The Story of a Small Town
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Echoes From Spring Street: The World of Sing Lee and Chinese-Language Cinema in L.A.. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
In person: Introduction by guest programmer Janet Louie, Ph.D. candidate, Harvard University. Pre-screening Q&A with Louie and Kurt Wong (UCLA ’90), grandson of Tony Quon and Margaret Lew, owners of the Sing Lee Theatre.
A man (Kenny Bee) recently released from prison falls in love with a mute woman (Joan Lin) in this classic wenyi film from 1979. Wenyi, often translated as “melodrama,” refers to a tradition in Chinese cinema dating back to the 1920s. Characterized by their modern, cosmopolitan sensibility, the wenyi or “literary-art” films of 1970s Taiwan were especially popular among diasporic audiences across Asia and North America. The film’s lasting legacy, however, is its soundtrack — featuring Teresa Teng, whose theme song “Small Town Story” became one of the first major pop hits to enter Mainland China after its 1978 economic opening.
DCP. Director: Lee Hsing. Screenwriter: Chang Yung-hsiang. With: Kenny Bee, Joan Lin, Ko Hsiang-ting.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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