Ashes of Time Redux

93 mins | 2008 | Drama | Cantonese | English Subtitles
35mm Film

Content Advisory: This film contains (scenes of) nudity, violent themes and explicit/graphic violence

Ashes of Time Redux is inspired by JIN Yong’s novel “The Legend of the Condor Heroes.” It centers on a man named OUYANG Feng (Leslie CHEUNG). Since the woman he loved rejected him, he has lived in the western desert, hiring skilled swordsmen to carry out contract killings. His wounded heart has made him pitiless and cynical, but his encounters with friends, clients, and future enemies make him conscious of this solitude.

WONG Kar-wai was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong with his parents when he was five. He entered the film industry as a scriptwriter and began directing his own scripts in 1988. His debut feature As Tears Go By (1988) was invited to the Critics’ Week in the Cannes Film Festival. His second feature Days of Being Wild (1990) won five Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Director and Best Film. He founded his own company Jet Tone in 1992 and spent the next two years working on Ashes of Time (1994), shooting mostly on remote locations in China. Chungking Express (1994) , made very quickly during a break in the post-production of Ashes of Time,, became his first global success; he followed it with the related ‘diptych’ movie Fallen Angels (1995). Shot mostly in Argentina, Happy Together premiered at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival and won the Best Director award. His subsequent features have continued to premiere in Cannes: In the Mood for Love in 2000 (winning the Best Actor award for Tony LEUNG Chiu-wai), 2046 in 2004 and his English-language debut My Blueberry Nights in 2007. He served as President of the Jury at Cannes in 2006. His latest feature The Grandmaster (2013) was the opening film at Berlin International Film Festival. WONG Kar-wai is one of the defining auteurs of contemporary cinema. Joined by key collaborators such as Christopher Doyle, Wong has enraptured audiences and critics worldwide and inspired countless other filmmakers with his movies’ poetic moods, narrative and stylistic daring, and potent themes of alienation and memory.