Movies: Hou Hsiao-hsien

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....

Doris simply wanted to open a refined, stylish coffee shop in a bohemian Taipei neighborhood, but when she's stuck with a load of useless gifts from the opening celebration, her younger sister Josie turns the café into a burgeoning bartering business...

On his 60th birthday, Van is told that he is seriously ill. But instead of going to Taipei for treatment, his illness leads him to Japan. Together with his son, he goes in search of the father who abandoned him 50 years ago. At the same time, a young...

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...

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...

A substitute teacher from Taipei arrives in a country village to teach a class of mischievous students. He soon falls in love with nature, country life and a fellow teacher at the school....

An exploration of Chinese cinema and its relationships with gender and sexuality, which the film argues has been more frankly and provocatively explored than in any other national cinema. Utilizing both film excerpts and interviews with many leading ...

Focuses on the people, their stories and architecture spanning from the mid-1800s, when Shanghai was opened as a trading port, to the present day....

Hsu Zi Qi is a young woman who lives alone in the city. Lee is the autistic son of Zi Qi's landlady, who tries to free himself from his protective mother. Feng is a shy young builder, who struggles with the constant breakdowns of his car....

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...

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

With Taiwan remaining in the grip of martial law in 1982, a group of filmmakers from that country set out to establish a cultural identity through cinema and to share it with the world. This engaging documentary looks at the movement's legacy....

10+10 is a project initiated by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival to demonstrate the solidarity between Taiwanese film-makers. 20 directors are invited to make a 5-minute short film each on the theme of the “Uniqueness of Taiwan,” but allowed tot...

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 ...

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...

When a woman who was abandoned at birth because of a genetic disorder sees a child facing the same fate, she finds herself trying to persuade their parents to reconsider and goes to extreme lengths to save the child....

The daughter of a wealthy man takes French lessons so she can go to France with her fiancée, but ends up falling for a poor man who studies civil engineering....

A loose youth passes the time freely until he comes across a young, female broadcaster who works at a radio station....

The startling contrast between old and new Taiwan is the subject of Wan Jen's epic of traditional identities coming into conflict with an urban life, emphasizing the situation of women....

A couple is torn by conflicting emotions. Jing and Mi are two women living in Taiwan who have been lovers for some time; Jing is a singer in a rock band who suffers from severe mood swings and has been suffering from a fractured relationship with her...