Hou Hsiao-hsien's cinema draws comparisons to Yasujiro Ozu's with its ability to turn the ordinary-homes and hallways, a family dining together-into the extraordinary, repeating shots so that a lived-in space becomes as familiar as the characters within it. Hou's 1989 epic, A City of Sadness, has been called not only his crowning film, but “one of the supreme masterworks of contemporary cinema” (Jonathan Rosenbaum). Following the Lin family from 1945 to 1949, a momentous historical period encompassing Taiwan's independence from Japan and its secession from the mainland, the film courted controversy (and became a box-office hit) by addressing the then taboo subject of the “February 28th Incident,” when the Nationalist government met a popular uprising with a brutal crackdown. Hou's particular genius lies in reflecting such large-scale social and political events in minute, highly personal moments: children being born, conversations among friends and family, goodbyes and hellos exchanged on the same hilly streets as times, and governments, change. “The growth of an individual, or of a whole nation,” he wrote, “often occurs without us noticing.”