today i sat down and watched one of the dvds from the hou hsiao-hsien's classics: from 1983-1986. i watched the boys from fengkuei. i've only seen a few hou hsiao-hsien films, so i'm looking forward to exploring his earlier work. i found this film especially interesting to see how taiwan has changed and how it hasn't. the scenes in kaoshiung particularly showed this. the buses, the nightmarket, the houses...i guess i'd find that interesting about any place i've lived or even for some places i haven't. a sense of history documented in photographs or cinema.

oddly enough most of the websites i've been to about this film describe the three main characters as just having graduated from high school, but in the film it's stated that at least one of them has dropped out of high school. well, maybe it's not that important, but when i read things like that it makes me wonder if the people have actually seen the film, or if the english subtitles were just wrong in some places.