Nilouhe Nuer

I seem to work best by intuition and instinct, so I go to great lengths not to think out a scene before shooting. Films have their own will anyway, no matter how you edit them. But lately the more I try to improvise, the more abstract and stylised my films have become. Daughter of the Nile, which is aimed at the youth market in Taiwan, has the same problems. I want the film to be more commercial, more down-to-earth and more emotional. During the editing, I cut out those parts I find unnatural, but the finished film seems detached and restrained, quite unlike my own personality. But because of the plotline about young people and urban life, the film retains the energy and impulsiveness of my early commercial films. The film is, of course, unsatisfactory. But the process of making it was very fruitful. Hou Hsiao-Hsien