Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Hou Hsiao -Hsien (Chinese侯孝贤/侯孝贤, Pinyin Hou Xiaoxian; born April 8, 1947 in Meixian, China) is a Taiwanese film director, screenwriter, film actor and film producer. Other names by which he is known, Xiao Xian Hou, Xiao- Xian Hou and Hou Hao Yin.
He was nominated six times for the Golden Palm. In addition to the Golden Lion and FIPRESCI two prices he could take receipt of the 2005 Akira Kurosawa Award. Hou Hsiao -Hsien, in 2007, the Leopard of Honour of the Locarno Film Festival for his life's work.
Life and work
Together with Edward Yang, he is one of the leading representatives of the so-called Taiwanese Nouvelle Vague.
He was born in the Chinese province of Guangdong. In 1948 his family emigrated with him to Taiwan. He belongs to the ethnic group of the Hakka. Hou studied at the National Taiwan Academy of the Arts.
He grew up with films from Hollywood and Hong Kong and only later learned Ozu's work know.
His first films came from popular genres and emerged still within the commercial Taiwanese film industry. With his contribution to the omnibus film Ulbricht de Dawan'ou he turned to more personal materials. This was accompanied by a search for a decidedly Taiwanese style. The following films treated mainly the country life and have been seen on numerous smaller festivals around the world. The international breakthrough came with The City of Sadness, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1989. This work was the first of a trilogy that deals with the Taiwanese history ( the other films in this series are masters of puppetry and Haonan haonu ). In the course of his career, Hou placing more emphasis deals with the urban present Taiwan, in films such as Nanguo Zaijan, Nanguo or Qianxi manbo. He also produced in recent years for the first time two films outside of Taiwan. Kohi Jiko was founded in 2003 in Japan as a tribute to the director Yasujiro Ozu. Followed in 2007 by the French production Le Voyage du ballon rouge with Juliette Binoche in the lead role.
Common partners include Mark Lee Ping Bin on the camera, Chu Tien -Wen Li as a writer and as a performer Tianlu. Excelled As advocates have mainly Village Voice and the Film Society of Lincoln Center with a retrospective in 1999. Babylon in Berlin-Mitte brought his action- poor, while yet elliptical difficult works and him personally to Germany, from where he for the funeral of Edward Yang departed prematurely. The Cahiers du cinéma know him also memorable as " HHH". Nevertheless, many films are in German-speaking not currently available, let alone to see because on television. A City of Sadness touched a taboo subject, the incident of 28 February, from a country where "national identity is a permanent question mark" (Kent Jones).
" But there are very artificial trips, with those of the scenic space is divided into discrete units - camera movement, then, in which the conventional monitoring of the movement of the character does not matter. [ ... ] The Neukadrierung the image by the camera movements make voyages of discovery is in the room [ ... ] In addition, there are now strict axis jumps [ ... ] there is no scene resolutions, such as in the western cinema "
Fergus Daly in 2001 it proposed four prosaic formulas before that could outline its aesthetics:
" Kohi Jikou was [ ... ] a picture sheet of exquisite precision: static settings of extreme sobriety. The life that nothing else stands in the center of Hous casual narration. [ ... ] In the cinema to sleep, ie, trust the movie. ' Times has a well said. "
" Hou Hsiao -Hsien is a good example of someone who has virtually invented his own cinematic language. [ ... ] In essence, he has ceased to be manipulative. He has become observant. He gives the audience all the information it needs, but very minimal. He has taken and taken and taken away again, to the point that is barely enough to it to communicate the essential points. "