HHH: portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien [NTSC]

Documentary on acclaimed filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien, considered by many to be the greatest Taiwanese filmmaker of all time. Directed by his friend and colleague Olivier Assayas, the film is an exuberant profile of a director known for his quietly restrained, elliptical films. Examining the questions of identity and “native land,” Hou returns to the setting of his youth to talk to childhood friends and discuss his films. His body of work is inseparably linked with the recent history of Taiwan and must be located within the context of an intellectual Nouvelle Vague that united Taiwanese writers, journalists and filmmakers at the end of the 1970s, when the end of censorship enabled free discussions, through film and literature, about Taiwan’s society. As Hou escorts Assayas around his childhood haunts of Taipei and its environs, he reveals himself to be charmingly wry, politically and critically engaged—and surprisingly fond of karaoke. A number of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films are available in the Lending Collection on VHS. In French, English, Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles.