Local film industry mourns passing of acclaimed director

Film industry workers yesterday mourned the death of Cannes-winning director Edward Yang (楊德昌), who introduced movies with an Asian view to the West in the 1980s.

Yang died at his Beverly Hills home last Friday after battling colon cancer for seven years.

He produced eight widely acclaimed films in a career spanning two decades.

His last movie, Yi Yi, about a family that copes with the serious illness of their elderly mother, won him the best director award at Cannes in 2000 but was never shown in Taiwan.

"His passing away marked the end of a glorious era [for Taiwan's film industry]," scriptwriter Hsiao Yeh (小野) told CTI Cable News.

"Our era may have really ended with [Yang's] passing away," director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) said.

Hou and Yang created the "new wave" of Taiwanese films in the 1980s -- movies that won international acclaim for portraying Taiwan at a time of social and political transition.

Yang's films include A Brighter Summer Day, Taipei Story and A Confucian Confusion.

"His death is a great loss to our film industry," film critic Huang Chien-yeh (黃建業) wrote in the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times sister newspaper). "He created a unique era with his poignant pessimism and cold rationality ... backing the uncompromising, sharp criticism with his deep emotion."

Yang had expressed dissatisfaction with Taiwan's film scene and complained that the government subsidized films to serve political purposes.

Government Information Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) had asked a press official at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles to convey his condolences to family members of Yang, an official said on Sunday.

The anonymous official said the Government Information Office was seeking opinions from leaders in the movie industry on how to honor Yang for his contribution to Taiwanese arts and culture.