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New Taiwan Cinema

A collection of 14 posts

A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang, 1994)

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A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang, 1994)

Hou Hsiao-hsien in Austin

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien in Austin

This weekend the Austin Asian American Film Festival kicks off a month-long retrospective on Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien at the Austin Film Society [https://www.austinfilm.org/series/reality-in-long-shots-a-hou-hsiao-hsien-retrospective/] , all but one of which will be playing on 35mm film. I wrote extensively about Hou, who would probably be my

Edward Yang Capsule Reviews

Edward Yang Capsule Reviews

In Our Time (1982) — August 23, 2020 Nothing more pure than Edward Yang’s complete and total lack of respect for international copyright law as it pertains to the use of popular music in film. He put two (2!) Beatles songs in his debut short film. Absolute legend. That Day,

Hou Hsiao-hsien Capsule Reviews

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien Capsule Reviews

Cute Girl (1980) — March 18, 2015 Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first film pairs pop stars Kenny Bee and Feng Fei-fei in a totally pleasant and generic romantic comedy. He’s poor, she’s rich, they fall in love anyway. Tsui Hark’s Working Class is a much better version of this

A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)

A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)

Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day was released earlier this year by the Criterion Collection. A home video event years in the making, rumors of its impending inclusion in the canonical collection (as part of Criterion’s partnership with the World Cinema Foundation) have been swirling since as far

The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015)

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s latest, his first film since 2007’s Flight of the Red Balloon, is set in the late Tang Dynasty period, starring Shu Qi as a young woman who returns home after ten years as a killer-in-training to wreak vengeance on the local ruler. The film follows a

Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003)

Café Lumière was supposed to be one part of an anthology made to honor the 100th anniversary of Yasujiro Ozu’s birth, but the other directors involved dropped out and so Hou Hsiao-hsien expanded his section into a feature. It’s set in Tokyo and tells the story of a

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)

Millennium Mambo, released in 2001 and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first to be theatrically distributed in the US, is his first one set entirely (well, almost) in the contemporary world since Daughter of the Nile, and like that film it tends to be passed over in favor of more ostensibly serious

Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998)

Flowers of Shanghai is based on an 1892 novel by Han Bangqing, considered a masterpiece but composed largely in the Wu dialect of Chinese, which is unintelligible to Mandarin speakers. The script (by Chu T’ien-wen, of course) is based on a translation by novelist Eileen Chang who wrote the

Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986)

The fourth in the series of coming-of-age films that marked Hou Hsiao-hsien’s transition from competent movie-maker to celebrated auteur, Dust in the Wind is based on the experiences of New Cinema multi-hyphenate Wu Nien-jen, most famous in the US for his starring role in Edward Yang’s Yi yi.

The Time to Live, The Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

The Time to Live, The Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985)

After his turn toward more personal filmmaking with 1983’s The Boys from Fengkuei, which was based on incidents from his own life transplanted onto a story of contemporary youth, and the following year’s A Summer at Grandpa’s, based on the recollections of Chu T’ien-wen, an author

The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983)

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s fourth feature and self-proclaimed “first real film”. It followed a trio of totally pleasant romantic comedies starring Hong Kong pop star Kenny Bee, who was then trying to make it as an actor in Taiwan. Already in those films Hou was demonstrating some of the tropes that

Hou Hsiao-hsien in Seattle

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien in Seattle

In the spring of 2015, the complete retrospective on Hou Hsiao-hsien that had been travelling the world for several months made its way to Seattle in truncated form. Ten of his films, five on 35mm film and five on video, played at three theatres across town over ten days, and

Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1995)

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1995)

Part of the fun of Good Men, Good Women is piecing together the narrative as it unfolds. Hou Hsiao-hsien doesn’t exactly withhold information, but rather, like in his previous film The Puppetmaster, he tends to explain events only after they’ve gone on long enough that, if you’ve