Edward Yang
«I always wanted my films to be like letters, as sincere as possible, sent to absent friends». This is how Edward Yang saw his form of cinema. After starting out in television, he participated in the collective film In Our Time, a work that marked the birth of the Taiwanese New Wave in 1982. A spearhead of this movement, with his compatriots Hou Hsiao Hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, Edward Yang made films that were distinguished by their urban settings, through which he portrayed the development of Taiwanese society, as in That Day on the Beach (1983), then Taipei Story, (Fipresci Prize at Locarno in 1985), Terrorists (Jury Grand Prize at Locarno in 1986), A Brighter Summer Day (1991) and A Confucian Confusion (1994). Edward Yang achieved international recognition with Yi Yi (2000), a lyrical portrait of a Taiwanese family, which won the Prize for Mise en Scène at Cannes. At the time of his death, in June 2007, the filmmaker was working with Jackie Chan on his first big budget project, the animation feature film The Wind.
Filmography
1983 Haitan de yitian
1985 Qingmei Zhuma (Taipeh Story)
1986 Kongbu fenzi
1991 Guling jie shaonian sha ren shijian
1994 Duli shidai
1996 Mahjong
2000 Yi Yi (Et un et deux)
Yi Yi - A One and a Two (2000)
The Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang shows in his film Yi Yi - A One and a Two the life of a family in modern Taipei. NJ is a man in his mid-forties. He is married, a father of two children and successful in his job - still he is no longer happy with himself and with his life. While NJ starts seing his old flame again his mother-in-law is in a coma. It is NJ's eight year old son who guides us through everyday life of the family and who asks critical questions and surprises the spectators with his experiments in the water. More
