It was only a matter of time before Chen Kaige, the child of a film director and an actress, pissed off the authorities in China. His fascination with sex, opium, costumes, and the individual in society exposed him as a romantic and a maverick. Chen's characters burst at the seams with personality. P

Dramatic, Epic, Huge, Mainland chinese (the 5th generation), Political, Sensual

If Lauryn Hill had allowed critics to choose her path, she would have left the Fugees after their 1993 debut, "Blunted on Reality" -- andthe best selling hip-hop album ever, "The Score," would never have been more than a dream. Hill stuck to her convictions and produced the Fugees' sophomore album, w

Lush, Pop, Religious, Sensual, Sincere

Stockton, California, is generally known for producing seed hybrids, not literary ones. But that all changed in 1940, when the town saw the birth of author Maxine Hong Kingston. Stockton would remain the same, but Asian American literature would be changed forever. Kingston was the third of eig

Bright, Eclectic, Lyrical, Overflowing, Sensual, Women's literature

Fran'ois Truffaut's name is by now synonymous with the French New Wave. The movement's birth was heralded when Truffaut printed his official manifesto against "le cinema de papa" in the journal Cahiers du Cinema. "A Certain Tendency in French Cinema," appearing in 1954, rocked the French film world's

Epic, French new wave, Lyrical, Psychological, Sensual