Edward Yang on DVD

[ptmd]

That's a good point, and, for obvious reasons, the subtitles on the VCD and on most circulating prints of A Brighter Summer's Day (and The Terrorizers as well) are in traditional, not simplified, Chinese. It's the presence of the joint English subtitles that marks it as a film from a certain period (and, by the way, this is one of the major reasons why Hong Kong films could be exported so easily in the 1980s).

[nyasa]

I recently managed to get hold of a copy of A Brighter Summer Day - albeit of dubious provenance. But needs must...

It's the full 230-minute version, and - despite being a very murky print with burned-in Chinese and English subtitles - it absolutely blew me away. As with Yi Yi, it will require further viewings to pick up on all the nuances, but as a period portrait of fledgling Taiwan I don't think it can be bettered. And as a piece of filmmaking, it's right up there with the very best I've ever seen.

Does anyone know the current situation with Yang's back catalogue? I know that there are complex rights issues, but where are the original elements? Are they mouldering in some basement in Taipei, or are they being properly cared for until the legal issues have been sorted?

[vivahawks]

Yeah, this is just unbelievably great, probably the best film made in the last forty-some years IMHO; even Yang's other incredible films pale beside this one. I'm no expert on the state of the elements, but I've heard that even the prints at the recent Ontario Yang retrospective weren't too hot, which doesn't bode well for any immediately forthcoming releases on DVD.

[ptmd]

Does anyone know the current situation with Yang's back catalogue? I know that there are complex rights issues, but where are the original elements? Are they mouldering in some basement in Taipei, or are they being properly cared for until the legal issues have been sorted?

The original elements are either at the National Film Center in Taipei or with Edward Yang's sister in LA depending on the title (most of them are in Taipei). They are being properly taken care of, and the issue with releasing his films more widely is not so much legal complications (although those do exist) as a perceived lack of interest on the Taiwanese side. Edward managed to burn bridges with almost every distributor in Taiwan in the mid-1990s for a variety of reasons and all of his films, including Yi Yi, are perceived as commercial poison there. New prints aren't forthcoming anytime soon but the prints of the post-Brighter Summer's Day films are all in fine shape. The earlier ones are trickier and mostly circulate in spotty 16mm prints, although decent 35s do exist.

MoMA has also been steadily acquiring good prints of many of the major films, including A Brighter Summer's Day, so they will play periodically there.

[nyasa]

The original elements are either at the National Film Center in Taipei or with Edward Yang's sister in LA depending on the title (most of them are in Taipei). They are being properly taken care of, and the issue with releasing his films more widely is not so much legal complications (although those do exist) as a perceived lack of interest on the Taiwanese side.

Thank you for that. At least it's good to know that there isn't complete neglect of the source material.

After I finished watching A Brighter Summer Day, a thought struck me...I then took a moment, thinking that perhaps I was overblowing it, but no: if Yang's films in general, and this one in particular, are allowed to disappear, it would be a crime against humanity.

If they're currently just sitting there, what's Criterion doing about it?

[ptmd]

If they're currently just sitting there, what's Criterion doing about it?

The same thing they're doing with even greater films like The Puppetmaster, which is also sitting around waiting to get picked up now that Wellspring is defunct. Criterion does a lot of great work, and they are very strong on pre-1970 Japanese cinema, but they don't seem especially interested in contemporary Asian cinema. Yi Yi is a major exception, but it was also one of the few genuine arthouse hits of the past decade (same goes for In the Mood for Love). There's always hope with this, but it's worth remembering that no North American distributor was willing to pick up A Brighter Summer's Day and it has yet to receive even a cursory one-week theatrical release. Without that, I suspect companies like Criterion feel it's going to be a hard sell.

The likeliest places for a DVD of Brighter Summer's Day to appear are France and Japan, where the film did play theatrically and effectively made Yang's reputation internationally.