Publications
Our Publications
The inaugural volume – Hou Hsiao-hsien (Vienna: Österreichisches Filmmuseum and New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) – has been published through a partnership between the Austrian Film Museum and Columbia University Press. Released in conjunction with a comprehensive retrospective initiated and organized by Center director Richard I. Suchenski, it includes original interviews, production documents, and contributions from scholars, filmmakers, and critics in Taiwan, China, Japan, France, and North America.
The mission statement for the book is below:
For younger critics and audiences, Taiwanese cinema has a special status, comparable to that of Italian Neorealism or 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 and influential Taiwanese filmmaker and his sensuous, richly nuanced work is at the heart of everything that is vigorous and genuine in contemporary film culture. An heir to the great modernist legacy – with its use of elegantly staged long takes, the performance of many non-actors, and a radically, even vertiginously, elliptical mode of storytelling – Hou’s work does place unusual demands on the viewer, but its sophistication is understated and its formal innovations are irreducibly bound up with the sympathetic observation of everyday experience. 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 associated retrospective will travel to prominent venues around the world through 2016:
Also like Life: the Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien
International retrospective organized by Richard I. Suchenski, in collaboration with the Taipei Cultural Center, the Taiwan Film Institute, and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of China (Taiwan)
Reviews/Press Coverage: The Wall Street Journal, David Bordwell, Asia Society ChinaFile, Artforum, H-Net, Film Quarterly, Asian Cinema, Fandor Keyframe, Jugend ohne filme (German), The Arts FuseAwards: Nominee for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Best Edited Collection Award, Nominee for the Kraszna-Krausz Best Moving Image Book Award
Participating venues:
- Austrian Film Museum (Vienna) [May 30-June 22, 2014]
- Press Coverage: Der Standard (German), ray Filmmagazin (German)
- Center for Moving Image Arts at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York) [September 2-December 9, 2014]
- Museum of the Moving Image (Astoria, New York) [September 12-October 12, 2014]
- Panel discussion and book event at Columbia University [September 12, 2014]
- Press Coverage: The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Taipei Times, LEAP (Chinese and English), Blouin Artinfo ("15 Must-See Shows in NYC This Fall"), The Village Voice, The Brooklyn Rail, The L Magazine
- Press Release
- Trailer
- Harvard Film Archive (Cambridge, Massachusetts) [October 2-November 3, 2014]
- Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley) [October 10-December 14, 2014]
- Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, and the American Film Institute Silver Theatre and Cultural Center (Washington, D.C.) [November 2-December 21, 2014]
- Presentations and book events at the National Gallery of Art (December 6) and the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution (December 7)
- George Eastman House (Rochester) [November 14-December 19, 2014]
- Yale University (New Haven) [January 19-25, 2015]
- Rotterdam International Film Festival [January 22-February 1, 2015]
- Toronto International Film Festival Cinematheque [January 29-March 1, 2015]
- Göteborg International Film Festival [January 31-February 1, 2015]
- Pacific Cinematheque (Vancouver) [February 6-March 11, 2015]
- Press Coverage: The Georgia Straight, Inside Vancouver, North Shore News
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Rice Cinema, and the Chao Center for Asian Art (Houston) [March 6-15, 2015]
- Northwest Film Forum (Seattle) [March 20-March 28, 2015]
- Press Coverage: Northwest Asian Weekly
- UCLA Film and Television Archive, the American Cinematheque, and REDCAT (Los Angeles) [April 3-June 20, 2015]
- Press Coverage: The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Bruin, LAist
- Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago) [April 5-May 13, 2015]
- Presentation and book event at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (May 2)
- Press Coverage: Chicago Tribune
- Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Cinematheque [April 9-June 20, 2015]
- Presentations and book events at the Cleveland Cinematheque (May 23) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (May 24)
- Press Coverage: The Plain Dealer
- San Diego Asian Film Festival and the Museum of Photographic Arts (San Diego) [May 28-30, 2015]
- Munich Filmmuseum [May 26-June 21, 2015]
- Press Coverage: Süddeutsche Zeitung (German), Artechock (German)
- British Film Institute (London) [September 2-October 6, 2015]
- Academy Film Museum and the Getty Research Institute [October 13, 2015]
- University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) [November 2015]
- Tokyo FILMeX [November 27-29, 2015]
- Stadtkino Basel [January 1-31, 2016]
- Press Coverage: bz Basel
- Deutsches Historisches Museum (Berlin) [January 12-February 11, 2016]
- Press Coverage: Der Tagesspiegel, Critic.de
- National Museum of Singapore [February 26-March 20, 2016]