Asia Society kicks off an ongoing monthly series titled Films to See Before You Die featuring classic films and underseen gems from across Asia and the Asian diaspora with extended introductions by Asia Society's Curator of Film. 

This screening will be preceded by a specially recorded video introduction from T'ien-wen Chu.

The Boys from Fengkuei 
Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan, 1983, 35mm, 101min
In Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles.

The Boys from Fengkuei marks the beginning of a now 14-film-strong collaboration between Hou Hsiao-Hsien and acclaimed Taiwanese writer T’ien-wen Chu, and the former has cited it as a personal favorite among his own films. The duo’s characteristically elliptical plot follows three provincial teenagers seeking work and trouble in the big city. 

Doze Niu plays Ah-Ching, who agitates his mother by spending time with Ah-rong (Chang Shih), Kuo-zai (Chao Peng-chue), and Ah-yu, a group of reprobates whose days are devoted to shooting pool and minor pranks and swindles. He daydreams about going to the cinema with his father, whose head was dented by a baseball years earlier and who now sits in a vegetative state on the family porch all day. When the boys skip town and show up unannounced at the apartment of Jang Chuen-fang, who plays Ah-rong's older sister, they soon meet her boyfriend— played by Hou himself. In what now feels like a prescient joke targeting the wide-angle long-take naturalism of the Taiwanese New Wave, Ah-rong and his friends buy tickets to a porn film from a street peddler only to find themselves in a derelict building with a demolished-wall-as-screen revealing the city’s vista. Imported 35mm Print.

A limited amount of complimentary tickets will be available to NYC college students with ID at the box office on the day of the screening.

This presentation at Asia Society is generously funded by the Pratt Foundation.