ABSTRACT
This chapter traces Chang Kuo-sin’s 1950s media project with the support of the CIA-backed Asia Foundation. Chang launched Asia Pictures in Hong Kong to produce Chinese movies intended to present non-communist and anti-communist worldviews to diasporic Chinese audiences. Chang attempted to vie with the left-wing Great Wall Pictures by producing commercially friendly pictures. The chapter examines the production of The Heroine (1955), a historical psycho-drama about a female assassin during the transition of the Ming to Qing Dynasty in 1664. The Heroine pioneered as a “woman’s picture” by figuring a female assassin in martial arts storytelling. The study assesses the contributions of Asia Pictures to Sinophone cinema and diasporic Chinese experiences amidst the leftist and rightist cultural contentions.
