Local film companies were getting battered by the competition from Hong Kong when the Central Motion Picture Corporation decided in desperation to try an experiment. It put up a shoestring NT $ 4 million budget (around US $ 100,000 at the time) and invited four fledgling directors--Jim Tao, Edward Yang, K'o Yi-cheng, and Chang Yi--to collaborate on a portmanteau film in four episodes called "In Our Time."
就在電影公司紛紛「暫停營業」時，中國電影公司做了一個小小的嘗試：用新台幣四百萬元的超低預算，請了四位名不見經傳的年輕導演﹘﹘陶德辰、楊德昌、柯一正、張毅﹘﹘拍了一部四段式的電影「光陰的故事」。