ACF 1241: A RATIONAL MIND: THE FILMS OF EDWARD YANG

Yi Yi

A Rational Mind: The Films of Edward Yang

When November 22-27, 2011

Where: The Film Society of Lincoln Center

The Walter Read Theater, 165 West 65 Street 

“Life is a mixture of happy and sad things. Movies are so lifelike—that’s why we love them.”
“Then who needs movies? Just stay home and live life.”
“My uncle says we live three times as long since man invented movies.”
“How can that be?”
“It means movies give us twice what we get from daily life.”
—Dialogue from Edward Yang’s Yi Yi

The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be presenting this eight film retrospective of films by the highly regarded Taiwanese director Edward Yang.

Born in Shanghai in 1947, Edward Yang was still a toddler when his family, like some two million other Chinese citizens, emigrated from mainland China to Taiwan after the end of the Chinese Civil War. Not surprisingly, one of the richest themes in his films (as in those of his friend and contemporary Hou Hsiao-Hsien) would become the search for identity—personal, social and political—in the small island nation.

But Yang’s work was equally concerned with such universal subjects as the longing for missed opportunities and the age-old conflicts between parents and children, his deeply rational mind (he came to filmmaking after studying computer science and applied physics) always striving to impose order on the irrational world of human experience.

His untimely death in 2007 robbed world cinema of one of its greatest talents at the peak of his career. All the more tragically, only one of Yang’s features, the acclaimed Yi Yi, had managed to receive commercial distribution in the United States, where the director lived for much of his adult life.  This retrospective will serve as a noteworthy effort to correct this neglect.

Info, schedule, and tickets here.

A Brighter Summer Say

In a related event, the U.S. theatrical premiere of Yang's A Brighter Summer Day, will take place November 25 - December 1 in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.  Info/Tickets