The Taipei Cultural Center in New York is thrilled to announce its collaboration with CUNY TV’s City Cinematheque to co-present a new five-part film series, “An Island of Stories: Recent Films from Taiwan,” set to debut on Saturday, October 5, and Sunday, October 6, 2019, both at 9 p.m. EST.
Hosted by Jerry W. Carlson, professor of Cinema Studies at The City College and Graduate Center CUNY, this series features interviews with five Taiwanese filmmakers who are representative of post-Taiwanese New Wave cinema in the 1980s. They are Wei Te-sheng, Chung Mong-hong, Chang Tso-chi, Midi Z, and Yang Ya-che. The interviews will be accompanied by these directors’ recent and well-known works that show how they adopt bold and fresh perspectives on film aesthetics and genre concepts to broaden Taiwan’s cinematic landscape.
“We are proud to share this milestone series with the U.S. audience for the first time,” said Su-pao Chang, director of the Taipei Cultural Center in New York. “Taiwan is an island of stories owing to its complex history and cultural diversity. Through a selection of captivating Taiwanese cinematic works, this series aims to not only showcase veteran and rising Taiwanese filmmakers, but also deepen the general public’s understanding about Taiwanese contemporary cinema, which is very much influenced by the cultural and historical exploration prominent in the works of Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang—iconic filmmakers of the Taiwanese New Wave movement. We hope Taiwan cinema will continue to offer a unique perspective for the contemporary world cinema.”
“The five film selection ‘An Island of Stories: Recent films from Taiwan’ seeks to…open the door to a treasure trove of films thrilling in their diversity and pure cinematic craft,” said Jerry Carlson, producer and host of City Cinematheque. “No film, of course, can tell the whole truth about being Taiwanese. But taken together, the five movies project a beautiful prism, each color telling its own part of the story in its own light.”
Featured titles are Wei Te-sheng’s CAPE NO.7, the highest grossing Taiwanese domestic film of all time; Chang Tso-chi’s prizewinner Thanatos, Drunk; Chung Mong-hong’s chilling psychological thriller Soul; Midi Z’s tragic love story The Road to Mandalay; and Yang Ya-che’s feminized crime drama The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful. For more info, visit https://tv.cuny.edu/show/citycinematheque/