OUR TIME, OUR STORY: 20 YEARS' NEW TAIWAN CINEMA
(Bai Ge Ji Hua: Taiwan Xin Dianying Ershi Nian Huei Gu) (2002) Directed by Hsiao Chu-chen, Beta-SP, 117 min.

Richly illustrated with film clips and interviews, OUR TIME, OUR STORY tells the still-evolving story of the Taiwanese "new wave," from its rise in the early 1980s, as the island was democratizing after decades under martial law, through growing international recognition and domestic debate in the 1990s. Spearheaded in its early years by such filmmakers as Edward Yang, Ko I-cheng, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wan Jen, the movement revitalized Taiwan cinema through low-budget experiments that emphasized personal stories, political reflection and stylistic invention. Said filmmakers, writers and actors like Wu Nien-jen and Sylvia Chang, even "second wave" directors Tsai Ming-liang and Lin Cheng-sheng provide fond reminiscences and retrospective insights in this compelling account of one of the most distinctive national cinemas of the last quarter-century.

Producer: Hsiao Chu-chen, Sylvia Feng. Cinematographer: Hsu Wen-shi. Editor: Chen Po-wen, Liu Chun-hsiu. Cast: Ming Chi, Li Hsing, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Chen Kun-hou. Presented in Mandarin dialogue with English subtitles.

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About the series:

The Asia Society, Los Angeles & UCLA Film and Television Archive in association with the University of Southern California present...

In Our Time: New Chinese Cinema

The New Taiwan Cinema, or Taiwanese "new wave," refers to the film movement that arose in the early 1980s that challenged the aesthetic and sociopolitical orthodoxies of postwar Taiwanese filmmaking. Its precise beginning is usually pinpointed to the portmanteau IN OUR TIME (1982), directed by four then-unknowns including Edward Yang. Since then, despite the New Taiwan Cinema's successes overseas (as measured by major film festival awards, critical plaudits and commercial exhibition), it has met with a cooler reception at home. Even as leading Taiwanese directors like Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang have joined the ranks of internationally celebrated film auteurs, domestic distribution of their work and of Taiwanese cinema generally has been moribund. First-run theaters remain dominated by Hollywood films while Taiwanese movies, bereft of mainstream distribution, are increasingly shown only in specialized settings like festivals and universities. Meanwhile government subsidies that long sustained Taiwan's art cinema are being changed to favor projects with perceived commercial value. The picture is bleak indeed, making the mournful valentine to an earlier era of Taiwanese filmdom of Tsai's GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (2003) a fitting metaphor for the present.

All that said, there are hopeful signs of resuscitation afoot. In the past few years, young directors, dubbed the "seventh graders," have emerged who profess a love for popular cinema along with the avant-gardist experimentation of their elders. ("Seventh graders" refers to Taiwanese born in the 1980s, the seventh decade after the founding of the Chinese republic in 1911.) Their most prominent success—and the highest-grossing Taiwanese fiction film in 2004—has been the delightfully frothy, queer-in-Taipei romantic comedy, FORMULA 17.

Documentaries are another bright spot in Taiwanese cinema, and are represented here by OUR TIME, OUR STORY's retrospective look at the New Taiwan Cinema, and two captivating explorations of Taiwanese popular music from epochs 70 years apart, VIVA TONAL—THE DANCE AGE and OCEAN FEVER.

One of only a handful of animated features originated in Taiwan, the charmingly earthy GRANDMA AND HER GHOSTS was a two-year labor of love for animation novice but film-and-television veteran Wang Shaudi. Wang's former student is Tsai Ming-liang, who in turn has mentored actor Lee Kang-sheng, who recently made a widely acclaimed debut as a director with THE MISSING.

Inter-generational ties also extend to the best-known Taiwanese director featured in In Our Time, Hou Hsiao-hsien. With a cinephilic gaze backwards, Hou's CAFÉ LUMIERE is a tribute to the legendary Japanese filmmaker Ozu Yasujiro and is appropriately set the film is set in Ozu's hometown of Tokyo. Looking forward, Hou has become a vocal supporter of new Taiwanese filmmakers. SPOT—Taiwan Film House, a cinema-cum-bookstore and café founded by Hou, has become a favorite haunt for Taipei's cinephiles. It remains to be seen whether SPOT will yield an IN OUR TIME for our time.

Special thanks to:—Carie Cable; Marcus Hu—Strand Releasing; Mei-Juin Chen; Stanley Rosen; David James; Marie Chao.

Cost : $7 General Admission; $5 Students

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/

Sponsor(s): Film and Television Archive, Asia Society, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, The James Irvine Foundation, Chinatrust Bank, Far East National Bank