22 Facts About Edward Yang

Edward Yang rose to prominence as a pioneer in the Taiwanese New Wave of the 1980s, alongside fellow auteurs Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang.

Edward Yang won the Best Director Award at Cannes for his 2000 film Yi Yi.

Edward Yang was born in Shanghai in 1947, and grew up in Taipei, Taiwan.

Edward Yang always had a great interest in film ever since he was a child, but put away his aspirations in order to pursue a career in the high-tech industry.

Edward Yang then applied and was accepted into Harvard's architecture school, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, but decided not to attend.

Edward Yang was particularly inspired by the films of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni.

Edward Yang married Taiwanese pop-singer and music legend Tsai Chin in May 1985.

Edward Yang returned to Taiwan in 1980, where his former USC friend Wei-Cheng Yu asked him to write the script for and serve as a production aide on his film, The Winter of 1905, in which he had a small acting role.

Edward Yang's script brought him to the attention of Sylvia Chang, who hired him to write and direct an episode of the television miniseries she was producing, Eleven Women.

Edward Yang then followed that short with several of his major works.

Edward Yang's first feature film, That Day, on the Beach, was a fractured modernist narrative reflecting on couples and families that spliced timelines.

Edward Yang followed with his second feature film, Taipei Story, where he cast fellow auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien as the lead, a former Little-League baseball star named Lung trying to find his way in Taipei.

Edward Yang's fourth film was A Brighter Summer Day, a sprawling examination of youth-teen gangs, 1949 Taiwanese societal developments, and American pop culture starring a then 15-year-old Chang Chen.

Edward Yang's fifth film was A Confucian Confusion, a multi-character comedy set in urban Taiwan, which was nominated for a Palme d'Or and in competition at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and garnered a Golden Horse Award for Best Screenplay Originally Written for The Screen.

In 2001, Edward Yang had finished a script about a young kid who travels the world with just a cellphone and a credit card.

Edward Yang died on June 29,2007, at his home in Beverly Hills, as a result of complications from a seven-year struggle with colon cancer.

Edward Yang died beside his wife, concert pianist Kaili Peng, and son Sean.

Edward Yang collaborated with many of his fellow Taiwanese film-makers in his films: for instance, in Yi Yi he cast as the lead well-known auteur, novelist, and screenwriter Wu Nien-jen, director of the award-winning A Borrowed Life, which Martin Scorsese has cited as one of his favorite works and one of the most influential films of the '90s.

Edward Yang cast fellow film-maker Hou Hsiao-hsien as the lead in his 1985 film, Taipei Story, where Wu Nien-jen had a brief part as a taxi driver and an old friend of Hou Hsiao-hsien's character.

Edward Yang taught theatre and film classes at the Taipei National University of the Arts.

The first animated feature that Miluku was slated to produce was an animated feature titled The Wind with Jackie Chan in 2007, but the project was cut short when Edward Yang fell ill with cancer.

In 2007, Edward Yang won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards that year.