Hou Hsiao-hsien is a Mainland Chinese-born Taiwanese film director, screenwriter, producer and actor.
35 Facts About Hou Hsiao-hsien
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Hou Hsiao-hsien is a leading figure in world cinema and in Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1989 for his film A City of Sadness, and the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 for The Assassin.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien was born in Meixian District, Guangdong in 1947 to a Hakka family.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien was educated at the National Taiwan Academy of the Arts.
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Internationally, Hou Hsiao-hsien is known for his austere and aesthetically rigorous dramas dealing with the upheavals of Taiwanese history of the past century by viewing its impacts on individuals or small groups of characters.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien's 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.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien uses extensive improvisation to arrive at the final shape of his scenes and the low-key, naturalistic acting of his performers.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien's compositions are decentered, and links between shots do not adhere to an obvious temporal or causal narrative logic.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien has cast revered puppeteer Li Tian-lu as an actor in several of his movies, most notably The Puppetmaster, which is based on Li's life.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien's films have been awarded top prizes from prestigious international festivals such as the Venice Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival and the Nantes Three Continents Festival.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien 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.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien contributed two songs to the soundtrack of Dust of Angels, a film he produced.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien directed the Japanese film Cafe Lumiere for the Shochiku studio as an homage to Yasujiro Ozu; the film premiered at a festival commemorating the centenary of Ozu's birth.
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In 2010, Hou Hsiao-hsien directed the 3D short film for the Taipei Pavilion at the Expo 2010 Shanghai China.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien has had some acting experience, appearing as the lead in fellow Taiwanese New Wave auteur Edward Yang's 1984 film Taipei Story.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien 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.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien had a small role in the 2013 Chinese comedy-drama film Young Style, about a group of teenagers in high school.
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In 2015, Hou Hsiao-hsien won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for The Assassin.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien has directed a total of 18 feature films, of which he has written 11.
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The second feature film that Hou Hsiao-hsien both wrote and directed was Cheerful Wind, which teamed him up again with the trio of leads from Cute Girl, Kenny Bee, Feng Fei-fei and Anthony Chan.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Coming of Age" trilogy includes the three films: A Summer at Grandpa's, A Time to Live, A Time to Die, and Daughter of the Nile.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien's fifth feature film was A Summer at Grandpa's, which won a Best Director award for Hou Hsiao-hsien at the 1984 Asia-Pacific Film Festival and the Golden Montgolfiere award at the 1985 Nantes Three Continents Festival, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury - Special Mention at the 1985 Locarno International Film Festival.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien's eleventh film was a post-modern time-jumping and fourth-wall breaking narrative that jumped between the modern-day life of an actress named Liang Ching and the historical role of Chiang Bi-Yu, who she was portraying in a 1940s period piece film.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien's thirteenth film, Flowers of Shanghai, would see him reunite with actor Tony Leung Chiu-Wai from A City of Sadness as well as Jack Kao, and was a period piece set in the elegant brothels of 1880s Shanghai.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien's fifteenth feature film - Cafe Lumiere - was a self-acknowledged homage to the cinema of legendary Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, who Hou Hsiao-hsien considers a major influence on his own work.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien has directed a total of three short film segments in omnibus or anthology films.
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In 1983, Hou Hsiao-hsien directed a short film segment in the omnibus film The Sandwich Man which featured segments directed by Wan Jen and Zhuang Xiang Zeng entitled The Taste of Apples and Vicki's Hat.
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In 2010, Hou Hsiao-hsien directed a 3D short film for the Taipei Pavilion in the Expo 2010 Shanghai China.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien has written 21 films in total, 8 of which he directed.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien has produced 14 films - meaning serving as a producer or executive producer on a project - and the only film he both produced and directed is The Assassin.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien has acted in four films, including starring as the main character "Lung" in fellow Taiwanese New Wave auteur Edward Yang's Taipei Story, which was perhaps Yang trying to return the favor for Hou Hsiao-hsien casting him in his film A Summer at Grandpa's.
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In 1986, Hou Hsiao-hsien played the character "Boy-Boy" in Kei Shu's Lao Niang Gou Sao and in 2013, Hou Hsiao-hsien appeared as an older parental figure in Jie Liu's high school comedy, Young Style.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien was an assistant director on seven films, a presenter for the segment "La Belle Epoque" in the Taiwanese omnibus film 10+10, and a script supervisor on the film The Heart with Million Knots.
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Hou Hsiao-hsien's wife is Tsao Pao-feng, who was one of the producers on Hou Hsiao-hsien's film Flight of the Red Balloon.