The Puppetmaster (1993)

Interesting facts

The Puppetmaster is a 1993 Taiwanese film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. Based on the memoirs of Li Tian-lu, Taiwan's most celebrated puppeteer, this story covers the years from Li's birth in 1909 to the end of Japan's fifty-year occupation of Taiwan in 1945.

Production

The Puppetmaster was photographed in Fuzhou, the capital of southeastern China's Fujian province, and in Taiwan. The film is structured around a series of ellipsis, which Hou has compared to traditional Chinese opera: "It simply gives you a scene without much of a clear narrative, unlike Western drama where all the elements must be put in place. Ellipsis and other indirect narrative methods are, ironically, more clear-cut and to the point.

For the shots showing Li himself, he usually appears at a particular location right after it has been introduced dramatically. The shifts between narrative and interview footage and between past and present are frequently accompanied by some narrative clarification that facilitates a change in the audience's perspective.

Hou has stated that through this film he was “exploring the values of traditional culture which [Taiwan has] lost...We have distanced ourselves from nature and man has become like a puppet – he has lost his power to be his own master. The Puppetmaster represents the lament which I feel for the loss of our culture."

The Puppetmaster premiered in the U.S. at the New York Film Festival in 1993, but like most of Hou's films, it has never been commercially released in America. It was rarely screened until it anchored a comprehensive Hou Hsiao-Hsien retrospective that toured North American cinematheques and museums in the fall and winter of 2014.

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