Book

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Out of print

For younger critics and audiences, Taiwanese cinema enjoys a special status, comparable with that of Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave for earlier generations, a cinema that was and is in the midst of introducing an innovative sensibility and a fresh perspective. Hou Hsiao-hsien is the most important Taiwanese filmmaker working today, and his sensuous, richly nuanced films reflect everything that is vigorous and genuine in contemporary film culture. By combining multiple forms of tradition with a uniquely cinematic approach to space and time, Hou has created a body of work that, through its stylistic originality and historical gravity, opens up new possibilities for the medium.
 
The volume includes contributions by Olivier Assayas, Peggy Chiao, Chung Mong-hong, Jean-Michel Frodon, Hasumi Shigehiko, Ichiyama Shōzō, Jia Zhang-ke, Kent Jones, Koreeda Hirokazu, Jean Ma, Ni Zhen, Abé Mark Nornes, James Quandt, Richard I. Suchenski, James Udden, and Wen Tien-hsiang, as well as conversations with Hou Hsiao-hsien and some of his most important collaborators over the decades.
 
The editor, Richard I. Suchenski, is Founder and Director of the Center for Moving Image Arts (CMIA) and Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College. His academic work focuses on the development of cinematic modernism internationally and on the relationship between film and the other arts.

This book is jointly published with the Center for Moving Image Arts at Bard College, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of China (Taiwan).
  

"Delicious is a good word for this book too, an absolute necessity for every serious cinephile." (David Bordwell)

"This handsome, abundantly illustrated anthology ... now stands as the one English-language study [of Hou Hsiao-hsien] that covers the most ground." (Film Comment)

"A monumental endeavour in the growing English-language scholarship on the sensuous, richly nuanced work of Hou Hsiao-hsien, the most important Taiwanese film director.... [This book] enriches our understanding of Hou Hsiao-hsien, and is indispensible for any future scholarship on this distinguished film auteur." (Asian Cinema)
 

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Edited by Richard I. Suchenski
FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 23

Vienna 2014, 272 pages, with numerous color illustrations. In English
ISBN 978-3-901644-58-0
Table of Contents - Hou Hsiao-hsien (PDF)

 

All publications produced by the Austrian Film Museum are distributed internationally by Columbia University Press  

 

Related materials

* Our supporting members receive a 20% discount on in-house publications and articles (T-shirts, bags, and posters of the Film Museum) at the box office. These are marked online. When placing your order in our webshop, please enter your membership number in the comments field and select the payment method "Prepayment." You will then receive a reduced invoice.