Made in Taiwan: A Cinematic Season Comes to London
Get ready for a deep dive into the rich, endlessly inventive world of Taiwanese cinema. Made in Taiwan, supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, brings together a striking mix of classic and contemporary films, with a special spotlight on one of Asian cinema’s most celebrated cinematographers: Mark Lee Ping-bing.
A towering figure behind the camera for five decades, Lee joins us in London for a seven-film celebration of his extraordinary career — including his legendary collaborations with director Hou Hsiao-hsien.
The season offers the chance to rediscover Hou’s hypnotic, neon-soaked Millennium Mambo (2001), his deeply personal The Time to Live and the Time to Die (1985), the sumptuous wuxia The Assassin (2015), and the ravishing, lamplit Flowers of Shanghai (1998). Also on the bill is the rarely screened Flight of the Red Balloon (2007).
Lee will join Q&As for The Assassin and Flowers of Shanghai, while the UK premiere of the newly restored The Dull Ice Flower (1989) offers another opportunity to experience his extraordinary visual artistry on the big screen. He will also give a free masterclass at King’s College London, exploring his distinctive approach to cinematography and visual storytelling.
Lee’s remarkable work extends beyond Hou Hsiao-hsien. Strawman (1987), the first film in Wang Toon’s acclaimed Modern Taiwan Trilogy, showcases his ability to capture history through intimate, vividly observed lives. Alongside Banana Paradise (1989) and Hill of No Return (1992), the trilogy charts the experiences of ordinary Taiwanese people through Japanese colonial rule, the upheavals of 1949 and the early Kuomintang era.
The programme also looks further back into Taiwan’s complex colonial history with Huang Ya-li’s award-winning documentary Le Moulin (2015). Blending archival footage, writing and inventive reenactment, it resurrects the surrealist-inspired poets and artists of 1930s Taiwan in a haunting portrait of a cultural world on the cusp of transformation.
Made in Taiwan is a chance to see Taiwanese cinema at its most visually daring, historically revealing and emotionally resonant — and to encounter the work of a cinematographer whose images have helped define the look and feel of modern Asian cinema.
THE GARDEN CINEMA LONDON