Wu Nien-ChenFilmography

Occupation:: Actor, Director, Screenwriter

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Island Etude

Actors: Tung Ming-hsiang, Darren Chiang, Teng An-ning, Saya, Huang Teng-te, Wang Chien-ho, Yuen-lun

Synopsis: A young man with a bike sets out on an once-in-a-lifetime trip in this road movie from Taiwanese filmmaker Chen Huai-en. Ming (Tung Ming-hsiang) is a college student who born with serious hearing loss, though despite his handicap he has taught himself to play guitar by feel. With a few weeks off Read More

2007
Yi Yi

Actors: Wu Nien-Chen, Elaine Jin, Kelly Lee, Chen Xisheng, Jonathan Chang

Synopsis: Master Taiwanese director Edward Yang spins this intricate and complex yarn about life's everyday crises. The film focuses on N.J. Jian (Wu Nien-Jen, a noted writer/director in his own right); his wife, Min-Min (Elaine Jin); and their two children, teenager Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee) and young Read More

10/6/00
Mahjong

Synopsis: The European Upper Crust meets the Taiwan Underworld in this convoluted comic action thriller. Winston Cheng (Chang Kuo-shu) is a prominent businessman who has somehow managed to fall deep into debt to organized crime leaders in Taipai, to the tune of $100 million. When it becomes clear that the Read More

1996
Buddha Bless America

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: A small Taiwanese town loses its innocence after Lin-Wen, an opportunistic ex-teacher convinces his fellow villagers to allow American and Taiwanese troops to perform maneuvers in their area by informing them that the government will pay for the resulting damage. The townsfolk, in need of money Read More

1996
Super Citizen Ko

Synopsis: This Taiwanese historical drama will be most meaningful to those familiar with the island's 20th-century politics, especially from the 1950s onward during an uprising called the "White Terror" which led to the establishment of martial law through 1987. During this time, anyone suspected of any Read More

1995
A Borrowed Life

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Tsai Chen-Nan, Tsai Chiou-Fong, Fu Jun, Peng Wan-Chun, Chang Li-Shu

Synopsis: This Taiwanese drama focuses on the strained relations between a father and son. It is set in a small mining village on the northern tip of Taiwan. This area owes it's development to Japan which once controlled it. The older residents of the town still hold the Japanese in high regard, but the Read More

1994
The Puppetmaster

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Li Tian-lu, Yang Liyin

Synopsis: This Hou Hsiao Hsien masterpiece is a portrait of the childhood and adolescence of octogenarian Taiwanese puppet master and actor Li T'ien-lu, who narrates the film both off-screen and on-screen. In this second installment of a trilogy on Taiwanese life in the 20th century (City of Sadness is the Read More

1993
Wuyande Shanqiu

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Yang Kuei-Mei

Synopsis: The period of Japanese rule over the island of Taiwan is still a potent memory for its residents, as is evidenced by this drama. In the story, a couple of brothers (Peng Chia-chia and Huang Pin-yuan) are lured away from their everyday lives to work at a Japanese-run gold mine in the town of Read More

1993
A Dai

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Cong Shan

Synopsis: For reasons which only the audience knows, A Dai has left his retarded mother behind in the village he was born in and has migrated to the city of Taipei. There, he proves his complete absence of fear and his brutality in order to get a job with the city's gangster boss. In front of his would-be Read More

1992
Sunless Days

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: The year 1989 witnessed a widespread movement for democracy in mainland China, and also witnessed its brutal suppression in the Tien An Min Square Massacre, as the horrified world watched these events on television. This documentary interviews China's exiled intellectuals and freedom fighters at Read More

1990
City of Sadness

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Jack Kao

Synopsis: Seen through the prism of the Lin family, this complex family drama from Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao Hsien details a brief but crucial moment in Taiwanese history between 1945, when 50 years of Japanese colonial rule came to an end, and 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Kuomintang forces Read More

1989
Daughter of the Nile

Actors: Yang Lin, Kao Jai, Yang Fan, Li Tian-lu, Ts'ui Fu-Sheng

Synopsis: One glance at the 1989 Daughter of the Nile will convince the viewer that this is not the cheapjack 1969 American TV movie of the same name. Instead, this is a compelling Taiwanese drama about a wistful schoolgirl (Yang Lin) who is peripherally involved in a teen-aged crime ring. She escapes from Read More

1987
Dust in the Wind

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Hsin Shu-fen, Wong Jing Man, Mei Fang

Synopsis: Master filmmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien directs this wistful story about lost love and lost innocence among Taiwan's working class. Wan (Wang Chien-wen) and Huen (Hsin Shu-feng) are high school sweethearts living in a down-and-out mining community of Jio-fen in Taiwan's backwaters. Too poor to continue Read More

1987
The Second Spring of Old Muo

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Sun Yueh

Synopsis: In this heartwarming tale of an older man's strength in combatting loneliness, director Li Yu-ning has created a compassionate and sympathetic story, though one that may still raise the shackles of feminists (and not without reason). Old Muo (Sun Yueh) has been discharged from military service Read More

1985
Taipei Story

Actors: Tsai Chin, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Wu Nien-Chen, Ko Su-Yun

Synopsis: The disintegration of a relationship has undertones that find an echo in the possible disintegration of both the economy and the society in this intriguing tale from director Edward Yang. Qin (Cai Qin) has a high-paying job in a computer company, and her fiancé, Lon (Hou Xiaoxian), works in a Read More

1985
T'ien Hsia de Yi

Crew: Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Tien Feng, Cheng Pei-Pei

Synopsis: Somewhat convoluted and with a touch of low comedy, this spoof of the foibles of a "last emperor" is set just before the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) when the last ruler of the preceding dynasty was struggling with the problem of epilepsy and how to treat it without letting anyone know he was Read More

1984
Sandwich Man

Crew: Screenwriter

1983