tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095695.post2380390003237156702..comments2023-10-22T17:40:51.323-04:00Comments on Tativille: In Memory of Edward Yang (1947-2007)Michael J. Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12333893240336518881noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095695.post-85892132982759406112007-07-02T00:10:00.000-04:002007-07-02T00:10:00.000-04:00A visionary not even appreciated in his home count...A visionary not even appreciated in his home country of Taiwan. Sad. Much too early to die.<BR/><BR/>db<BR/><BR/>Larry Gross observes, āI think Yang was one of the world's most radically gifted film makers of the last two decades. In his own work and as a practical matter in his career, he lived out a link between Chinese culture and the sophisticated practices of Western and Japanese cinemas that was indispensable to where the three Chinese cinemas, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and Mainland have gone. There would absolutely be no Ang Lee, for instance, without Ed Yang. And Ed Yang played the role for Hou Hsiao Hsien of the brilliant student who partially educated the master about developments in the West. (In modern literary history, Ezra Pound played a roughly comparable role in the "education" of the already-established William Butler Yeats, helping him among other factors to go from being a very good poet to a great one.) Frederic Jameson's long essay on The Terroriser (1986) is one place to start in the assessment of Edward Yang. But there was a bunch of movies that never got released here,Mah Jong, A Confucian Confusion, were sophisticated black comedies about sexual-and-social issues in contemporary Taiwan that presaged the masterwork that was Yi-Yi ... A Brighter Summer's Day was his foray into Hou's favored genre of dealing with criminal youth gangs,.. I have never seen that one but those who have claim it as one of the great masterpieces of recent decades. One hoped after the international profile that Yi-Yi achieved at the ā99 Cannes Festival that Yang would explode on the world wide scene, but obviously now that's not going to happen. Interestingly, if Iām not mistaken, one of the central characters in his first movie (coincidentally Chris Doyle's first Chinese work as a DP) That Day at the Beach, succumbs to cancer at a terribly young age. A huge huge loss to world cinema.āDANIELBLOOMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05130493903696077379noreply@blogger.com