Edward Yang (Director)

(Yang Dechang). Born: 1947, Shanghai. Died: 2007, Los Angeles.

His family was originally from Guangdong province and relocated to Taiwan (like many others) in 1949. He graduated in engineering in Taiwan in 1969, before getting an MA degree in computer science in 1972 from the University of Florida. In 1974, he briefly enrolled to study film at the University of Southern California, but quit after a year. He worked in the computer industry in the US for the next few years, before returning to Taiwan in 1981. There he would initially get his break (in a very young under-productive film industry in the process of re-inventing itself) first directing a TV show episode and then a segment in an omnibus film, In Our Time.

"He was a self-taught filmmaker, an engineer-cum-comic book
illustrator, not a director with an orthodox training in the craft. He is a cinephile,
with impeccable taste in European and American cinema. Inspired by the example
of Werner Herzog, who used the money earned as a blacksmith to hand-make his
own early features, Yang embarked on the same road. But his commitment to
film is part of a wide-ranging aesthetic sensibility that is more mathematical than
expressive. Yang idolizes architects (I. M. Pei), musicians (Beethoven, Bob Dylan),
and scientists (Einstein), not only artists and filmmakers." [Taiwan Treasure Island, 92.]

Had an antagonistic relationship with the domestic Taiwanese film industry, and many of his films, especially all his later ones, were never released domestically [find out more on this].

Yang in fact had trouble negotiating the commercial practices of Taiwan’s film industry from the beginning. From his first feature That Day, on the Beach, he found it hard to work with the crew assigned him by Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC), and this drove him away from commercial production.

"From virgin to vamp, from innocence to experience, Yang’s women are emblems for socioeconomic transformations, the exchange of qing for economic gain and rapid replacement of old with new. The intertwined stories of two women in That Day, on the Beach masks the consequences of the economic boom in postwar Taiwan—selling out qing for money. Yang uses the two women to suggest that women are adaptable, and men are more vulnerable, to change. Men appear to be socioeconomic achievers, but they are the ones to bear the costs of competitive pressure.... The women in Yang’s films cast about for a suitable feminine role to play, often wracked by indecision. Their angst and neurosis is nothing, though, next to the profound identity crises of males, particularly those negotiating rites of manhood." [Taiwan Treasure Island, 123-4]

"Missing persons are a common thread in all Yang’s films, and their absence is connected to a loss of capital and confidence, both financial and emotional (qing). Yang’s narratives are all based on the resolution of a puzzle. Each story begins with a misplaced piece, nearly always taking the form of the missing. That Day, on the Beach opens with the search for the disappeared husband; the vanishing Ms. Mei in Taipei Story uncovers the deficits of the major characters Chin and Ah-Lon. Nobody actually goes missing in The Terrorizers, but the whole film is based on deferral, displacement, and waiting. Honey is the missing person in A Brighter Summer Day, hiding somewhere in the South. During his absence, struggles for power and women break out in the gangs of Guling Street. But when he returns, he is murdered instead of restoring order. In Mahjong, a kidnapping is used to locate the missing father of Redfish, who returns, only to kill himself and his mistress. Similarly, the grandmother in Yi Yi returns to life after her long coma, then dies, bringing the family together again." 

Themes & Motifs:

• .
• Absent/weak fathers (also seen in Hou, and related perhaps to the 'fraudulent' father-figure of the nation, Chiang Kai-Shek.

Filmography

• In Our Time (1982, joint-director)
• That Day, on the Beach (1983)
• Taipei Story (1985)
• The Terroriser (1986)
• A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
• A Confucian Confusion (1994)
• Mahjong (1996)
• Yi Yi (2000)

References:
Jameson in New Chinese Cinemas, 117-. 
Profile in Perspectives on Chinese Cinema, 199.