The Cinematheque's month-long series Are You Lonesome Tonight? The Films of Edward Yang launches March 28

Seven films by the 1980s new-wave cinema figurehead, including A Confucian Confusion (1994) and Yi Yi (2000), screen throughout April

SPONSORED POST BY The Cinematheque

A Confucian Confusion (1994).

The Cinematheque launches its new series Are You Lonesome Tonight? The Films of Edward Yang from March 28 to April 29, in honour of the great Taiwanese director and figurehead of 1980s new-wave cinema.

Yang was born in Shanghai but raised in Taipei after his parents fled China due to the communist takeover in 1949. He was pursuing a computer engineering career in Seattle when he rekindled his innate cinephilia, and an invitation by a former classmate to write a movie script fated his return to Taiwan to become a filmmaker. Yang’s directorial contribution to In Our Time (1982), a cornerstone of New Taiwanese Cinema, secured his place in the burgeoning movement that he would soon bring to international attention alongside friend and collaborator Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Opening Night kicks off the series with Yang’s A Confucian Confusion (1994) on March 28 at 7 pm, along with an introduction by Helena Wu. The film also screens on April 6 and 8 at 6 pm, and April 16 at 8:30 pm.

The black comedy follows a dizzying array of rootless characters through 56 fraught hours of career crises, shifting sexual relationships, and gnawing self-doubt. At the centre of this tangled Taipei story is Molly, head of the family PR business, who is facing an arranged marriage to the dim heir of another corporate fortune. Molly’s firing of Feng, an aspiring actor biding time in her employ, is the catalyst that sets the film’s chaotic, comic events in motion.

Closing night film on April 29 at 7 pm is Yi Yi (2000), Yang’s beloved final feature. Intimate yet epic, tender but truthful, rooted in realism while unafraid to summon magic, Yi Yi is a virtual summation of the director’s signature themes and tonal range. Winner of Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, this universally revered work revolves around a middle-class Taipei family weathering the vicissitudes of life, love, and death over a year.

The other films in the series include A Brighter Summer Day (1991), That Day, on the Beach (1983), Taipei Story (1985), The Terrorizers (1986), and Mahjong (1996).

For more details, head to The Cinematheque.

Post sponsored by The Cinematheque.