Hou Hsiao-Hsien

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Hou (surname).

Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Chinese name	侯孝賢 (Traditional)
Chinese name	侯孝贤 (Simplified)
Pinyin	Hóu Xiàoxián (Mandarin)
Born	(1947-04-08) April 8, 1947 Mei County, Guangdong, China
Awards Golden Horse Awards Best Director 1989 A City of Sadness 1995 Good Men, Good Women Best Taiwanese Filmmaker of the Year 2005 Three Times Other awards Golden Lion : 1989 A City of Sadness Jury Prize (Cannes Film Festival) : 1993 The Puppetmaster Leopard of Honour : 2007

Hou Hsiao-Hsien (simplified Chinese: 侯孝贤; traditional Chinese: 侯孝賢; pinyin: Hóu Xiàoxián; Wade–Giles: Hou² Hsiao⁴-hsien²) (born April 8, 1947) is a Taiwanese actor, singer, producer and director. He is a leading figure of Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement.

Biography

A Hakka, Hou Hsiao-Hsien was born in Mei County, Guangdong province in 1947. He and his family fled the Chinese Civil War to Taiwan the following year. Hou was educated at the National Taiwan Academy of the Arts.

Hou generally makes rigorously minimalist dramas dealing with the upheavals of the Taiwanese (and occasionally larger Chinese) history of the past century by viewing its impacts on individuals or small groups of characters. A City of Sadness (1989), for example, portrays a family caught in conflicts between the local Taiwanese and the newly arrived Chinese Nationalist government after World War II. It was groundbreaking for broaching this long-taboo subject and became a major success despite its seemingly uncommercial nature.

His storytelling is elliptical and his style marked by extreme long takes with minimal camera movement but intricate choreography of actors and space within the frame. He uses extensive improvisation to arrive at the final shape of his scenes and the low-key, naturalistic acting of his performers. His compositions are decentered, and links between shots do not adhere to an obvious temporal or causal narrative logic. Without abandoning his famous austerity, his imagery has developed a sensual beauty during the 1990s, partly under the influence of his collaboration with cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bin. Hou's consistent screenwriting collaborator since the mid-1980s has been the renowned author Chu Tien-Wen, a collaboration that began with the screenplay for Chen Kunhou's 1983 film, Growing Up. He has also cast revered puppeteer Li Tian-lu as an actor in several of his movies, most notably The Puppetmaster (1993), which is based on Li's life.

Hou's films have been awarded prizes from prestigious international festivals such as the Venice Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival and the Nantes Three Continents Festival. Six of his films to date have been nominated for the Palme d'Or (best film award) at the Cannes Film Festival, though the prize has so far eluded him. Hou was voted "Director of the Decade" for the 1990s in a poll of American and international critics put together by The Village Voice and Film Comment. Despite such acclaim, his work remains rarely distributed in the West outside of the film festival circuit.

He directed the Japanese film Café Lumière (2003) for the Shochiku studio as an homage to Yasujirō Ozu; the film premiered at a festival commemorating the centenary of Ozu's birth. The film deals with themes reminiscent of Ozu - tensions between parents and children and between tradition and modernity - in Hou's typically indirect manner. In 2005 his film Three Times - which features three stories of love set in 1911, 1966 and 2005 using the same actors, Shu Qi and Chang Chen - was the latest to be nominated for a Palme d'Or; it received glowing reviews instead.

In August 2006, Hou embarked on his first Western project. Filmed and financed entirely in France, Flight of the Red Balloon (2007) is the story of a French family as seen through the eyes of a Chinese student. The film is the first part in a series of films sponsored by the Musee d'Orsay and stars Juliette Binoche. In 2010, Hou directed the 3D short film for Taipei Pavilion in Expo 2010 Shanghai China.

Hou has also had some acting experience, appearing as the lead in fellow Taiwanese New Wave auteur Edward Yang's 1984 film, Taipei Story. Hou starred as Lung, a former Minor League baseball star who is stuck operating an old-style fabric business, longing for his past days of glory. Lung becomes alienated from his girlfriend and tries to find his way in the city of Taipei.

Hou is also a singer, having contributed two songs to the 1992 soundtrack of Dust of Angels, a movie he also produced.

Filmography

As director

Year	English Title	Original Title	Notes
1980	Cute Girls	就是溜溜的她	First full length feature film
1981	Cheerful Wind	風兒踢踏踩
1982	The Green, Green Grass of Home	在那河畔青草青
1983	The Sandwich Man	兒子的大玩偶	Directed with Wan Ren and Tseng chuang-hsiang
1983	The Boys From Fengkuei	風櫃來的人	Golden Montgolfiere at the 1984 Three Continents Festival
1984	A Summer at Grandpa's	冬冬的假期	Golden Montgolfiere at the 1985 Three Continents Festival
1985	A Time to Live, A Time to Die	童年往事	FIPRESCI Prize at the 1986 Berlin International Film Festival
1986	Dust in the Wind	戀戀風塵
1987	Daughter of the Nile	尼羅河的女兒	Entered into Directors' Fortnight at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival
1989	A City of Sadness	悲情城市	Golden Lion at the 1989 Venice Film Festival
1993	The Puppetmaster	戲夢人生	Jury Prize at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival
1995	Good Men, Good Women	好男好女	Best Feature Film at the 1995 Hawaii International Film Festival
1996	Goodbye South, Goodbye	南國再見，南國	Entered into the 1996 Cannes Film Festival
1998	Flowers of Shanghai	海上花	Entered into the 1998 Cannes Film Festival
2001	Millennium Mambo	千禧曼波	Technical Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival
2003	Café Lumière	咖啡時光	Japanese production, Entered into the 2004 Venice Film Festival
2005	Three Times	最好的時光	Entered into the 2005 Cannes Film Festival
2007	The Electric Princess House	電姬館	Segment of the anthology film, To Each His Own Cinema
2008	Flight of the Red Balloon	Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (紅氣球的旅行)	French production
2011	La Belle Epoque	黃金之弦	Segment of the anthology film, 10+10
2013	The Assassin	聶隱娘	In production

As producer

Year	English Title	Original Title	Director
1991	Raise the Red Lantern	大紅燈籠高高掛	Zhang Yimou
1992	Dust of Angels	少年吔，安啦	Hsu Hsiao-ming
1993	Treasure Island	只要為你活一天	Chen Kuo-Fu
1994	A Borrowed Life	多桑	Wu Nien-jen
1995	Heartbreak Island	去年冬天	Hsu Hsiao-ming
2000	Mirror Image	命帶追逐	Hsiao Ya-chuan
2007	Reflection	愛麗絲的鏡子	Yao hung-I
2010	One Day	有一天	Hou Ji-ran
2010	Taipei Exchanges	第36個故事	Hsiao Ya-chuan
2010	Return Ticket	到阜陽六百里	Teng Yung-Shing
2011	Hometown Boy	金城小子	Yao hung-I

As actor / Himself

Year	English Title	Original Title	Director
1983	The Boys From Fengkuei	風櫃來的人	Himself
1985	Taipei Story	青梅竹馬	Edward Yang
1986	Soul	老娘夠騷	Shu Kei
1996	Yang±Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema	男生女相	Stanley Kwan
1997	HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien	HHH - Un portrait de Hou Hsiao-Hsien	Olivier Assayas
2010	I Wish I Knew	海上傳奇	Jia Zhangke

Further reading

• Berenice Reynaud, A City of Sadness, British Film Institute 2002
• James Udden, No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien, Hong Kong University Press, 2009. [1]

See also

• Cinema of Taiwan
• Edward Yang
• Tsai Ming-liang

External links

• Hou Hsiao-Hsien at the Internet Movie Database
• Director of the Decade: Hou Hsiao-Hsien at Camera-Stylo
• Hou Hsiao-Hsien at Strictly Film School
• Cinema with a Roof Over Its Head: Kent Jones (Film Comment) on the Latterday Films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien
• Tribute to Hou Hsiao-Hsien at Cinemaya
• Style and Meaning in the films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien - podcast of a lecture by Prof. John Orr, University of Edinburgh
• Parametric Narration and Optical Transition Devices: Hou Hsiao-hsien and Robert Bresson in Comparison, Senses of Cinema article on the style of Flowers of Shanghai by Colin Burnett
• Hou Hsiao-Hsien, a Reverse Shot symposium