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Director Hou Hsiao Hsien, in a 1988 New York Film Festival World Critics Poll, was voted one of three directors who would most likely shape cinema in the coming decades. He has since become one of the most respected, influential directors working in cinema today. In spite of his international renown, his films have focused exclusively on his native Taiwan, offering finely textured human dramas that deal with the subtleties of family relationships against the backdrop of the island’s turbulent, often bloody history. All of his movies deal in some manner with questions of personal and national identity, particularly, “What does it mean to be Taiwanese?” In a country that has been colonized first by the Japanese and then by Chiang Kai-Shek’s repressive Nationalist Government, this question is pregnant with political connotations.

Hou was born to a member of the Hakka ethnic minority in southern Guangdong province in mainland China, but his parents emigrated to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1949, to escape the bloodshed of the Chinese civil war. After serving in the military, Hou entered the film program at the National Taiwan College of the Arts. He graduated in 1972 and worked as a salesman until he landed a job as an assistant director and a screenwriter. In 1980, he made his directorial debut with Cute Girl, but he did not attract critical attention until The Son’s Big Doll appeared as an episode of the omnibus film Sandwich Man (1983). This film, along with another portmanteau movie, In Our Time(1982), is considered one of the first films of the New Taiwan Cinema movement, which injected a new level of sophistication and vitality into a moribund film industry previously known for martial arts spectaculars; it arose from the Foundation for the Development of Motion Picture Industry and the loosening of censorship laws in the late ’70s and was led by such young filmmakers as Hou and Edward Yang.

Hou’s work centers on two recurring themes, the social upheaval and erosion of traditional family ties resulting from Taiwan’s rapid urbanization in the 1960s and 1970s and the representation of Taiwan as a multicultural, multilingual society, a view that intentionally differed from the government’s enforcement of Mandarin as the official tongue. For example, Dust in the Wind (1986) follows the lives of two country innocents who move to Taipei, and Daughter of the Nile (1987) tells of a displaced family torn apart by the pressures of the city. Characters in Hou’s films, more often than not, speak Taiwanese, Hakka, Fukienese, or even Japanese, as opposed to the state-sanctioned language, as seen in his autobiographical A Time to Live, a Time to Die (1985) and in City of Sadness (1989). Stylistically, Hou has been compared to Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. Both directors favor a minimalist approach that downplays overt melodrama, focusing instead on the quiet nuances of human emotion. Both employ long static shots and low camera angles. But unlike Ozu, Hou’s films challenge the viewer in their use of episodic plot lines, complex juxtapositions, and off-scene space.

In 1989, Hou overcame government censors to create his masterpiece, City of Sadness, the first film to confront the so-called Incident of February 28, 1947, a Tianamen Square-style massacre of native Taiwanese committed by government troops. Well-received domestically, the film was acclaimed by international critics and won the first Golden Lion awarded to a Chinese film at the Venice Film Festival. For his next film, the second in his Taiwan trilogy, Hou continued to investigate Taiwanese history in the semi-documentary Puppet Master (1993), which focused on Japan’s occupation of Taiwan as seen through the eyes of puppet artist Li Tien-Lu. The final film in the trilogy, Good Men, Good Women (1995), about a political prisoner released in 1987 who finds modern Taiwan cold and alienating, has often been cited as one of the finest films of the 1990s. Such subsequent films as Goodbye, South, Goodbye (1996) and Flowers of Shanghai (1998) have also been critically lauded but have failed to find an audience at home. Apart from directing, Hou also served as production manager for the landmark mainland Chinese film Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and acted in Edward Yang’s Taipei Story (1985). In 1997, French director Olivier Assayas directed a documentary about Hou entitled HHH: Portrait of Hou Hsiao Hsien.

(Source: http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:95029~T1)

Kevin Chu Yen-ping (Chinese: 朱延平; pinyin: Zhū Yánpíng; Wade–Giles: Chu Yen-ping; Cantonese Yale: Chu Yin-ping; born December 1950) is a Taiwanese film director. Chu once said in an interview that he is “not an artist,” but rather “a movie factory that puts out products to match the season”, and is compared to Hong Kong director Wong Jing.

Chu studied in Soochow University, and began to work in a studio of Central Motion Picture Company next to the school.

In 1980 Chu directed his first film, The Clown. The film is a successful comedy, which boosted the career of Taiwanese comedian Hsu Pu-liao, and began a series of successful and formulaic collaboration between Chu and Hsu. Hsu became known as “Taiwanese Chaplin”, and Chu’s The Funny Couple in 1984 with Hsu and child talent “Little Bing-bing” pays heavy homage to Chaplin’s City Lights. Though the collaboration was a big success, Hsu and Little Bing-bing suffered from exploitation and Hsu died in 1985 due to stress and alcoholism. Chu met difficulties until he established his own company and came back in 1987 with Bighead Brigade (also known as Naughty Cadets on Patrol in Hong Kong), a farce-comedy series about military drill. Chu also began another series, The Kung-fu Kids, featuring child talents Yen Cheng-kuo, Tsuo Hsiao-hu and Chen Tsung-jung. Both series were successful until the formula got worn out. In 1985 Chu also made Seven Foxes starring Taiwanese pop singers Dave Wong, Tom Chang, and Samuel Tai, and actress Yip Chuen Chun. The film was shot when these young Taiwanese talents became famous in Hong Kong.

In 1990 Chu directed A Home Too Far and its sequel in 1993, based on Bo Yang’s novel about the Chinese troop taking refuge in Santikhiri (near Golden Triangle). The two films were a commercial success and were nominated for Golden Horse Award. The controversial issues it featured stirred wide discussion. Chu considered this to be his best film.

Throughout 1990s Chu made a variety of films ranging from physical comedy, action, wuxia (swordsman), drama to erotic films. Slapsticks and body part jokes were staple. Collaboration with Cantonese speaking talents was common and their lines were dubbed with Madarin. Most notably, Chu worked with the child talents Hao Shao-wen and Shaolin-trained Shi Xiaolong (Ashton Chen) in many comedy-kungfu-flicks. Chu’s Shaolin Popey II: Messy Temple in 1994 starring the two was a local success in the face of strong competition from Hong Kong and Hollywood, and Chu was considered as an alternative to art films of “Taiwanese New Wave”.

In 2000s Chu again met difficulties in Taiwanese market, with two of his film breaking the record of lowest ticket sale (less than twenty tickets sold in Taipei City). Some of his films earned well in China. In 2009 Chu ambitiously made The Treasure Hunter, an action film shot on location in Gobi Desert, starring Jay Chou and Lin Chi-ling. The film was screened in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong but met serious box office failure. —Wikipedia

Wu was born in a coal miner’s family. He started writing short stories for newspapers in 1975, when he was still an accounting major in college. After penning his first screenplay in 1978, Wu entered Central Motion Picture Corporation as a creative supervisor and worked with several leading Taiwanese New Wave directors such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang. Wu has since wrote more than 70 screenplays that were made into films, and has become one of the leading artists of the Taiwanese Cinema of the 1980s. Wu has also set the record for winning the most Golden Horse Awards to date (Taiwan’s Film Awards), including a collaboration with the internationally acclaimed Hong Kong director Anne Hui on her film Song of Exile aka Ketu qiuhen (1990). His novels and screenplays have also made him one of Taiwan’s best-selling authors.

Nien-Jen Wu made his directorial debut in 1994 with A Borrowed Life (1994), aka Duo-Sang (1994). The award-winning movie commemorates Wu’s Japanese-educated, hard-working coal-miner father. The film won the Grand Prize at The Torino Film Festival in Italy, and Best Actor and The International Critics Award in The Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece. Martin Scorsese also has cited Duo-Sang as one of his favorite films, and picked the film as the one of the best films of the 1990s. In 1996, Wu wrote and directed his second film Buddha Bless America, aka Taipin tienguo (1996),a political satire set in the 1960s. Besides his directing and writing career, Wu appears in film cameos from time to time. However, it was not until he acted in several beer and food product commercials that his true acting talent was discovered. He was cast as the lead (“NJ”) in Edward Yang’s film, Yi Yi (2000), which was critically acclaimed and won several international awards (including Best Director for Yang at Cannes). Currently, Nien-Jen Wu runs his own production company “Wu’s Productions” and actively writes, directs, produces and performs in commercials and television programs. He is an artist of many versatile talents, being a published novelist/author/writer and a well-respected Taiwanese filmmaker.—Wikipedia