Edward Yang, 59, filmmaker with Seattle ties

Years before creating such New Taiwanese Cinema masterpieces as "A Brighter Summer Day" and "Yi Yi," Edward Yang was a gifted computer engineer, living in Seattle and frequenting art-house cinemas such as the Harvard Exit. There he indulged his preference for the kind of challenging European films his father had introduced him to while growing up in Taiwan.

Born in Shanghai in 1947 and raised in Taipei, Mr. Yang died on June 29 at his home in Beverly Hills, from complications of colon cancer. He was 59. At the time of his death, Mr. Yang was preparing "The Wind," an ambitious animated martial arts feature co-produced with Jackie Chan. According to Seattle resident Johnny Cheng, a close friend of Mr. Yang's for 30 years, Mr. Yang had completed a sketchbook of 56 conceptual drawings for "The Wind" shortly before his death.

Mr. Yang had always intended to make a film in his "American hometown" Seattle, where a viewing of Werner Herzog's 1972 classic "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" inspired him to make his pivotal transition from computers to film.

In 1970, en route to the University of Florida to pursue a master's degree in computer science, Mr. Yang stopped in Seattle to visit his two-years-older brother, Robert, then working here as an engineer. Smitten with Seattle, Edward vowed to return. After graduation, he endured a semester at USC film school, growing disillusioned with its emphasis on commercial Hollywood production. Temporarily abandoning his filmmaking goals, Mr. Yang found a comfortable home in Seward Park after landing a well-paying job at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory.

Mr. Yang continued to watch movies while doing pioneering work in software and designing innovative maneuvering programs for U.S. Navy submarines, but his directorial desires remained in limbo. That's when Herzog's film, in Mr. Yang's oft-quoted words, "turned me around."

"During the '70s my brother, my wife and I always went to the UW film series, and that was a fantastic way to learn about movies," said Robert Yang during a recent phone interview. "I've always felt that technological innovation and artistic creation followed the same route, and you can sense that in Edward's films."

Mr. Yang's ambitions led him back to Taiwan in 1981, just as the New Taiwanese Cinema was beginning to emerge. He quickly got his first break when a producer friend asked him to write the screenplay for the Hong Kong TV movie "The Winter of 1905." After directing a few TV shows and the "Desires" segment of the pivotal 1982 anthology film "In Our Time," Mr. Yang found himself at the epicenter of a close-knit collective of influential filmmakers including Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, working in defiance of old-school directors whose films offered little or no connection to the shifting realities of modern Taiwan.

"We were all dreamers then," said Claire Pei, a filmmaker and artist who casually knew Mr. Yang from the Taipei film scene of the '80s. "Edward would hang out in coffeehouses for hours at a time, just watching the city, and that eventually came out in his work."

An acclaimed Taiwanese novelist now living in Bellevue, Pei recently visited Mr. Yang's mother, who moved to Seattle with her husband (now deceased) in the late '70s. Pei recalled a touching anecdote from Mrs. Yang that reveals her son's serious devotion to filmmaking — a career that Mr. Yang's parents initially disapproved of.

"When Edward graduated in Florida, he wrapped his diploma in ribbons and carefully handed it to his mother," Pei said. "It was his way of telling his parents, 'I got this because you loved me and raised me, and I felt obligated to do this for you.' "

Mrs. Yang instantly understood the gesture. Edward had studied for the stable career his parents wanted for him, but now he would pursue his own dreams, via a circuitous but ultimately triumphant path.

Until recently, Mr. Yang remained virtually unknown to U.S. filmgoers because distributors found his densely layered, postmodernist films too commercially risky. His first acknowledged masterpiece, the four-hour pop-cultural period epic "A Brighter Summer Day" (1991) was shown at various film festivals (including the Seattle International Film Festival, where it was enthusiastically received) but never received an official U.S. release. (It remains unavailable on DVD but can be rented at Scarecrow Video in the obscure VCD format.)

With the international release of his eighth and final film, the 2000 masterpiece "Yi Yi" (aka "A One and a Two"), Mr. Yang was unanimously hailed as a world-class auteur. Now available as a flawless Criterion Collection DVD, "Yi Yi" represents the perfect distillation of Mr. Yang's stylistic and thematic concerns, unfolding as a complex yet warmly inviting study of family dynamics. It's an all-time classic that improves with each viewing.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Yang's recent passing has programmers around the world scrambling to screen retrospectives. The director's artistic immortality is virtually guaranteed.

Mr. Yang, who was an American citizen, is survived by his third wife, the classical pianist Kai-Li Peng; a son, Sean; his mother; younger sister Li; and brother Robert. Memorial services are being held Wednesday in Westwood, Los Angeles.

Jeff Shannon: j.sh@verizon.net