Film at Lincoln Center Announces Edward Yang Retrospective

The films of Edward Yang (1947–2007) were among the first to capture the ethos of Taiwan’s rapid modernization-particularly Taipei urbanites adjusting to their global city’s ever-evolving zeitgeist-even as they exhibited a novelistic field of vision that superseded time and place. Born in Shanghai and brought to Taiwan by his family in 1949 after the end of the Chinese Civil War, Yang emerged in the early 1980s as a leading figure of the ascendant Taiwanese New Wave with his contribution to the seminal anthology film In Our Time (1982). He remained a cinematic guiding light of his country’s first postwar generation up to his magnum opus, Yi Yi (2000, NYFF38). Grounding his films in a realist aesthetic-perhaps partly owed to his formal training as a computer engineer-Yang gracefully responded to the world’s changes across seven expansive features, each one notable for their sprawling, unconventional narrative structures, effortlessly precise compositions, and largely nonprofessional casts that expressed a heartfelt, near-omniscient understanding of life on the small island nation. Likening any one of his films to a “very intimate letter to a very good friend,” Yang defined the intricacies of interpersonal relationships (among different generations and classes) with a depth of storytelling and intimacy of style that call for multiple viewings to parse. <a href="https://btrproductions.medium.com/film-at-lincoln-center-announces-edward-yang-retrospective-220a6f84aa6f">Read More</a>