{"id":31498,"date":"2015-06-06T08:22:38","date_gmt":"2015-06-06T13:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=31498"},"modified":"2015-06-06T22:43:02","modified_gmt":"2015-06-07T03:43:02","slug":"hou-hsiao-hsien-a-new-video-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2015\/06\/06\/hou-hsiao-hsien-a-new-video-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Hou Hsiao-hsien: A new video lecture!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Puppetmaster<\/a><\/p>\n

The Puppetmaster<\/strong> (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1993).<\/em><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

The Hou Hsiao-hsien seminar<\/a> held in Antwerp at the end of May\u00a0was an event I was sorry to miss. The title announced a focus on\u00a0Hou’s style of “just-noticeable differences,” a phrase I used to describe his rich and nuanced staging. Coordinator Tom Paulus assembled a stellar lineup of scholars<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Cristina \u00c1lvarez L\u00f3pez<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0critic and researcher, co-founder and co-editor of\u00a0Transit<\/a><\/em> and frequent contributor to mubi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Adrian Martin,<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0wide-ranging\u00a0critic and scholar, whose recent book, Mise en sc\u00e8ne and Film Style<\/a><\/em>, made him a natural choice for this gathering.<\/p>\n

B\u00e9r\u00e9nice Reynaud,<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>expert on Chinese cinema and\u00a0author of the first book on Hou in English, a fine monograph on\u00a0City of Sadness<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Richard Suchenski,<\/strong> <\/a>coordinator of the major Hou retrospective now touring the world<\/a>\u00a0and editor of a vast\u00a0anthology\u00a0<\/a>(discussed in an earlier post<\/a>).<\/p>\n

James Udden<\/strong><\/a>, author of the first career monograph<\/a> on Hou in English (discussed hereabouts<\/a>) and reporter for us on The Assassin<\/em> (here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

A bout of bronchitis kept me home.\u00a0Chris Fujiwara<\/a>,<\/strong> author of books on Preminger<\/a>, Jerry Lewis<\/a>, and Jacques Tourneur<\/a>, kindly filled in for me.<\/p>\n

But I had prepared a talk, dammit, and I chafed at the prospect of junking it.<\/p>\n

The talk was called “The Drawer, Two Women, and the Little Toy Fan.” It centered on aspects of Hou’s 1980s and 1990s work that seemed to me to have influenced\u00a0works by other filmmakers in the region. The talk\u00a0ended with some speculations on developments in Hou’s own films over the last fifteen years.<\/p>\n

Remembering that all redemption comes from the Web,\u00a0I decided to put the thing up on our Vimeo channel. While fiddling with it, I realized that it was pretty narrowly\u00a0addressed to Hou specialists. So I expanded it by\u00a0offering more context and background, and gave it\u00a0the unsexy title of “Hou Hsiao-hsien: Constraints, traditions, and trends.”<\/p>\n

The lecture is\u00a0available here on my Vimeo channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It can serve as an introduction to some ideas about Hou I floated in Figures Traced in Light.<\/em> I’ve added comments\u00a0on Hou films after Flowers of Shanghai<\/em>, and I consider\u00a0other filmmakers (Kore-eda, Tsai Ming-liang, Edward Yang) as well.\u00a0<\/em>It has pretty pictures, many drawn from 35mm prints.<\/p>\n

I regret to report, though, that my voice-over narration, the first I recorded at home rather in a studio, is\u00a0a bit ragged. And, sorry to say, the talk runs nearly\u00a0seventy minutes. I take consolation in Adorno’s reply to someone who complained that The Authoritarian Personality<\/em> was too long: “We didn’t have time to make it short.”<\/p>\n

\n

Thanks to Tom Paulus<\/strong> of the University of Antwerp and the Photog\u00e9nie blog<\/a> for sponsoring the seminar. Thanks as well to Bart Versteirt<\/strong>\u00a0and Lisa Colpaert<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0of the Vlaamse Dienst voor Filmcultuur vzw<\/a>\u00a0and to\u00a0Nicola Mazzanti<\/strong> of the Cinematek<\/a>. And of course I owe big thanks to Erik Gunneson<\/strong> of our department of Communication Arts who, as ever, helped me record and post the video lecture.<\/p>\n

See our previous entry<\/a> for more information about events related to Hou’s\u00a0visit to\u00a0Belgium. Our site has\u00a0other material on Hou here<\/a> and especially here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here’s a good place to acknowledge what Ab\u00e9 Markus Nornes<\/strong> and\u00a0Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh<\/strong> have done in making available their pioneering work on City of Sadness<\/em>. Long ago they put up a fascinating website on the film, which they have now updated on several platforms. Staging Memories<\/em>, the free interactive iBook<\/a>\u00a0for Mac and iPad, can be downloaded from the Apple Bookstore. You can buy a paperback edition from\u00a0Michigan Publishing\u00a0here<\/a>, and \u00a0the PDF version of that\u00a0can be viewed for free here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the talk I mention how Hou’s work has affinities for the “tableau” style developed in the 1910s. This isn’t a question of direct influence, but an instance of convergence:\u00a0Similar early choices in a process (long take, long shot, fixed camera) led to similar options and opportunities\u00a0further down the line. (A case of path dependence<\/a> in film style?) You can find more on\u00a0the tableau style\u00a0in\u00a0On the History of Film Style<\/em>, Figures Traced in Light<\/em>, and some entries on this site, particularly this one\u00a0<\/a>and these<\/a>. The tableau style is also discussed in another video lecture, “How Motion Pictures Became the Movies.”<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Assayas<\/a><\/p>\n

Olivier Assayas and Hou Hsiao-hsien at the Master Class held at the Royal Film Archive of Belgium. Photo courtesy Nick Nguyen.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1993). DB here: The Hou Hsiao-hsien seminar held in Antwerp at the end of May\u00a0was an event I was sorry to miss. The title announced a focus on\u00a0Hou’s style of “just-noticeable differences,” a phrase I used to describe his rich and nuanced staging. Coordinator Tom Paulus assembled a stellar lineup of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,30,32,1,59,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-directors-hou-hsiao-hsien","category-directors-kore-eda","category-directors-tsai-ming-liang","category-film-comments","category-technique-staging","category-national-cinemas-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31498"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31526,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31498\/revisions\/31526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}