Abstract: As a leading director of Taiwan new movie, Hou Hsiaohsien, together with other directors including Yang Dechang, has created many influential films with valuable humanistic affinity. These films focus on the revival of cultural subjectivity, estimate ego growth, reflect on historical experience, and examine the hard transition of Taiwan from simple farming civilization to modern industrial civilization. In particular, the works of Hou Hsiaohsien take as root Taiwan native literature and are rich in cultural connotation. As his magnum opus, A City of Sadness displays a poetical picture of history, reconstructs a tragic period that should never be forgotten as part of history, sublimates personal memory into "people' s memory", composes an epic based on individual historical consciousness and brings much beneficial cultural enlightenment.

Key words: Taiwan new movie, cultural subjectivity, root of "native literature", humanistic affinity, intervention of individual historical consciousness