Chu Tien-Wen

The Assassin

9th century China. Ten year old general’s daughter Nie Yinniang is abducted by a nun who initiates her into the martial arts, transforming her into an exceptional assassin charged with eliminating cruel and corrupt local governors. One day, having failed in a task, she is sent back by her mistress to the land of her birth, with orders to kill the man to whom she was promised – a cousin who now leads the largest military region in North China. After 13 years of exile, the young woman must confront her parents, her memories and her long-repressed feelings.

Millennium Mambo

In 2011, Vicky looks back on her life a decade earlier, recalling her turbulent relationship with her controlling boyfriend Hao Hao and her growing connection to a compassionate gangster amid the neon haze of Taipei's nightlife.

Three Times

In three separate segments, set respectively in 1966, 1911, and 2005, three love stories unfold between three sets of characters, under three different periods of Taiwanese history and governance.

Good Men, Good Women

An actress preparing to play in a historical epic is terrorized by someone faxing her pages from her stolen diary; has colorful flashbacks of her affair with a now-deceased man; and imagines black-and-white film-within-a-film scenes of the movie she is about to appear in.

A City of Sadness

The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror," the Kuomintang government's anti-communist political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people from 1947-1987.

Taipei Story

A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.

A Summer at Grandpa's

A coming-of-age story about a young brother and sister whom spend a pivotal summer in the country with their grandparents.

The Time to Live and the Time to Die

An autobiographical film based on Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's memories of his youth growing up in Taiwan after emigrating from mainland China.

Goodbye South, Goodbye

In this portrait of small-time hoods rendered in rhythm-of-life anecdotal detail, Gao is the leader of a circle of layabouts including his sidekick, Flathead, and their girlfriends, Pretzel and Ling. He is also the originator of petty crime schemes, which promise to get the gang nowhere fast.

Flowers of Shanghai

At the end of the 19th century, Shanghai is divided into several foreign concessions. In the British concession, a number of luxurious “flower houses” are reserved for the male elite of the city. Since Chinese dignitaries are not allowed to frequent brothels, these establishments are the only ones that these men can visit. They form a self-contained world, with its own rites, traditions and even its own language. The men don’t only visit the houses to frequent the courtesans but also to dine, smoke opium, play mahjong and relax. The women working there are known as the “flowers of Shanghai”.

Dust in the Wind

A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do they. They fail to see time and fate are beyond their control.

Growing Up

The story follows a young man as he changes from an intelligently aware youth, to a teenager with much less confidence than he once had, and finally, to a stable adult.

Café Lumière

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.

The Boys from Fengkuei

Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking and fighting. Three of them decide to go to the port city of Kaohsiung to look for work. They find an apartment through relatives, and Ah-Ching is attracted to the girlfriend of a neighbor. There they face the harsh realities of the big city.

The Puppetmaster

Master puppeteer Li Tien-lu recalls his life in Japanese-occupied Taiwan during the first half of the 20th century.

Daughter of the Nile

Lin Hsiao-yang tries to keep her family together while working as a waitress at Kentucky Fried Chicken and going to night school. With no mother and her father currently working out of town, it is up to Lin Hsiao-yang to take care of her younger siblings, who are slipping into a life of crime.

My Favorite Season

Bi Bao-Liang is a 29 year-old man who believes that he will have bad luck if he touches a woman before he turns thirty. Liu Xiang-mei is a beautiful woman who had a love affair with her married boss, and now she is pregnant. In order to give her child a family name, she decides to find a man to have a one-year marriage contract. Bi Bao-Liang is the perfect man she is looking for because he is afraid of women. However, their marriage does not follow what they've planned...

His Matrimony

This is a story located in a small town in Taiwan during the 50's and 60's. Mei-Hsia is from the most prominent family in town. Yun-Lang works in the local peasant assocation. They like each other, but Mei-Hsia is afraid to tell her mother about their seeing each other. They wait till Yun-Lang sends a matchmaker to Mei-Hsia's family. There was no way that Mei-Hsia's family would agree to their marriage. Mei-Hsia's parents send her to a relative in the northeast of Keelung, in an attempt to stop them from seeing each other, but Yun-Lang follows her there. Mei-Hsia's relative doesn't stop them until Mei-Hsia's mother finds out. Now their love is an open affair. This time, it's the Mei-Hsias turn to propose a marriage between the two families. To everyone's surprise, the Yun-Langs turn it down. Mei-Hsia and Yun-Lang planned to elope, but they failed. She kills herself. At last, Yun-Lang can call Mei-Hsia his wife by marring her memorial tablet.

HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Entry on Taiwanese new-wave filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien for French television's "Cinéma, de notre temps" series, directed by Olivier Assayas.

Out of the Blue

Teenagers Jielong and Tangmi secretly love each other, but Tangmi vanishes after they spend a night out together. Jielong has to turn back to focus on his studies and enter university. Unexpectedly, Tangmi resurfaces with a newborn baby.

The Inspired Island: Unfulfilled Dreams

Chu Tien-Wen, frequent screenwriter for Hou Hsiao-Hsien, makes her directorial debut with this entry in The Inspired Island documentary series. With Hou as producer, cinematographer Yao Hung-I and editor Liao ChingSung, Chu takes a deep dive into the story of her parents, famed authors Chu Hsi-Ning and Liu Mu-Sha. Through family albums, old letters and interviews with fellow writers, Chu crafts a deeply personal portrait of her parents’ romance, literary careers, family roots and the unfinished opus her father left behind.

Drifters

Drifters directed by Kun-Hou Chen.

I Remember

“I Remember” tells the story of sister writers Chu Tien-wen and Chu Tien-xin, from co-founding the San-san magazine to their respective creative and political efforts up to the present.