The first part of director Hou Hsiao-hsien's trilogy on Taiwanese history, A CITY OF SADNESS provides a unique perspective on the events that irrevocably altered his homeland in the aftermath of Japan's fall from power at the end of World War II. The film intertwines two plot lines organized around the brothers Lin. The first involves the small-time gangster activities of the first and third brothers, who become entangled in a turf war with recently arrived smugglers from Shanghai. The other follows the fourth brother, a deaf-mute photographer who falls in love with his friend's sister while they are caught up in the discontent of the Taiwanese during the brutal February 28 Incident. Having won the Golden Lion at the 1989 Venice Film Festival, the film has since become regarded as a defining masterpiece of Taiwanese cinema.

This second installment of Hou's three-part history of Taiwan is based on the memoirs of 84-year-old Li Tien-lu, Taiwan's celebrated puppeteer and official 'national treasure' who also appears in Hou's films, A CITY OF SADNESS and A TIME TO LIVE AND A TIME TO DIE. In THE PUPPETMASTER, Li's captivating first-person recollections of his childhood and his days on the road with a troupe of travelling puppeteers are intercut with dramatic reenactments of fateful chapters in his life, creating a seamless, multi-layered narrative that is both formally inventive and profoundly moving. The portrait that emerges captures both the tragic sweep of Taiwan's fate throughout much of the 20th century, and the puppetmaster's own personal hardships. This is Hou Hsiao-hsien's masterpiece and one of the greatest films of the 90s.

Like his 1991 masterpiece, A Brighter Summer Day, Edward Yang’s new film, Yi Yi, finds universal life lessons in the everyday exchanges between ordinary people. In this case, the characters belong to three generations of a “typical” Taipei family, the Jians. The drama is set in motion on the day that Min-Min Jian’s brother, A-Di, gets married, complete with pregnant bride and a bitter “ex”. That’s the day that Min-Min’s mother suffers a stroke and is rushed to the hospital in a coma. It’s also the day that N.J. Jian bumps into Sherry, his first love whom he hasn’t seen for twenty years. In the following weeks, Min-Min will run off to a religious retreat, N.J. will meet Sherry in Tokyo, teenage daughter Ting-Ting will get her first difficult lesson in love, and eight-year-old Yang-Yang will steal your heart as he tries to make sense of it all. "A lucid, elegant, nuanced, humorous melodrama that orchestrates a soap opera season's worth of family crises with a virtuoso discretion." - J. Hoberman, Village Voice