HUANG Mingchuan was born in 1955 in Chiayi, Taiwan. After getting his Bachelor of Laws from National Taiwan University, he chose to drop a career in law and turned to pursuit his interests in cinema and photography. His feature film The Man from Island West claimed an Excellent Cinematography Award, Hawaii International Film Festival, and Silver Screen Award, Singapore International Film Festival in 1990. After that, in 1998 his Flat Tire was awarded Best Film of Non-commercial category, Taipei Film Festival, and Jury Award, the Golden Horse Festival, Taiwan.

As a documentary director, Huang is a strong advocate of independent filmmaking and made numerous documentaries on art subjects, including biographical portraits of 4 veteran novelists, documentaries on local festivals, a national archive video project on 100 Taiwanese poets' oral history and poem reading, and Avant-Garde Liberation on contemporary young conceptual artists, which won the first Taishin Arts Award's Visual Arts Prize in 2003.

He had been board member of the NCAF (2000~03), National Film Archive Foundation (2002~05), Public Television System Foundation (2005) and CTV station, Taiwan. (2008~). He was invited as chairman of international jury of Taishin Arts Award's Visual Arts Prize (2005), and juror of Taiwan International Documentary Festival (2008). He is the chairman of the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan.