Terrorizer (Kongbu Fenzi)

A dazzling narrative, this film explores the power of human contact as it links together characters with a single, randomly placed phone call.

Milestones

Hong Kong , Taiwan, 1986, 109 min, 35 MM
In Mandarin with English subtitles

DIR: Ed Yang
SCR: Ed Yang,
Hsiao Yeh
DP: Chang Chan
ED: Ching-Song Liao
CAST: Cora Miao, Li Liqun, Wang An

A blocked novelist (Cora Miao) contemplates giving up writing and returning to the 9-to-5 work force. Her husband, a doctor, snitches on a colleague in order to get a promotion at work.

Meanwhile, a photographer becomes increasingly obsessed with the young woman he sees fleeing from a police raid. These are the characters—all of them linked by a single, randomly placed phone call—who populate Edward Yang’s masterful third feature. Dazzling in its narrative complexity, THE TERRORIZER is, like many of Yang’s films, a study of choices made and roads not taken, and of the myriad ways in which we literally and figuratively seal ourselves off from meaningful human contact until we are primed to explode.

As Yang himself noted of the film, “There may not be Baader-Meinhof gangs in this part of the world, but the bombs we plant in each other are ticking away.”

 - Scott Foundas

 SCREENING SCHEDULE

Saturday, November 3rd 4:00pm
ArcLight Theatre 14

*see website for ticket purchases