The 1990s were, in the Sinophone world, a time of anxiety, of transition. Hong Kongers braced for the 1997 Handover to Mainland China; Taiwan’s cities saw themselves unrecognizably transformed from day to day by a speculative boom in construction; and the Mainland stood on an uncertain precipice following the tragedy of Tiananmen in 1989 and the reopening of the stock exchange the following year, pointing towards a free market–oriented future. Coming of age as old certitudes were collapsing, a generation of filmmakers from all corners of Greater China produced work reflecting the turbulence that surrounded them: Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers and Zhang Yuan’s Beijing Bastards, respectively landmarks in independent documentary and independent fiction filmmaking in Mainland China; Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang and his dolorous city sickness symphony Vive L’Amour; and the brashly frenetic works of Hong Kongers Wong Kar-wai and Fruit Chan. A program of films about events moving far too fast for comfort—that is to say, a bracingly contemporary retrospective.
With special thanks to Film Festival Organizer and Filmmaker Zhu Rikun
