Movies: Hou Hsiao-hsien

In 1920s China, 19-year-old Songlian becomes a concubine of a powerful lord and is forced to compete with his three wives for the privileges gained....

Vicky recalls her romances with her exes Hao Hao and Jack in the neon-lit clubs of Taipei....

9th century China. Ten year old general’s daughter Nie Yinniang is abducted by a nun who initiates her into the martial arts, transforming her into an exceptional assassin charged with eliminating cruel and corrupt local governors. One day, having fa...

At the end of the 19th century, Shanghai is divided into several foreign concessions. In the British concession, a number of luxurious “flower houses” are reserved for the male elite of the city. Since Chinese dignitaries are not allowed to frequent ...

Two friends who haven't seen each other for thirteen years reunite. One is a successful concert pianist just back from a European tour and the other has just started a new business....

Set in the island Kinmen, often seen as the most dangerous military base because it’s geographically close to China, "Paradise in Service" follows the adventure of a boy who serves his military service in Unit 831 from 1969 to 1972, in preparation fo...

The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror," the Kuomintang government's anti-communist political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people from 1947-1987....

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the...

An autobiographical film based on Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's memories of his youth growing up in Taiwan after emigrating from mainland China....

A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squan...

A coming-of-age story about a young brother and sister whom spend a pivotal summer in the country with their grandparents....

Two independent stories involving chess wizards are interwoven to satirize the politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as well as Taiwan's capitalist boom of the 1970's....

A woman is transported into a world as strange and beautiful as her dreams in this fantasy. Singing, who comes from a family of poor shopkeepers, earns her living as a cleaning woman on a ferry that services a military base. Singing has a recurring d...

A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do th...

Set in the late 1980s, this family drama is about an 11-year-old boy who befriends his landlord, nicknamed Old Fox, and learns from him how to survive in a rapidly changing world as well as things his poor father would never be able to teach him....

In 2013, the Golden Horse Film Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary. The ministry of Culture commissioned director Yang Li-chou to make a documentary about the history of Golden Horse. What is unique to this film is that it's not an ode to celebr...

In three separate segments, set respectively in 1966, 1911, and 2005, three love stories unfold between three sets of characters, under three different periods of Taiwanese history and governance....

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit ...

Master puppeteer Li Tien-lu recalls his life in Japanese-occupied Taiwan during the first half of the 20th century....

This is a story of reminiscence, remembering my long-deceased Grandpa. To remember is to transcend, therefore it’s a story of time and space, overlapped and intertwined. It’s also a quest of love and work, a spiritual and emotional journey; and throu...