Terrorizers (1986)

Thursday, February 27, 2020 @ 7:00 PM
Globe Cinema - 617 8 Avenue SW, Calgary, AB
$12 General | $10 Members/Seniors/Students | $40 5-Pack Punch Pass | $99 Season Pass

Edward Yang’s Terrorizers paints an uncompromising look at urban life in Taipei, marked by coincidences, near misses, and collisions.

Edward Yang’s dissonant, mysterious third feature Terrorizers (1986) charts the trajectories, near misses, and collisions between three sets of people in Taipei: a failing marriage between a struggling writer and her lab tech husband, a disaffected photographer, and a teenaged hustler involved with the criminal underbelly.

Opening with a shootout and a body lying dead on the streets, Terrorizers connects its storylines in an oblique, intuitive, and almost metaphysical way. What emerges is a vision of a society teeming with the prospect of violence, in forms physical, emotional, and psychical. Released in 1986, at a moment of palpable political and societal upheaval (the twilight of a decades-long period of martial law), Yang embeds his narrative with sharp social commentary, presenting a society increasingly driven by self-interest, increasingly unable (or perhaps unwilling) to form connections with each other.

- Written by Kevin Dong

SPOTLIGHT: TAIWANESE NEW WAVE

In the early 1980s, Taiwanese cinema was at a crossroads. Nobody was watching locally made melodramas or kung fu movies anymore, instead opting for films from Hong Kong. Taiwanese society was also rapidly changing, with soaring high-tech economic growth driving people into the concrete jungles of Taipei and the cities. To revitalize the film industry, the state-run Central Motion Picture Corporation turned to a time-tested method to revitalize national cinemas – give the reins over to young filmmakers. These filmmakers, including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang, pursued a radical break from the previous stylistic and aesthetic traditions, favouring location shooting, long takes, and deliberate editing to reflect the rapidly changing world around them. Each responded to the alienation wrought by globalization in their own unique ways: Hou with pensive reflection, Yang with meticulous exhumation, and Tsai with melancholy detachment. With this series, Calgary Cinematheque presents five key films from one of film history’s most influential movements.

About Calgary Cinematheque

We are a non-profit film society dedicated to presenting significant, challenging, and essential works of cinema art in Calgary. During our season, which runs from October to April, we screen films weekly, in curated programs which situate each film in a thematic and historical context. We do this because we believe cinema is an essential form of artistic, social, and political expression. Audiences should be able to engage with a wide range of cinematic expression, not only with what is commercially viable. We believe in the power of sharing these experiences with other people in a theatrical setting and we strive to cultivate a community around that experience.  

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