Film director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) is to retire from cinema due to Alzheimer’s disease, his family said in a brief statement yesterday.
The announcement came on the heels of an IndieWire report that said Hou had retired due to dementia, citing among its sources a remark by an associate and film expert Tony Rayns in an introduction during the screening of Hou’s 1985 film A Time to Live and a Time to Die (童年往事).
Hou’s office in Taipei has closed its doors and its employees dismissed, the film industry and review Web site said.
Photo: Wang Wen-lin, Taipei Times
Hou’s son yesterday said in a statement that his father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and that he had been making the long-awaited Shulan River (舒蘭河上) despite his condition until a COVID-19 infection forced an end to the project.
The family expressed hope that Hou’s friends and fans would not be saddened by his retirement, and that Hou “found his love for movies to have become more purified” before catching COVID-19.
“Hou has returned fully to family life following his recovery [from COVID-19] and he is in good mental and physical condition,” his son said, urging the public to give Hou space to enjoy his life with loved ones.
Photo: Reuters
Although Hou would not complete Shulan River, his works have already garnered acclaim from critics around the world, including many film classics that “assuredly will withstand the tides of time and be remembered,” his son said.
“Hou’s passion and approach to filmmaking will continue to live in his comrades and fans,” he said. “We give our most sincere thanks.”
Hou’s company is to continue operations, his son said.
Photo courtesy of Activator Co. Ltd.
Hou rose to international fame after his 1989 film City of Sadness (悲情城市) won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.
The director’s later works, including The Puppetmaster (戲夢人生), Flowers of Shanghai (海上花) and Three Times (最好的時光) won plaudits at global movie festivals and independent film events.
Hou released his last film, The Assassin (刺客聶隱娘), in 2015, for which he received the Best Director award at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
RSS