Screen/Society--Cine-East: East Asian Cinema [Taiwan]--"The Assassin" (DCP screening!)

Wednesday, November 2, 2016 - 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Screen/Society--Cine-East: East Asian Cinema [Taiwan]--"The Assassin" (DCP screening!)

Film Screening:

The Assassin

(Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2015, 105 min, Taiwan/China, in Mandarin w/ English subtitles, Color, DCP) 

-- Introduced by Prof. Guo-Juin Hong (AMES)

Set in ninth-century China during a time of unrest that would eventually lead to the decline of the Tand Dynasty, The Assassin tells the story of Nie Yinniang (Shu Qui), who was kidnapped from her family when she was only 10 by Jiaxin (Sheu Fang-yi), a nun who trained her to become a brutally efficient assassin specializing in killing corrupt government officials. As the story begins, she demonstrates her abilities by killing her target-a man on horseback-with such lethal precision that it takes both her victim and viewers of the film a few moments to register that the deed has been done. Alas, Yinniang is not quite as ruthless as she seems to be, and when she confronts her next target and finds his young son in the room with him, she finds that she is unable to do the deed and lets him live.

-- Winner for Best Director at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival!

 

"The first film in seven years from the Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien is an immaculate treasure box of light, texture and movement." -- Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (UK)

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsors: The Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), and the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES).

Bryan Center Griffith Film Theater