Hsiao-hsien Hou
“I'm more interested in people and the family, not so much in the politics of society. I'm very interested in the decay of family and the impact of that on the individual.”
Born into a Hakka family (an ethnic minority in the province of Guangdong), Hou’s family fled to Taiwan in 1949 to escape the Communists. After completing his military service he studied in the film program at the National Taiwan College of the Arts. In 1972 he graduated but had to work as a salesman, and then worked his way up from the bottom in the film industry, until his first film, Cute Girl in 1980. His films are revered around the world, but not often seen here.
Select Filmography
Cute Girl (1980)
All the Youthful Days (1983)
A Time to Live and a Time to Die (1985)
A City of Sadness (1989)
The Puppetmaster (1993)
Flowers of Shanghai (1998)
Café Lumière (2003)
Three Times (2005)
About
Born 8 September 1946 Meixiang, Guandong Province
Links
IMDB - for a comprehensive filmography and some external links
Wikipedia - for the usual sort of Wikipedia article - biography, filmography, some links ...
You Tube- lots to choose from here - trailers, interviews, shorts ...
China through a lens - This Canadian site which promotes all things Chinese, has a detailed analysis of Hou’s films.
Senses of Cinema 1 - an essay by Charles R. Warner, entitled, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Optics of Ephemerality
Senses of Cinema 2 - an essay by Tony McKibbin entitled, Situations Over Stories: Café Lumière and Hou Hsiao-hsien
Reverse Shot - an index page to a list of various in-depth articles on Hou and his films, that have been published in this online magazine. Click on the links to read the articles
Cinemaspace at Berkely a 1995 paper reworked in 1998 on City of Sadness by Abe Mark Nornes and Yeh Yueh-yu
Guardian - an article about Hou, based on an interview with him at Cannes in 2005, by Geoffrey MacNab
Cinetext - an article by Adam Bingham entitled, Cinema of Sadness: Hou Hsiao-hsien and ‘New Taiwanese Film’