. This is also the only film he ever performed in his life. Unfortunately, Wang died early in 2014.

Dust in the Wind portrays the urbanization of Taiwan in the 1970s, when more and more youngsters left their hometowns to find jobs in the city. The film touches upon social issues such as violence in the workplace some of them have to endure. It also portrays the miners complaining about the ill treatment of the mining company and proposing to go for a strike.

Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wu Nian-chen jointly wrote a letter to James Soong, director of the Information Bureau of the Executive Yuan, requesting his help to obtain assistance from the military department for the scenes involving Ah Yuan’s military service. Central Motion Picture Corporation also submitted the script and applied for military support to go to Kinmen for on-site shooting.

The outdoor screening of Beautiful Duckling in the village in this film is considered to be a deliberate tribute to Li Hsing, who is the director of this representative film of Healthy Realism (健康寫實).

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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