AN UNFOLDING HORIZON:
THE FILMS OF HOU HSIAO-HSIEN

UN HORIZON QUI SE PRÉCISE :
LES FILMS DE HOU HSIAO-HSIEN

 Flowers of Shanghai

Declared "director of the decade" for the 1990s by New York's Village Voice, Taiwan filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien has assembled one of the most impressive bodies of work in all of contemporary world cinema. His calm, contemplative films, often compared to the work of Japanese master Ozu and to traditional Chinese poetry and landscape painting, is intensely contemporary. Hou's films explore the tensions in Taiwan between tradition and modernity, the island's tangled political history, and the implications of an ever-increasing American cultural influence. "Challenging yet profoundly simple, historically rich yet rivetingly emotional, Hou Hsiao-Hsien is that rarity of rarities, a genuine master." (Kent Jones, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York)

Nommé à réalisateur de la décennie 1990 ª par la revue Village Voice de New York, le réalisateur taîwanais Hou Hsiao-Hsien a constitué l'un des oeuvres les plus impressionnants de tout le cinéma international contemporain. Ses films calmes et contemplatifs, souvent comparés à l'uvre du maÓtre japonais Ozu, ou à la poésie et aux paysages de l'art classique chinois, sont d'une intense actualité. Dans ses films, Hsiao-Hsien étudie l'histoire politique embrouillée de l'Óle, les répercussions de l'influence sans cesse grandissante de l'Amérique et les tensions qui partagent Taîwan entre tradition et modernité.

The Hou Hsiao-Hsien Retrospective and its tour to Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver is made possible by the generous assistance of The Information Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, Toronto. We are indebted to to Mr. David Lee, for sponsoring its presentation. We are also grateful to: Hou Hsiao-Hsien; 3H Films Ltd., Taipei; Wendy Lidell and Suzanne Fedak, WinStar Cinema, New York; Brent Klewer, Santa Fe; Shelly Kraicer, Toronto; Barbara Scharres, The Film Center, Art Institute of Chicago; Ken Chiu, Information Division, Tapei Economic and Cultural Office, Toronto; Teresa Huang, Chinese Taipei Film Archive; Kent Jones, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York; Mr. Ching-cheung Kuan, Director, Information Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, Ottawa.

All films presented with English sub-titles.

Sat./sam. June 3 juin, 19:00
PUPPET MASTER
Taiwan 1993, 142 minutes    Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1993, Hou's gorgeous film weaves its narrative strands from the memoirs of actor Li Tien-Lu to trace an intimate history of Taiwan under the fifty years of Japanese occupation that ended in 1945. The film juxtaposes dramatic scenes from Li's often harrowing life with scenes from his puppet plays (he is renowned as Taiwan's foremost traditional puppet master); it blends these sequences together with Li's occasional earthy, very funny direct addresses to the camera. "Truly something new in movies, collapsing fact and fiction into one moving and penetrating inquiry into the past the work of a genuine master." (Film Society of Lincoln Center)

Sun./dim. June 4 juin, 19:00
TIME TO LIVE, TIME TO DIE
Taiwan 1985, 138 minutes    Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
This semi-autobiographical drama about growing up in southern Taiwan in the late 1950s and early 1960s centres on Ah-Hsiao, an attractive kid who wagers money he's stolen from his mother. Growing older and more obsessive a gambler, Ah-Hsiao soon becomes a surly, small town lout who must change when confronted with three deaths in his life. A haunting drama of lost innocence, it captured the International Critics Prize at the 1986 Berlin Film Festival.

Sat./sam. June 10 juin, 19:00
FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI
Taiwan 1998, 125 minutes    Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Based on the novel by Han Ziyun and set in a opium drenched brothel in 19th Century Shanghai, FLOWERS brings together the stories of three courtesans ('flowers') and their privileged gentlemen callers. Subtle and often breathtaking in its formal beauty, this is a revealing look at the intricacies of social and sexual politics in Shanghai. "Hou's third masterpiece of the decade following Puppet Master and Goodbye South Goodbye. One of the ten best films of the 1990s." (J. Hoberman, Village Voice)

Sat.sam. June 10 juin, 21:15
HHH: A PORTRAIT
France/Taiwan 1997, 93 minutes    Director: Olivier Assayas
"When he was a critic at Cahiers du Cinema, Olivier Assayas (L'eau froide, Irma Vep) was one of the first people in the West to write about Hou's work, and the two directors have had a long friendship that led to the spontaneous portrait of Hou on his home ground. As he's visiting old friends, presiding over a tea ceremony, or explaining his aesthetics, Hou betrays the same kind of warmth and candour that characterize every frame of film he's ever shot. Assayas' portrait of Hou and of Taiwan is informative, winning and beautiful to look at. And be sure not to miss Hou indulging his passion for karaoke." (Film Society of Lincoln Center)

Sun./dim. June 11 juin, 21:00
GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE
Taiwan 1996, 116 min. Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Set in the contemporary mean streets of urban Taiwan, GOODBYE follows a group of marginal small-time hoods as they attempt to scam their way across southern Taiwan. Part road movie, part gritty gangster film, this is one of Hou's most inventive and absorbing films. "The slack-jawed, Nintendo-playing ennui and despair of these hopeless characters captures modern Taiwan adrift between traditional values and money-crazed Western soullessness." (Jim Sinclair, Pacific Cinematheque)

Sun./dim. June 18 juin, 21:00
GOOD MEN, GOOD WOMEN
Taiwan 1995, 108 min.    Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
As a film actress named Liang prepares for a role of a real-life heroine of the anti-Japanese resistance of the 1940s, her own past begins to catch up with her. Once a drug-addicted barmaid in love with a small-time gangster, Liang's new career as an actress is cast into darkness when someone starts to send faxes of pages from the sordid and explicit diaries she kept in those days. Hou brilliantly interweaves Liang's present, her remembered past, and her imagining of the film she is about to make, creating an extraordinary portrait of a woman in crisis. Says critic Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader), "If you care about the future of world cinema, you can't afford to miss it."

Sat./sun. July 8 juillet, 19:00
CITY OF SADNESS
Taiwan 1989, 158 min.       Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Set during the four tumultuous years from 1945, when Japan surrendered Taiwan to China at the end of WW II, to 1949, when Chiang Kai-Shek established his Nationalist government there after the fall of mainland China to the Communists. This period unfolds dramatically through the lives of one family, headed by the aging widower Lin, his four sons (gangster, doctor, collaborator, and photographer), and their wives. Panoramic in scope and richly textured, the film ignited controversy at home for its treatment of a taboo subject: the brutal repression of the Taiwanese independence movement by the Nationalist Chinese. Winner of the Golden Lion in Venice in 1989, Film Comment's Godfrey Chesire calls CITY "A family epic as expansive as THE GODFATHER."

Sat./sam. July 15 juillet, 21:00
DUST IN THE WIND
Taiwan 1987, 109 min.          Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
A young man named Wan and his girlfriend, Wuen, quit their rural high school and head toTaipei to look for work. The promise of urban wealth quickly fades to the reality of dead-end jobs, their relationship falters, and the strong emotional pull of home is insistent. This early feature, like his BOYS FROM FENGKUEI (1983) and SUMMER AT GRANDPA'S (1987), traces the tribulations of young Taiwanese torn between traditional village life and the lure of the modern city. DUST placed Hou firmly on the international cinema stage as a major talent from the then emerging "Taiwanese New Wave."

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SUMMER SCI-FI WITH DAVID CRONENBERG SCIENCE-FICTION FESTIVALE : DAVID CRONENBERG

In 1975, with the release of "The Parasite Murders" (aka "Shivers"), David Cronenberg did not only become the most commercially successful Canadian filmmaker of the time, but also established himself as a radical new voice in the Horror cinema. Today, Cronenberg is regarded as a master of the Horror genre. However, the body of work that he has generated over the last twenty-five years is not limited to the one genre. While the course given at Carleton University as part of the SYNESTHESIA summer program investigates the context and meaning of Cronenberg's Horror films, the series presented by the Canadian Film Institute focuses on the "Other Cronenberg," with films that range from avant-garde sci-fi experimentations to hyper-realist critiques of consumer society. André Loiselle

All screenings will feature a brief introductory talk by Canadian film scholar and Carleton University professor, André Loiselle.

Présenté en collaboration avec l'université Carleton, cette série spéciale de six films met en vedette les incursions des réalisateurs canadiens les plus connus dans le monde de la science-fiction et du fantastique.

Chaque projection comprendra une introduction par André Loiselle, professeur d'études cinématographiques à l'université Carleton

Sun./dim. July 9 juillet, 19:00
STEREO
Canada 1969, 64 min.    Director: David Cronenberg
The Canadian Academy of Erotic Inquiry organizes a series of experiments to increase the potential for telepathic exchange among its patients. Cronenberg's first feature is a potent examination of how modern science, despite the erratic evidence, believes totally that what it observes about human desire matches what is really there. Cronenberg's first foray into the relationship between the human interior and exterior presages the visceral explosions of his later films.

Sun./dim. July 9 juillet, 20:30
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE
Canada 1970, 63 min.    Director David Cronenberg
A companion piece to STEREO, CRIMES is set in a world where all the women have been killed as a result of a disease named 'Rouge's Malady,' named after its discoverer, the mad dermatologist, Antoine Rouge. One of Rouge's disciples, Adrian Tripod, wanders through the world in search of a means of survival and regeneration. Strangely compelling and visually austere, CRIMES was shot, like STEREO in 35mm, and is Cronenberg's first colour film.

Sun./dim. July 16 juillet, 19:00
VIDEODROME
USA/Canada 1983, 89 min.      Director: David Cronenberg
Lowlife cable TV operator Max Renn (James Woods) discovers a "snuff TV" broadcast called Videodrome. But Videodrome is more than a TV show; it's an experiment that uses regular TV transmissions to permanently alter the viewer's perceptions. Max is caught in the middle of forces that want to control Videodrome, while his body becomes the ultimate weapon to fight them. A prescient and provocative piece of filmmaking, VIDEODROME is one of Cronenberg's finest films.

Sun./dim. July 16 juillet, 21:00
DEAD RINGERS
Canada 1988, 115 min.       Director: David Cronenberg
Elliott and Beverly Mantle are identical twin brothers (Jeremy Irons in stereo!) who are both successful gynecologists. Their comfortable existence is gradually altered when they both fall for the same infertile patient, a beautiful actress (Genevieve Bujold). Elliot treats her as just another conquest while Beverly is more more disturbed by his growing relationship with the enigmatic Claire.

Sun./dim. July 23 juillet, 19:00
NAKED LUNCH
Canada/UK 1991, 115 min.       Director: David Cronenberg
A no-holds-barred, graphic filming of William S. Burroughs' thoroughly unfilmable novel, weaving elements of the author's life in with the fictional material. Peter Weller stars as an aspiring writer and N. Y. C. exterminator in 1953; when his drug-addled wife (Judy Davis) dies, he becomes immersed in an extended, drug-laced odyssey to a Casablanca-like community populated by the very strange and the very weird.

Sun./dim. July 30 juillet, 19:00
CRASH
Canada/France/UK 1996, 100 min.        Director: David Cronenberg
Since being involved in a car accident, a former TV director (James Spader) becomes obsessed with the marriage of motor car technology with the 'raw sexuality' of car-crash victims. The scientist, along with a crash victim (Holly Hunter) he befriends, sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of vehicles in search of some meaning. Adapted from the novel by J.G. Ballard, Cronenberg's is an enervating critique of a materialist society which fetishizes objects and uses sex to sell them. An unsettling film which earned the wrath of censors in the UK, the scorn of filmmaker Mike Leigh at Cannes, and, ironically, the anger of that ever-materialistic salesman himself, Ted Turner.

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ARMENIA YESTERDAY AND TODAY:
A CELEBRATION OF THE CINEMA OF ARMENIA

L'ARMÉNIE, HIER ET AUJOURD'HUI :
CÉLÉBRATION DU CINÉMA ARMÉNIEN

Aside from the work of Sergei Paradjanov, the cinema of Armenia is virtually unknown in the West, despite a rich and varied filmmaking tradition which dates back to 1923. This programme features recent works produced in Armenia, as well as films by members of the Armenian diaspora who have settled in Canada, most notably Atom Egoyan. Presented in collaboration with the Armenian Women's Association of Canada, the Yerevan Film Studio, the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia.

L'oeuvre de Sergeî Paradjanov mise à part, l'Occident ne sait à peu près rien du cinéma arménien, bien que la tradition cinématographique riche et variée de ce pays remonte à 1923. Ce programme met en vedette des oeuvres récentes de mÍme que des films de réalisateurs de la diaspora arménienne établis au Canada, notamment Atom Agoyan. Présenté en collaboration avec l'Association des Arméniennes du Canada, le Yerevan Film Studio et l'ambassade de la République d'Arménie.

Sun./dim. May 28 mai, 19:00
THE LAST STATION
Armenia 1994, 93 min.       Directors: Haroutioun Khachatrian, Nora Armani
A husband and wife acting duo, Armenians who have been living in the West, travel the world performing a play about national identity and belonging. When their tour finally takes them to a newly independent Armenia, new tensions surface. Is it their last performance together? Based on the actual stage play, 'Sojourn at Ararat,' this is a fascinating film about love, exile, and the mysteries of identity. Preceded by Khachatrian's award-winning short film, WHITE TOWN (1988, 20 min.) and by LAURIE'S GARDEN (Canada, 1998, 10 min,) by Dan Sokolowski. "A beautiful and elegant mix of poetry, animation and live footage on a subject dear to many people who live in the north" said David Curtis of the Dawson City Film Festival.English sub-titles.

Sun./dim. June 4 juin, 21:30
OUTFLOW
Armenia 1997, 62 min.        Director: Edgar Baghdassarian
This haunting and poetic exploration of a failing relationship between a man and a woman links their misunderstandings and alienation to the troubled Armenian experience in the 20th Century. While the couple attempts to reconcile, the shadow of death pursues them. Preceded by the remarkable documetary about poverty in an old quarter of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, KOND, YEREVAN'S NEIGHBOURHOOD (1989, 37 min). English sub-titles.

Sun./dim. June 25 juin, 21:00
LE SANG
Arménie 1990, 106 min.    Réalisateur: Souren Babaian
Dans la veille maison famille, une pièce est fermée à clef regne autour d'elle une odeur de sang. Fantasmes, mémoire (familiale où historique), rêves et cauchemars se melent dans l'esprit du héros et dans le film. Pour exorciser les uns et les autres, Haik construit la croix qu'il portera en haut de la colline dans le vieux cimitière denude. Sous-titres français.

Sat./sam. July 29 juillet, 19:00
NOUS SOMMES NOS MONTAGNES
Arménie 1969, 93 min.           Réalisateur: Henrik Malian
Une attachante comédie en demi-teintes, où l'on ne sait plus ou sont les valeurs, ou est vraiment le droit. Des bergers onte égorge quelques moutons égares et organise un festin. Quand le maître est arrivé, ils lui ont payé la valeur de sa parte et se sont séparés en toute tranquillité. Mais le lieutenant se la milice vénu enquêter sur l'affaire est bien décidé à trainer les coupables devant le tribunal. Au début, les paysans ne comprennent pas se qui se passe, mais peu à peu, en suivant la logique de l'enquête, ils prennent conscience de leur faute. Ils comprennent que les intérêts de la société doivent prendre le pas sur les intérêts individuels.
Sous-titres français.

diaspora: Canadian Armenians

Sat./sam. June 17 juin, 21:30
CALENDAR
Canada 1993, 75 min.        Director: Atom Egoyan
A photographer (played by Egoyan himself) goes to Armenia to shoot ancient churches for a calendar. His companion (Arsinee Khanjian) goes with him to help. Their relationship soon changes utterly. Made on a very low budget, CALENDAR is one of Egoyan's most concise, accessible, and intelligent films about love, loss, identity, and, as always, the image itself. Preceded by Garine Torossian's extraordinary short film about identity, GIRL FROM MOUSH (Canada 1994, 6 min.).

Sat./sam. July 22 juillet, 21:00
SURVIVING ON THE RICHTER SCALE
Canada 1998, 44 min.          Director: Araz Artinian
A portrait of eleven survivors of the terrible earthquake that struck Armenia on December 7, 1988, killing more than 100,000 people. Filmmaker Artinian came across the story when her father, an Armenian architect living in Montreal, wrote about it in the community newpaper. Winner of seven international documentary awards at festivals in Chicago, Boston, Montreal, and others. Preceded by PURGE (Canada 1996, 24 min.), Mher Karakashian's short drama about a dissident poet from a totalitarian country ordered deported from his native country. His new, 'democratic' country hopes to use his case as counter propaganda.

Sat./sam. July 29 juillet, 21:00
BECAUSE WHY
Canada 1993, 104 min.        Director: Arto Paramagian
After five years of travel abroad, Alex returns to Montreal to find both his ex-girlfriend gone and her former apartment building demolished. Eventually settling in another apartment block populated by very peculiar tenants, Alex has to decide whether to stay or keep on moving. Quirky and engaging, BECAUSE WHY is Montreal-born Paramagian's first feature film. Preceded by Garine Torossian's latest short film, SPARKLING HORSE (Canada 1999, 8 min.).

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QUARTET PORTUGAL
The CFI is proud to present, in collaboration with the Embassy of Portugal, this special quartet of overlooked films from Portugal based on literary sources, including a classic work from one of international cinema's most celebrated talents, Joao Cesar Monteiro. All films are in Portugese with English sub- titles

QUATUOR PORTUGAIS
L'Institut canadien du film est fier de présenter en collaboration avec l'ambassade du Portugal quatre films portugais négligés tirés d'oeuvres littéraires, dont un classique par un réalisateur de grande renommée internationale, Joao Cesar Monteiro. Tous ces films sont en portugais avec sous-titres anglais.

Sat./sam. June 17 juin, 19:00
FLOWER OF THE SEA / A flor do mar
Portugal 1985, 143 min.          Director: Joao Cesar Monteiro
Laura Rossellini, a widow from Rome, vacations on the Algarve coast one hot summer. One day while sunbathing, she finds a wounded man named Robert drifting in the surf on a rubber raft. She takes him home, and, after he is revived, learns his story. As they talk, their mutual attraction grows, until a group of armed men suddenly arrives looking for Robert.

Sun./dim. June 18 juin, 19:00
THE HORNS OF CRONOS / Os Cornos de cronos
Portugal 1990, 109 min.        Director: Jose Fonseca e Costa
From one of Portugal's most accomplished directors comes this tale woven from the twin obsessions of love and time. Alexander is 42 years old, a frustrated writer, who has just been abandoned by his wife. He soon falls in love with Ana Sofia, a young ballet dancer he watches from his window everyday. Believing the age gap can be ignored, Alexander begins to act ever more erractically in an attempt to deny time's passing. Based on the novel by Americo Guerreiro de Sousa.

Sat./sam. July 15 juillet, 19:00
COLD LAND / Terra fria
Portugal 1992, 100 min. Director: Antonio Campos
In a remote mountain village in the 1940s, Leonardo ekes out a living as a fur trader while dreaming of wealth and escape. When his wife becomes involved with the local rich man, resulting in a child and eventually a murder, Leonardo must choose between his wife and the truth. An engaging drama of relationship, COLD LAND was in Official Competition at the 1992 World Film Festival in Montreal.

Sat./sam. July 22 juillet, 19:00
CONTENDA ISLAND / Ilheu de Contenda
Portugal 1995, 110 min.         Director: Leao Lopes
Under the magnitude of the volcano, the traditional society is changing. the old aristocracy is beginning to fall apart in the face of a new generation of post-colonial inhabitants. Based on the novel by Henrique Teixeira de Sousa, Lopes's film offers a fascinating dramatic dissection of the erosion of Portugese colonial power in Africa.

....special presentations speciale....

Sun./dim. May 28 mai, 21:15
FAMOUS DEAD PEOPLE
Canada 1999, 76 min.         Director: Erin Whalen
Two strangers find themselves trapped in an elevator over a long weekend. Andrew is a young aspiring actor on his way to meet his birth mother; Ruth is a troubled older woman haunted by family tragedy and a distrust of her husband. Exploring their individual histories and frustrations as well as the increasing tensions of their claustrophobic interaction while trapped together, FAMOUS DEAD PEOPLE is a well-rendered, tautly-constructed first feature. Preceded by the short film LAURIE'S GARDEN (Canada, 1998, 10 min,) by Dan Sokolowski. "A beautiful and elegant mix of poetry, animation and live footage on a subject dear to many people who live in the north" said David Curtis of the Dawson City Film Festival.

Sun./dim. June 25 juin, 19:00
TRISTANA
Spain/France/Italy 1970, 95 min.      Director: Luis Bunuel
When Tristana's (Catherine Deneuve) mother dies, she is entrusted to the guardianship of the Don Lope. Don Lope (Fernando Rey) is well-respected because of his honorable nature. But his one weakness is women, and he falls for the innocent girl in his charge, seduces her, makes her his lover, though all the while explaining to her that she is as free as he. But when she acts on this freedom, Don Lope must deal with the consequences of his world-view. Presented to honour the 100th anniversary of Bunuel's birth in collaboration with the Embassy of Spain and the Embassy of Mexico. English sub-titles.

small  is beautiful The CFI is pleased to present, as part of its ongoing programming, the best of Canadian independent short films before its feature presentations.