Taipei Story - Enzian Theater

40th Anniversary!

Celebrating 40-years of Enzian Theater, each month we will highlight a classic film from 1985 to illustrate the lasting impact of the films of the era and the legacy of Central Florida’s only non-profit arthouse movie theater. Thank you for being part of our 4-decade contribution to arts culture in Orlando.

Dive into the magic of cinema with the Enzian Film Club! Join us for an enriching experience where film enthusiasts and novices alike can explore classic films in a new light. Each session features a short presentation by esteemed professors from local colleges, followed by collaborative discussions that bring fresh insights and foster a deeper appreciation for the art of filmmaking. Part of our Saturday Matinee Classics series, the Enzian Film Club is your gateway to understanding and enjoying timeless cinematic masterpieces in a vibrant, community-focused setting.

Featuring an Enzian Film Club discussion on framing techniques by Milt Moise of Rollins College!

Edward Yang’s (Yi Yi, Best Director: Cannes 2000) long-unavailable second feature is a mournful anatomy of a city caught between the past and the present. Made in collaboration with Yang’s fellow New Taiwan Cinema master Hou Hsiao-hsien (The Assassin, Best Director: Cannes 2015)—who cowrote the screenplay, helped finance the project, and oversaw this restoration— Taipei Story chronicles the growing estrangement between a washed-up baseball player (Hou, in a rare on-screen performance) working in his family’s textile business and his girlfriend (pop star Tsai Chin), who clings to the upward mobility of her career in property development. As the couple’s dreams of marriage and emigration begin to unravel, Yang’s gaze illuminates the precariousness of domestic life and the desperation of Taiwan’s globalized modernity.

Taipei Story was restored by Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation World Cinema Project at the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique and Hou Hsiao-hsien.

About the speaker: Milt Moise is a Visiting Professor at Rollins College where he teaches courses in film, television, and literature. His research examines bipolarity in American fiction and television, Rastafari epistemology in the TV show Westworld, and self-referentiality in Caribbean fiction.

1985, 119 minutes, Taiwan, In Min Nan, Mandarin and Hokkien with English Subtitles, Unrated

Thank you to our 40th anniversary sponsors!

“A masterpiece that historically hasn’t been easy to see in the States. A delicate work of low-key modernism, imbued with fragile melancholia and an astonishing turn by none other than Hou Hsiao-hsien.”
– Dan Sullivan, FILM COMMENT
“A turning point in the history of Taiwanese cinema . . . Essential viewing.”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
“Edward Yang's Taipei Story (1985) offers a classically Yangian portrait of Taiwanese alienation and quiet anxiety, fractured and plagued by modernization and Americanization. It's essentially perfect.”
– Michael Atkinson, THE VILLAGE VOICE
“Like A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi, Taipei Story is charged with the urgency of a director attempting to map out a whole society through the interlocking oppositions of gender, class, generation, and cultural persuasion that threaten to pull it apart.”
– Andrew Chan, CRITERION
“Yang's family came from the Shanghai middle-class (Having fled just after his birth), and he studied electrical engineering at the University of Florida. This helps to explain Yang's depiction of Taipei as a distinctly global city—as well as the stinging sense of alienation that defines many of his characters.”
– Ben Sachs, CINE-FILE
“Arguably Edward Yang's finest achievement.”
– Clayton Dillard, SLANT