Thursday, October 15, 2015
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
UCLA James Bridges Theater/Melnitz 1409
235 Charles E Young Dr N, Los Angeles, CA 90095
RSVP List is now full so we are no longer accepting any RSVP.
Film Screening of
The Assassin (2015)
刺客聶隱娘
Q&A with director Hou Hsiao-hsien
Translation by Robert Chi – Associate Professor, UCLA Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures
Acclaimed director Hou Hsiao-hsien remolds the classic wuxia of martial combat and supernatural feats into mesmeric poetry. Hou’s first film in 7 years shocks with its heart-stopping beauty. The director and his collaborators – chief among them co-screenwriter Chu Tien-wen, cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing, costume and production designer Hwarng Wern-ying, sound editor Tu Duu-chih, and composer Lim Giong – limn an evocative 9th-century Tang Dynasty of brocades and shimmering silks, vividly orange sunsets, a birch tree forest (echoing the bamboo forests beloved of an earlier wuxia maestro, King Hu), white mist creeping up a mountain cliff, choruses of bird calls and pounding martial beats. In the shadows lurks a female assassin (Shu Qi), returned from exile with a test from her nun master to kill the ruler of a province who was once her betrothed (Chang Chen). This is a wuxia of silences and observation, punctuated by sudden leaps and the lethal glint of a blade. It is jianghu as only Hou could imagine.
– Cheng-Sim Lim
Screenwriters: Hou Hsiao-hsien, Chu Tien-wen, Hsieh Hai-meng, Zhong Acheng. Cinematographer: Mark Lee Ping-bing. Production Designer/Costume Designer: Hwarng Wern-ying. Editing Director: Liao Ching-sung. Editor: Huang Chih-chia. Sound Editor: Tu Duu-chih. Composer: Lim Giong. Cast: Shu Qi, Chang Chen, Zhou Yun, Tsumabuki Satoshi, Juan Ching-tian, Hsieh Hsin-ying, Sheu Fang-yi.
DCP, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 104 min.
*****
Admission is free with prior RSVP.
Directions and Parking: From Hilgard Ave. enter the east side of campus at Wyton Dr.
Make an immediate right turn onto Charles E. Young Dr. East and signs will direct you to Parking Structure 3.
From the ground level of Structure 3, enter the underpass (or from the street level cross Charles E. Young Dr. North and proceed down steps) and walk straight alongside Melnitz and Macgowan Halls.
Turn left at the plaza and proceed to the courtyard of theaters.
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“The Best Film of the Cannes Film Festival. A masterful film. The level of artistry was so much higher than anything else in the festival that everyone was, in one way or another, ravished.”
– John Powers, NPR
“Thrillingly beautiful. Filled with palace intrigue, expressive silences, flowing curtains, whispering trees and some of the most ravishingly beautiful images to have graced this festival (Cannes).”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Official Taiwan entry
Best Foreign Language Film – Academy Awards® 2016
Winner – Best Director, Cannes Film Festival 2015
Opens October 16 from Well Go USA
Presenters
UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, UCLA Film & Television Archive, UCLA Boethius Initiative