- Born
- Nickname
- Hou Xiaoxian
- Of the ten films that Hsiao-Hsien Hou directed between 1980 and 1989, seven received best film or best director awards from prestigious international films festivals in Venice, Berlin, Hawaii, and the Festival of the Three Continents in Nantes. In a 1988 worldwide critics' poll, Hou was championed as "one of the three directors most crucial to the future of cinema."
Hou's birthplace, a county in Kuangtung Province, had been well-known as an intellectual center in China. In 1948, his family moved to Taiwan and, like all children raised there, he went through an extremely demanding educational system. In 1969, he studied film at the National Taiwan Arts Academy. After graduation in 1972, he worked briefly as a salesman. Later he began his film career as a scriptwriter and assistant director.
Hou's films are often concerned with his experiences of growing up in rural Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s. The 1950s marked a time in which refugee families from the mainland were struggling painfully for survival, while the 1960s saw the beginning of the most significant social change in modern Taiwan. The economic boom of that period meant the beginning of Western-style industrialization and urbanization. The normal frustrations of growing up were aggravated by these complicated changes, and Hou's films are intimate expressions of those experiences.
His emotionally charged work is replete with highly nostalgic images and beautiful compositions; their power lies in his total identification with the past and the fate of families who suffered through difficult times. His stories, often written in collaboration with scriptwriters T'ien-wen Chu and Nien-Jen Wu, depict the complex intertwining of the different strands that shape the lives of individuals. In a poetic yet relaxed style, they reflect a deep sympathy and a profound humanism.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
- SpouseCao Baofeng(? - present) (2 children)
- ChildrenYunhua Hou
- ParentsHou Fenming
- Elliptical storytelling
- Extreme long takes and minimal camera movement
- Concentrating the action on the edge of the frame
- Use of trains
- Imagery of a sensual beauty
- Jim Jarmusch called Hou his "teacher".
- It was only because critics kept telling him how much his own work resembled that of the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu that he decided to explore it. He first saw Ozu's films in Paris, in the mid-1980s.
- French film-maker Olivier Assayas admired Hou so much that in 1997, he made a feature length documentary about him: HHH: Portrait de Hou Hsiao-hsien.
- Recalls how, as a child, he climbed a tree to steal mangos, and while looking down experienced "an acute sense of space and time" that later helped inspire him to become a filmmaker.
- He is the 25th generation of his family. He still sends money to maintain a family temple in China.
- Art movies and commercial movies are [in Taiwan considered] opposites ... it's like they hate each other.
- My films are accepted much more in Japan or in Europe.
- [on form] It seemed clear to me what determines each shot: the point of view, the objectivity, and the subjectivity of the character, what the actor sees. Who sees what? I thought, 'I've got it!' I understood that three viewpoints make up each film: 1) that of the director, what the director thinks or sees, and 2) that of the character, what the actor thinks or sees. That's all. Only two viewpoints.
- [on changes in the industry since his early days] The times have changed and the technical aspects have moved on but the mindset of the film business and its relationship with the market has more or less remained the same. For the contemporary people - or maybe for me in particular - the biggest enemy is the market. It destroys everything other than what makes money, doesn't it? The situation has gotten worse with the popularity of the internet: the users can come together and decide which movies (get made) nowadays. How much can you achieve in such a narrow space (for creativity)? It's not easy. Even the nature of the moving images has changed: people are used to watching on small screens or reading comics now. In comics, all the images are the most brilliant moments. The viewers no longer pay as much attention to the texture of the images or the flow of emotions (in films). So although the emphasis on the market has stayed the same, the essence of cinema has changed since I started.
- [on how he became a filmmaker] (When he was in the army) On Sundays, when I was on leave, I'd go to the movies. Sometimes I'd see four films a day. Without knowing whether I'd study cinema, I'd decided it was what I wanted to do. I liked the cinema without knowing exactly what I'd do in it. I began working, as soon as I got out of university, as an assistant and as a screenwriter, not knowing I'd become a director. At first I wanted to be an actor. During school I took part in a singing contest. But I got stage fright. Once on stage, no sound!
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