The Films of Edward Yang: Taipei Story

Taipei Story

Taiwan | 1985 | 110 min. | Edward Yang

April 1 - 18, 2024

The Films of Edward Yang

Lung is a former member of the national Little League team who lives with his old childhood sweetheart Ah-chin, a traditional family woman. Although they live together, Ah-chin is weary of Lung's past liaison with another girl. New 4K restoration.

Edward Yang’s second feature is a mournful anatomy of a city caught between the past and the present. Made in collaboration with Yang’s fellow New Taiwan Cinema master Hou Hsiao-hsien, who cowrote the screenplay and helped finance the project, Taipei Story chronicles the growing estrangement between a washed-up baseball player (Hou, in a rare on-screen performance) working in his family’s textile business and his girlfriend (pop star Tsai Chin), who clings to the upward mobility of her career in property development. As the couple’s dreams of marriage and emigration begin to unravel, Yang’s gaze illuminates the precariousness of domestic life and the desperation of Taiwan’s globalized modernity.

  • Original Language Title: 青梅竹馬
  • Director: Edward Yang
  • Principal Cast: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Tsai Chin, Wu Nien-jen
  • Country: Taiwan
  • Year: 1985
  • Running Time: 110 min.
  • Producer: Huang Yung, Lin Jung-feng, Liu Sheng-chung
  • Screenplay: T'ien-wen Chu, Hsiao-Hsien Hou, Edward Yang
  • Cinematographers: Wei-han Yang
  • Editors: Franchen Song, Qi Yang Wang
  • Music: Edward Yang
  • Filmography: YI YI, A Brighter Summer Day
  • Language: Min Nan, Mandarin, Hokkien