Freedom Beat: Fifties, focusing on the popular music in the 1950s in Taiwan, is a sequel of Sweet Revenge, which features the 1930s. Would people be happier without the memories of the past and historical wounds?

In a fictional future in 2050, a paralleling time and space where historical memories are lost, a group of workers in a sound collecting factory/laboratory discover the surviving memories of sounds in the everyday objects left behind from the 1950s.

From these objects, they have a glimpse of the historical events during the decade through the segments of memories of a tailor, who lived on the land devastated by the flame of wars: the frustration and helplessness of a Taiwanese solider, who fought for the Japanese Imperial troops in the Second World War; the terror and fright during the martial law period; the impact of the US aids; the glove puppetry, an entertainment among folks, being used as a powerful tool for political propaganda; the devastation brought by the Eight-Seven Floods of 1959 in Taiwan, and so forth. In the age of suppression, "Green Island Serenade" was well-spreading in everybody's mind, while "Wish You Come Back Soon" revealed the greatest expectation of all. In addition to making people experience the pains once again, will the re-discovery of the lost memories bring some sort of comfort? Or will it become a pair of a butterfly's wings, which bring forth a little bit of changes by flapping?

Photo©️ National Theater & Concert Hall (Taiwan)