Chu Tien-wen (Industry)

Aka Zhu Tianwen. Born: 1956, Taipei.
Best known as a key writer within the Taiwanese New Cinema, and particularly a key collaborator of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's.

"Zhu Tianwen (b. 1956) comes from “the most noted literary family” in Taiwanese literature; her father Zhu Xi’ning (1926–1998), a Christian mainlander, is a celebrated novelist and a cultural officer, and her Hakka mother, Liu Musha, is a respected translator of Japanese fiction. Growing up in a congenial literary circle and raised in Confucianism, Christianity, Chinese and Japanese literature, Zhu Tianwen began to publish in various newspapers’ literary supplements when she was still in high school."

Zhu Tianwen came into the film industry as a result of publishing a prize-winning piece, Growing Up ( published in the United Daily News, 1982). Hou and Chen Kunhou were interested in the story of Xiaobi and arranged to meet Zhu in a coffee shop. Thus began a rich creative partnership that continues to this day. They worked together on the screenplay of Growing Up, which Chen would end up directing.  From then on she and Hou would form a close artistic connection and collaboration. It was she who first introduced him to mainland Chinese literature, such as the autobiography of Shen Congwen, that would be so influential for his desire of an 'objective camera' --- leading to long takes and long shots.

That same year Chu wrote the screenplay for Hou's semi-autobiographical The Boys from Fengkuei. She then offered up an incident from her own childhood as the basis for Hou's next film, A Summer at Grandpa's, which she also wrote. She worked on several of his following films.. She also wrote, along with Hou, Edward Yang's 1985 film Taipei Story.. For A City of Sadness, she, Hou and Wu Nianzhen worked together, gathering tremendous amounts of research into the 1945-49 period of Taiwanese history.

She describes her working collaboration with Hou as rooting in words the great quantity of visual ideas Hou threw at her. She also developed and fleshed out his female characters, giving a stronger insight into their internal worlds.