The Garden Cinema London once again brings masterpieces from Taiwan with the return of Taiwanese Cinema: Now and Then, supported by the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan. As with their autumn programme from last year, Garden Cinema will be showcasing superlative work from filmmakers both old and new.
A brief overview in keywords (see the full programme at the event's website):
Ang Lee, with screenings of all three entries in Lee’s loose ‘Father Knows Best’ trilogy. Before his success in Hollywood, Lee made a huge impact in the early 1990s with two stories of Taiwan immigrant families in the USA, Pushing Hands (1991) and his Golden Bear-winning The Wedding Banquet (1993). The trilogy is completed by Lee’s delectable ‘return’ to Taiwan, Eat Drink Man Woman (1994).
Restorations of legendary titles from New Taiwanese Cinema.
Hou Hsiao-hsien’s beautifully nostalgic Dust in the Wind (1986) will join Edward Yang’s debut, That Day, on the Beach (1983), and Tsai Ming-liang’s provocative and playful The Wayward Cloud (2005). The digital restorations of these three titles will be shown for the first time in the UK during the season. Screening alongside these, will be the recent restorations of Edward Yang’s wonderful satire of 1990s Taipei life, A Confucian Confusion (1994), and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s epic tapestry of the personal and political history of Taiwan, A City of Sadness (1989).
Also continuing from previous years is the patient journey through the Buddhism-inflected wuxia films made by King Hu in Taiwan. His 1979 Legend of the Mountain is perhaps his most spiritual and ambitious work, and one that is rarely screened in UK cinemas.
The contemporary classics section will focus on incredible films made after the turn of the millennium, by post-new wave filmmakers. The hugely impactful diasporic director Shih-Ching Tsou will join for an online Q&A following a screening of her thrilling neorealist debut, Take Out (co-directed with Sean Baker, 2004).
Huang Hui-chen will also be digitally present for a post-screening discussion of her emotionally raw and empowering study of queerness and religion, Small Talk (2016).
And great : Garden Cinema includes short form works, with the anthology film 10 + 10 (2011), which comprises of segments from some of the most important names in Taiwanese cinema, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Chung Mong-Hong, Sylvia Chang, and Wu Nien-jen.
-> Event's Website
Textcredit: The Garden Cinema
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