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....

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 ...

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....

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...

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 this portrait of small-time hoods rendered in rhythm-of-life anecdotal detail, Gao is the leader of a circle of layabouts including his sidekick, Flathead, and their girlfriends, Pretzel and Ling. He is also the originator of petty crime schemes, ...

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

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-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...

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....

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...

Lin Hsiao-yang tries to keep her family together while working as a waitress at Kentucky Fried Chicken and going to night school. With no mother and her father currently working out of town, it is up to Lin Hsiao-yang to take care of her younger sibl...

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...

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...

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 actress preparing to play in a historical epic is terrorized by someone faxing her pages from her stolen diary; has colorful flashbacks of her affair with a now-deceased man; and imagines black-and-white film-within-a-film scenes of the movie she ...

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....

A photographer travels with her boyfriend to a seaside village in Penghu. There she strikes up a relationship with a blind man. When they reencounter one another back in Taipei, where he is preparing to undergo an operation to restore his sight, thei...