The Wedding Banquet

Ang Lee
1993
Taiwan, US
106 min

Catford Mews

12 June

Saturday

6:00pm

Director Ang Lee’s second feature film is a romantic comedy about Wai-Tung Gao (Winston Chao), a Taiwanese immigrant to the USA who lives happily with his partner Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) in Manhattan. Despite having achieved success as a real estate investor, Wai-Tung faces pressure from his parents, who wonder why he hasn’t yet gotten married and attempt to set him up with women. To appease them, Wai-Tung resolves to marry Wei-Wei (May Chin), a struggling Chinese artist who needs a green card. But what begins as a convenient lie evolves into an elaborate deception when the parents decide to fly to America for the wedding. Both farcical and touching, Lee’s film is a landmark of LGBTQ+ cinema and anticipates later debates over gay marriage.

Additional Information

Preceded by

Military Dog
Dir. Ping-Wen Wang | Taiwan | 2019 | 11 min

Introduction by Christopher Brown, University of Sussex.

With support from the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan.