Both screenings of this new restoration of A City of Sadness will feature pre-recorded introductions from Tony Rayns.
Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, A City of Sadness announced Hou’s arrival as a world-class filmmaker and foremost recorder of his nation’s troubled past. This intimate epic chronicles the tragedies that befall the three Lin brothers - a gangster, a translator for the Japanese administration, and a photographer - and those around them during a chaotic period in Taiwan’s national history, between the end of Japanese Imperial rule (1945) and the secession from Mainland China and creation of martial law (1949-1987). The film was groundbreaking in its depiction of the February 28 Incident of 1947, when thousands of native Taiwanese were killed in protests against the Nationalist government.
