PIFF Pays Homage to Late Director Edward Yang
Published on | Source
By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
BUSAN _ As Asia's leading film festival, the 12th Pusan (Busan) International Film Festival (PIFF) pays special tribute to its Filmmaker of the Year, the late Taiwanese director Edward Yang, completing its first posthumous award with a retrospective, seminar and hand-printing ceremony.
Many agree that it would be impossible to discuss the Taiwanese New Wave without mentioning Edward Yang (1947-2007), who passed away at the age of 60 in June.
"He is a filmmaker with his own special color who showed a sophisticated modernism that stands out not only in Taiwan but in the rest of Asia. In additon to the late Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, it is a great loss that another modernist leader has passed away", said Edward Wong, former head of Taiwan's Film Archive, during a seminar on Saturday titled "Edward Yang: The Memory of Taipei", at PIFF.
The complete works of Yang _ seven features and one omnibus film _ are being screened in Busan this year. "I hope that his work will continue to inspire the next generation of young filmmakers", said Yang's widow, Kaili Peng, who made an appearance at the seminar with their seven-year-old son Sean Yang.
Yang's works include many coming-of-age stories, and Wong explained that the intellectual man provides a keen and poignant view of Taiwan's social growth. 1985's piece "Taipei Story", for example, depicts social changes through a love story between a woman from the city's developing west end and a man from the dying east.
Asian Cinema Night, hosted for the seventh year now by fashion powerhouse Hermes Korea, celebrated the late director later on that night at a Busan hotel. Peng came onstage to accept the award on behalf of her husband, and Sean joined her to produce handprints in place of his father.
"Edward always admired the spirit of this festival and would have been deeply honored to receive this award", said Peng. "I hope that Sean doing this for his father will help him process his own grief".
Peng also said, teary eyed but maintaing a graceful composure, that it was exactly the 100th day of Yang's passing.
The handprint-embedded tiles will decorate the sidewalks of the festival's original foundational grounds in the Nampodong neighborhood, joining those of earlier honorees including Yang's fellow Taiwanese New Wave auter Hous Hsiao-Hsien, China's Zhang Yimou, Germany's Wim Wenders and this year's other honoree, composer Ennio Morricone.
In 2005, Yang had promised PIFF director Kim Dong-ho that he would return in 2006 as president of the jury, Peng said. Kim presented her with the award, which she will take home to Beverly Hills.
Yang won the 2000 Best Director Award at Cannes and Best Foreign Film from the National Society of Film Critics with his most commercially successful feature, "A One and a Two" (also known as "Yi Yi" in Chinese), which premiered at PIFF.
Visit http://www.piff.org to get a full screening schedule of Yang's works in the Edward Yang Retrospecive, under Special Section.
Staff Reporter
BUSAN _ As Asia's leading film festival, the 12th Pusan (Busan) International Film Festival (PIFF) pays special tribute to its Filmmaker of the Year, the late Taiwanese director Edward Yang, completing its first posthumous award with a retrospective, seminar and hand-printing ceremony.
Many agree that it would be impossible to discuss the Taiwanese New Wave without mentioning Edward Yang (1947-2007), who passed away at the age of 60 in June.
"He is a filmmaker with his own special color who showed a sophisticated modernism that stands out not only in Taiwan but in the rest of Asia. In additon to the late Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, it is a great loss that another modernist leader has passed away", said Edward Wong, former head of Taiwan's Film Archive, during a seminar on Saturday titled "Edward Yang: The Memory of Taipei", at PIFF.
The complete works of Yang _ seven features and one omnibus film _ are being screened in Busan this year. "I hope that his work will continue to inspire the next generation of young filmmakers", said Yang's widow, Kaili Peng, who made an appearance at the seminar with their seven-year-old son Sean Yang.
Yang's works include many coming-of-age stories, and Wong explained that the intellectual man provides a keen and poignant view of Taiwan's social growth. 1985's piece "Taipei Story", for example, depicts social changes through a love story between a woman from the city's developing west end and a man from the dying east.
Asian Cinema Night, hosted for the seventh year now by fashion powerhouse Hermes Korea, celebrated the late director later on that night at a Busan hotel. Peng came onstage to accept the award on behalf of her husband, and Sean joined her to produce handprints in place of his father.
"Edward always admired the spirit of this festival and would have been deeply honored to receive this award", said Peng. "I hope that Sean doing this for his father will help him process his own grief".
Peng also said, teary eyed but maintaing a graceful composure, that it was exactly the 100th day of Yang's passing.
The handprint-embedded tiles will decorate the sidewalks of the festival's original foundational grounds in the Nampodong neighborhood, joining those of earlier honorees including Yang's fellow Taiwanese New Wave auter Hous Hsiao-Hsien, China's Zhang Yimou, Germany's Wim Wenders and this year's other honoree, composer Ennio Morricone.
In 2005, Yang had promised PIFF director Kim Dong-ho that he would return in 2006 as president of the jury, Peng said. Kim presented her with the award, which she will take home to Beverly Hills.
Yang won the 2000 Best Director Award at Cannes and Best Foreign Film from the National Society of Film Critics with his most commercially successful feature, "A One and a Two" (also known as "Yi Yi" in Chinese), which premiered at PIFF.
Visit http://www.piff.org to get a full screening schedule of Yang's works in the Edward Yang Retrospecive, under Special Section.
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