Handbill for the Hokkien movie, ‘Zhuang Zi Tests His Wife’

Title
Handbill for the Hokkien movie, ‘Zhuang Zi Tests His Wife’
Year/Period
1955
Region
Singapore
Material
Dimension
Object size: 19.6 x 26.8 cm
Accession No.
2007-00667

This handbill was used to advertise the Hokkien movie, ‘Zhuang Zi Tests His Wife’ (庄子试妻, Zhuangzishiqi), also known as ‘Butterfly Dream’. During its Singapore run, the movie was screened at the Jubilee (光华, Guanghua) cinema.Between the 1950s and 1960s, most Mandarin, Cantonese and other Chinese-dialect movies were made in Hong Kong by film production companies with financial support from Singapore-based film studios such as Shaw Brothers, Cathay and Kong Ngee (光艺, Guanyi). These studios were also involved in the distribution and exhibition of these movies in Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia through their network of cinemas. In the early 1970s, Mandarin movies from Taiwan became popular, but by the late 1970s, Hong Kong movies were dominant once more.