Taipei Story

Director: Edward Yang

1985 / 110min / DCP

Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, the two undisputed masters of the Taiwanese New Wave, worked together to create one of the movement’s signature films, starring Hou (who also co-wrote) as a man newly returned to Taipei after leaving his dreams of baseball glory behind in the United States, his melancholic nostalgia slowly driving a wedge between him and his ambitious, forward-looking office worker girlfriend (pop singer Tsai Chin, who would later marry Hou). A plangent drama about the clash between traditional and contemporary mores as played out in the lives of everyday Taiwanese, enormously influential on future depictions of the frenetic, hypermodern capital city.