Hokkien entertainment media


Hokkien media is the mass media produced in Hokkien. Taiwan is by far the largest producer of Hokkien-language media.
The "golden age" of both Hokkien popular music and film in Asia was the mid-1950s through to the mid-1960s.

Films

Many films in Taiwan are produced in Hokkien. Many other films that are primarily in Mandarin or some other language may also have some Taiwanese dialogue. Over 1,000 Hokkien-language films were made in Taiwan between 1956 and 1961. However, censorship during Taiwan's White Terror period heavily affected Hokkien pop and film. As a result, approximately 160 Hokken-language films from this period survive, all held by the Taiwan Film Institute. When Ray Jing became leader of the National Film Archive, a predecessor organization to the Taiwan Film Institute, he began focusing the organization's efforts on the preservation of Hokkien-language films. The Taiwan Cinema Digital Restoration Project was launched in 2013 by the organization now known as the Taiwan Film Institute. The project sought to archive and restore Hokkien-language films.
Besides Taiwan, some Hokkien films have also been produced in Mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines.
Hong Kong cinema was a major producer of Amoy films during the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these Amoy films were copies of Cantonese or Mandarin films.

Television

There are a variety of television dramas, news broadcasts, variety shows, etc. that are produced in Hokkien. There were restrictions on the broadcasting of Hokkien in Taiwan, but they were lifted in the 1980s.
Taiwanese dubs of Cartoon Network shows feature some Taiwanese-language dialogue.

Music

The recording of Hokkien opera and songs in Taiwan and China can be traced back to the 1920s. During the middle stage of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan, there was an industry of recorded Hokkien popular music. This was funded mainly by American record companies such as Columbia Records and RCA. Although significant, this industry was largely ended with the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the subsequent restrictions on cultural production in Taiwanese and Hakka.