“I make films because I love this world and I believe in people,” notes Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, “the world's greatest working narrative filmmaker” (J. Hoberman). A graduate of Taiwan's National Arts Academy (known more as a theater school than a film hotbed), Hou first came to prominence as a key figure of the New Taiwan Cinema movement of the eighties, thanks to naturalistic works like The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) and Dust in the Wind (1986), which quietly yet eloquently captured the textures and essence of everyday life. Later films, such as City of Sadness (1989), The Puppetmaster (1993), and Flowers of Shanghai (1998), added a more sweeping political and historical scope to his work, yet retained that sense of intimacy, of eavesdropping upon ordinary lives that happened to be lived in extraordinary times. (“The growth of an individual, or of a whole nation,” he once stated, “often occurs without us noticing.”) These films, and later international efforts like Café Lumiere (2003), solidified his status among the world's elite filmmakers. In 1998, a worldwide critics' poll named him “one of the three directors most crucial to the future of cinema.”
Our series, which continues through December, begins appropriately with Hou's earliest titles, including his extremely rare “commercial trilogy.” Low-budget, quickly shot romantic comedies featuring Canto-pop icons, they are certainly atypical of Hou's later films, yet stand as fascinating representatives of the era's popular Taiwanese cinema, which was simultaneously overshadowed by the dominant Hong Kong film industry and hampered by its own government's tight-fisted regulations. Within the gaps these romantic comedies and dramas thrived, carving out a uniquely Taiwanese identity by addressing the nation's emerging middle-class culture and concerns about rapid urbanization. Offering glimpses of Hou's first steps as a filmmaker, these key titles-unavailable on DVD-also provide invaluable snapshots of a Taiwan in the throes of change.