When he was a mischievous child growing up in southern Taiwan, the future film director Hou Hsiao-hsien made a habit of sneaking into the courtyard of the Feng-shan temple to climb a mango tree. The tree's fresh fruit was its own reward, but even more nourishing for this budding master of mise en scène was the distance from the ground, providing him with an objective, ultimately melancholy glimpse of the human drama below. "On top of the tree," recalled Hou in a recent documentary, "I could really feel space and time, and a certain sense of solitude." Hence his cinematic equation: Distance multiplied by time and tension equals grief. Not for nothing did... More >>>