Table of Contents

MINISTER OF CULTURE LUNG YING-TAI Foreword ...... 5

Introduction

RICHARD I. SUCHENSKI “Also like Life:” The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien ...... 7

Critical Essays

PEGGY CHIAO (HSIUNG-PING) In Search of Taiwan’s Identity: Nativism and Traditional Aesthetics in A City of Sadness ...... 40

NI ZHEN Transcending Local Consciousness: The Significance of Hou’s Films for Asian Cinema ...... 57

JEAN-MICHEL FRODON Unexpected but Fertile Convergence ...... 75

JEAN MA A Reinvention of Tradition: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Puppetmaster ...... 87

HASUMI SHIGEHIKO Who Can Put Out the Flame? On Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai ...... 106

JAMES QUANDT Three Times Three: A Certain Slant of Light in the Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien ...... 118

JAMES UDDEN Dust in the Wind : A Definitive Hou/New Cinema Work ...... 130

WEN TIEN-HSIANG The Unmarried Women ...... 144

ABÉ MARK NORNES Hou Hsiao-hsien and Narrative Space ...... 154

KENT JONES In Time ...... 169 Three Filmmakers on Hou Hsiao-hsien

OLIVIER ASSAYAS Hou Hsiao-hsien: In China and Elsewhere ...... 177

JIA ZHANG-KE A Bard Singing the Remembrances of a Nation ...... 182

KOREEDA HIROKAZU Things I Learned from Hou ...... 185

Interview Working within Limits: A Conversation with Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chu Tien-wen ...... 186

Collaborators CHEN HUAI-EN, CINEMATOGRAPHER Experiments with Realism ...... 199 MARK LEE (PING-BIN), CINEMATOGRAPHER Exploring Visual Ideas ...... 209 LIAO CHING-SUNG, EDITOR Finding the Right Balance ...... 215 TU DUU-CHIH, SOUND A New Era of Sound ...... 222 CHEN KUO-FU, PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR Conscious Engagement with Reality ...... 225 ICHIYAMA SH O¯ Z O¯ , PRODUCER Working with Hou Hsiao-hsien ...... 228

CHUNG MONG-HONG, DIRECTOR AND CINEMATOGRAPHER What I Know about Hou Hsiao-hsien ...... 231 JACK KAO (CHIEH), ACTOR Acting without Boundaries ...... 236 HWARNG WERN-YING, PRODUCTION DESIGNER Filmmaking is like Cooking ...... 238 CHU TIEN-WEN, SCREENWRITER Production Material for Three Times ...... 242

APPENDIX Biographical Timeline ...... 258 Filmography ...... 260 Selected Bibliography ...... 264 Contributors ...... 266 A Note on Names and Romanization ...... 268 The Retrospective: List of Venues ...... 268 Acknowledgments ...... 269 Image Credit List ...... 269