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Winner of the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, the exquisite City of Sadness gets our vote as the best film of our greatest contemporary filmmaker, Hou Hsiao-hsien. We are extremely pleased to present a new print made especially for the film’s twentieth anniversary; long missing in North America, it has become something of a holy grail. Complex, dense, and demanding, City of Sadness employs a classic family saga to mirror the history of Taiwan during one of its most tumultuous periods: the four years after the end of World War II, which concluded with the incursion of the mainland Nationalist forces at the close of the Chinese civil war. Hou tells the story of old man Lin and his four sons – a gangster businessman, a doctor missing since the war, a mentally disturbed soldier, and a photographer deaf since childhood – each of whom represents a facet of Taiwanese society. A majestic succession of precisely framed images and a carefully composed soundtrack produce a formal beauty that all but disguises the film’s political daring. It was the first Taiwanese film to deal with the events of February 28, 1947, in which thousands of Taiwanese were massacred by Nationalist forces. “Masterpiece . . . one of the two best films of the year” (Jonathan Rosenbaum). – James Quandt
Special ticket prices apply.
We are grateful to our colleagues Ian Birnie and Bernardo Rondeau of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for their assistance in the presentation of this film. Special thanks also to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles (TECO).
Rated PG.
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