In Our Time

Four stories trace the ebb and flow of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in this anthology film that heralded the Taiwan New Wave.

Childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, told in four parts. In Little Dragon Head, a young boy copes with the daily indignities of adolescence through an active imagination and a beloved Trex figurine.

In Expectation, a teenage girl develops an awkward crush on the new male boarder her mother has taken in. Leapfrog follows a downtrodden college student as he chases his school's triathlon championship. Finally, in Say Your Name a young couple navigates the pitfalls of cohabitation and the demands of working life.

Curator’s note
Aside from announcing the arrival of a major filmmaker in Edward Yang, this seminal anthology film more broadly became a focal point for the emergence of the Taiwan New Wave. After decades of populist melodramas and imported Hong Kong genre cinema, the Taiwanese film industry was changing. A new generation of younger filmmakers were making their mark with films that were grounded in realism and weren’t afraid to adopt unconventional narrative structures.