The Terrorizers

Kongbu fenzi
dir. Edward Yang
Taiwan 1986, 108’
subtitles: Polish and English

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Theatrical Screenings
St 19 Nov, 12:30
Muranów
Muranów
We 23 Nov, 18:00
Muranów
Muranów
Online Availability
18th November – 1st December
Additional Materials
Awards and festivals
World premiere: Golden Horse FF 1986 Golden Horse FF 1986 - Best Feature Film Locarno FF 1987 - Silver Leopard Asia-Pacific FF 1987 - Best Screenplay British Film Institute Awards 1987 - Sutherland Trophy
Credits
Taiwan 1986
Duration: 108’
director: Edward Yang
screenplay: Hsiao-Yeh, Edward Yang
cinematography: Chang Chan
editing: Liao Ching-Sung
music: Weng Xiao-Liang
sound: Tu Duu-Chih
VFX supervisor: Tsao Chu-Chung
cast: Cora Miao, Lee Li-Chun, King Shih-Chieh, Ku Pao-Ming
producer: Lin Teng-Fei, Hsu Kuo-liang
executive producer: Raymond Chow
production: Central Motion Pictures Corporation
language: Mandarin, Hokkien
colouration: colour
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Film description

The city is a space of division and transgression, of constant movement filled with chance meetings and head-on collisions. The simultaneity of events blurs the line between chance and destiny. A young photographer takes interest in a girl he photographed as she was running away from her apartment during a police raid. A writer is struggling with a creative crisis and the routine of her marriage. Her husband works in a lab and incessantly hopes for a promotion, convinced that his main duty in life is to provide for his wife. One day, an unexpected phone prank changes their lives forever.

In Terrorizers, Edward Yang shows his passion for intricate narrative constructs that draw the viewers deep into the world they create. He plays with props – a phone, a camera, a gun – and turns them into the catalysts of chaos. Theoretician Fredric Jameson called Terrorizers the model postmodern film because of its polyphonic narration and the depiction of urban fragmentation. Even though much has changed in the three decades since its premiere, the movie still conveys the essence of the everyday reality of a modern metropolis.

text:
Maja Korbecka

Edward Yang

Born in 1947 in Shanghai. His father came from a southern province Guangdong, his mother from Hebei in the north of China. Born as the children of impoverished intelligentsia, they both worked as office clerks in the nationalist government structures. Two years after Yang was born, the communist party took over the reins in China, and the family moved to Taipei. Despite his fascination with literature and film, Yang chose to study engineering. After graduating, he moved to the US to continue his education in digital design. He spent seven years working as a coder in Seattle and then decided to return to Taiwan to pursue a career in film. In 1983, after creating his short film Desires, a part of an anthology film In Our Time, the founding oeuvre of the Taiwanese New Wave, Yang directed his almost three-hour-long debut That Day, on the Beach. Over the three decades of his career, Yang made a wide variety of films. His third feature, a postmodern tragicomedy Terrorizers, was a big box office success and a hit among the critics, bringing Yang the 1987 Silver Leopard at the festival in Locarno, and the title of the Best Film at the Golden Horse Film Awards. Yang’s later films – the award-winning, epic reconstruction of Taipei of the 1960s, A Brighter Summer Day, the comedy A Confucian Confusion, and the gangster film Mahjong – turned out to be box office flops. Yang’s last film, the Japanese co-production A One, and a Two, brought him the Best Director award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. After the Cannes win, Yang started working on several different projects – the animation The Wind, a website with auteur comic books Miluku.com, and the script for the adaptation of Lust, Caution, but did not finish any of them. Yang died of colon cancer in California in 2007.

Selected filmography:

1982 W naszym czasie / Guangyin de gushi / In Our Time (segment Oczekiwanie / Zhiwang / Expectation)

1983 Tego dnia na plaży / Haitan de yi tian / That Day, on the Beach

1985 Historia z Tajpej / Qingmei zhuma / Taipei Story

1986 Terroryści / Kongbu fenzi / Terrorizers

1991 Jasny dzień lata / Gulingjie shaonian sharen shijian / A Brighter Summer Day

1994 Konfucjańska konsternacja / Duli shidai / A Confucian Confusion

2000 I raz, i dwa / Yi Yi / A One and a Two

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