Edward Yang
June 24–30, 2005

The Department of Film and Media is delighted to present three of Edward Yang’s rarely screened major works, in celebration of the publication of John Anderson’s new book Edward Yang (2005, University of Illinois Press), the first in English to explore the cinema of the leading filmmaker. Edward Yang assesses the considerable and original accomplishments of the writer-director, whose work, according to the author, combines the humanity of Jean Renoir, the heroic gestures of Werner Herzog, and the modernist sensibility and droll humor of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Offering a close reading of Yang’s feature films and a populist approach to his work, Edward Yang is a long-overdue assessment of a major artist. The film descriptions below are drawn from the book, slightly reworked by John Anderson, who signs copies of Edward Yang at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, June 24, in the Titus 1 lobby before introducing Yi Yi (A One and a Two...) (2000).

Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film and Media. Special thanks to Lee Yang and Wellspring, New York.

Yi Yi (A One and a Two…). 2000. Taiwan/Japan. With Wu Nianzhen, Elaine Jin, Kelly Lee. Yi Yi stars mostly amateur actors, notably Jonathan Chang as the director’s stand-in, Yang-Yang, a young artist-in-the-making who photographs the backs of people’s heads because “they can’t see it all.” It’s left to someone like Yang-Yang, or Yang himself, to fill in the gaps—to provide the artistic mortar that will conjoin the cracked mosaic of humanity while acknowledging the unspoken desire to escape the abstract loneliness of life. In Mandarin, English subtitles. 173 min.
Friday, June 24, 7:30 (introduced by author and critic John Anderson). T1; Monday, June 27, 6:00. T2

Gulingjie shaonian sharen shijian (A Brighter Summer Day). 1991. Taiwan. With Lisa Yang, Zhang Zhen, Zhang Guozhu. A passion play, an elegy, a Wild West show, an Eastern West Side Story. Based on a shocking real-life story, A Brighter Summer Day should be considered, along with Yi Yi, one of the twin pillars of Yang’s work, a film that picks the scab off of life in Taiwan in a way his earlier films only seemed to. That the film incited hostility among more blinkered Taiwanese loyalists is understandable, as it questions the very existence of a national soul. In Mandarin, English subtitles. 237 min (plus 10 min. intermission).
Saturday, June 25, 2:00. T1; Sunday, June 26, 1:00. T2

Kongbu fenzi (The Terrorizer). 1986. Taiwan/Hong Kong. With Cora Miao, Li Liqun, Wang An. Sergei Eisenstein, the Russian pioneer of montage theory, described himself as an engineer (he studied engineering as a young student). Edward Yang also trained as an engineer, although what he attempts in The Terrorizer is a virtual dismantling of montage theory. One of Yang’s most closely scrutinized films, it ends with a shot of a novelist vomiting—which would seem to be a none-too-subtle commentary on the process of fiction, Yang’s included. But it’s also just one more enigmatic element in what is Yang’s most provocative and structurally challenging work. In Mandarin, English subtitles. 109 min.
Saturday, June 25, 6:30; Thursday, June 30, 6:00. T1

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