Film Screening:

Dust in the Wind
(Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986, 109 min, Taiwan, in Taiwanese and Mandarin w/ English subtitles, Color, DVD) 

-- introduced by Prof. Guo-Juin Hong (AMES)!

Master filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien directs this wistful story about lost love and lost innocence among Taiwan's working class. Wan and Huen are high school sweethearts living in a down and out mining community. Too poor to continue their education, the two drop out of school and move to Taipei to find employment. Huen finds work as a seamstress. Wan becomes a printer's assistant and then a motorcycle delivery boy. They work all day, pursue their studies at night school, and spend their scant free time drinking with their friends, all working similarly menial jobs. Then Wan is drafted into the army – a fateful turn that alters their lives irrevocably.

“Dust in the Wind is a gorgeously restrained mediation on Taiwan's rapid industrialization.” – AllMovie.com

“With his apt and unerring arrangement of actors and bustle and real life within his frame, Hou creates offhanded magic.” – Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

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).  Made possible by Taiwan Cinema Toolkit.

[Download PDF flyer]