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| acknowledgements : curator's note : films : location : schedule : ama home | |
Millennium Mambo (Qian Xi Man Bo)(Taiwan 2001, 35mm, 105 min.) Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien Millennium Mambo is Hou's first film to use a brand new perspective of young people's lives to depict Taipei in a documentary style narrative. He relied upon 10 years of film footage and 10 different films, hoping to use a long term cinematic technique to capture the feel of the city and transform it into one cinematic form. In order to capture the realism of the times, and having no way to create this kind of content of the past, Hou sought a new means to create it. Starting with the rhythm all aspects needed to be considered accordingly, otherwise the spirit could not be conveyed. Director's BiographyTaiwan's premium director and winner of numerous film prizes all over the world, Hou Hsiao Hsien established himself as a leading figure of Taiwan New Wave in the last decade. He was born in China and moved to Taiwan in 1948. He spent his childhood in southern Taiwan. Upon completing his military service in 1969, Hou went to study filmmaking at the National Taiwan Academy of Arts. He graduated in 1972 and took various jobs before switching to films. He made his directorial debut with the film Cute Girls in 1980. By his third film, Green, Green Grass of Home (1981), he was nominated for a Golden Horse Award, Taiwan's equivalent to the Oscars. Since then, he has helped shape a whole new cinema consciousness in Taiwan. Director's Note"Looking at the youthful friends around me, I find that their cycle and rhythm of 'birth, age, illness and death' are moving several times faster than those of my generation. This is particularly true among young girls: like flowers, they are fading almost immediately upon blooming. The process occurs in an instant. I do not remember who said this: 'Of so many leaves drifting everywhere in the sky above us, there is but one (falling) leaf which comes to an eternal halt at the very moment of being watched persistently by us with understanding and sympathy.' With this image in mind, I hope to shoot a movie of the story of this youthful girl." Critic's Corner"...watch without preconceptions and let yourself fall into the rhythms of the film: the dance music of his Taipei slackers defines the beat of its shots, the drift of its camera, the endless loops within loops of its spiraling chronology. All sandwiched between two of Hou's most lyrically beautiful sequences: Vicky's slow motion neon-lit dance that opens the film, and the play of snow-capped images of old film posters that lyrically closes it." "(Shu Qi) is a potential star who could surely equal Hong Kong's Maggie Cheung and China's Gong Li in the hearts of western film-goers." "Hou's discreet, unforced visual sensuality transforms his minimalism into something mesmerizing... (Millennium Mambo) stands head and shoulders above just about everything around, even in Cannes." |
| © 2002 Asian Media Access |
Vicky, a frequenter of Taipei's dance club scene, is torn between two men, Hao-Hao and Jack. The jealous Hao-Hao watches over her all the time; he checks her charge accounts, telephone bills, and even her body odor in an attempt to trace her activities. Jack, on the other hand, is a gentle gangster with an open-arms policy to anyone in need of his help, a policy that courts trouble.