WAVE BREAKER examines a family tragedy with warmth and a touch of humor
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Bruno Walter Auditorium
40 Lincoln Center Plaza (111 Amsterdam Ave. & 66th St.)
Tuesday, June 7, and Thursdays June 9-30, free, 6:30
www.nypl.org
The only openly lesbian Taiwanese filmmaker, forty-one-year-old Zero Chou has been making documentaries and narrative features since 1997, dealing with issues and concerns central to the LGBT community in Taiwan, Mainland China (where her films are banned), and around the world. Her feature films each highlight a color from the rainbow flag, so it is appropriate that she will be in New York City during Gay Pride Month for a retrospective being held at the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, where several of her films will be screened as part of the LGBT, LPA Cinema Series in conjunction with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office. On June 7, she will introduce her 2009 film, Wave Breaker, and she will introduce the award-winning Spider Lilies on June 9. The series continues on June 16 with 2004’s Splendid Float, June 23 with 2008’s Drifting Flowers, and June 30 with 2001’s Corners. Keep watching twi-ny for reviews of these rarely shown but important and evocative works.
WAVE BREAKER (Zero Chou, 2009)
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Bruno Walter Auditorium
40 Lincoln Center Plaza at Broadway & 66th St.
Thursday, June 9, free, 6:30
www.nypl.org
The domestic opening-night selection of the 2009 Women Make Waves Film Festival in Taipei, Zero Chou’s Wave Breaker is a heart-wrenching family drama that pulls no punches. Made for public television, Wave Breaker stars Yao Yuan Hao as Ho Hao-yang, a dedicated teacher and surfer who contracts the debilitating — and fatal — congenital disease spinocerebellar ataxia. As he begins losing his balance and his vision blurs, his mother, Shen Li-ping (Xu Gui-Ying), a local politician, is determined to help him through physical therapy and do anything she can to keep him alive so he doesn’t suffer the same fate her husband did. Meanwhile, his younger brother, Ho-ting, has dropped out of school, refuses to get a job, and instead devotes all his time to his rock band, whose main song asks the obvious question, “What is the meaning of life?” Writer-director Chou, an openly lesbian filmmaker whose previous work often examines issues involving the LGBT community, here plays it straightforward, focusing on the mind-set of the three protagonists and not getting caught up in subplots or medical jargon. Hao-yang, Ho-ting, and Ms. Shen each faces the family crisis in their own way as multiple tragedies await. The only breaks Chou offers from the stark reality of the awful situation are short animated clips that compare Hao-yang to a penguin, briefly lightening the darkness. Wave Breaker is screening June 7 at 6:30 as part of the Library of Performing Arts series “Breaking the Waves: The Films of Zero Chou” and will be introduced by the director.