Tsai Ming-liang

At that time, we sat on the first floor of the Social Welfare Hall, eating the Lao Wu charcoal grilled salty crispy cakes brought by Wenrui from Fuxing Road, Yilan, and looking at the sparse crowds of people on Tongqing Street, the trees swaying in the wind, and the Yilan River flowing not far away. Tsai Ming-liang said: "Sheng-Yuan tells me that apart from the buildings in the middle of the field providing shelter from the wind and rain and living functions, he also hoped that the people inside would look out and see the mountains, the water, the trees, the weeds, the rice paddies, the gullies, and the flying birds that we have. Let's stroll around and see how happy we are.”

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According to Tsai, “I chose to film Yilan’s Nanguan Market, the breakfast store next to the city god temple, the clay oven roll shop on Fuxing Road, and the mountains, water and paddy fields. To me, these are part of the architects’ everyday life. What makes Fieldoffice Architects precious is that they never do their work behind closed doors. Instead, their works are deeply guided by Yilan’s landscape and local customs, and are informed by their passion and love as artists.”

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The ninth opus of his Walker Films series, which was shot at Centre Pompidou.

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"For reasons of health, Lee Kang-sheng and I moved to the mountains. We don't have any neighbors. Our house is part of a row of dilapidated houses. I love these abandoned houses. I often walk around in them casually. I think they are beautiful. I said to Lee Kang-sheng: we don't have to go elsewhere to make films anymore. I'll make all my remaining films right here. I got some old chairs and some of my paintings and arranged them in these abandoned houses. And thus, this film was made." Tsai Ming-liang

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This short by Tsai Ming-liang, completed in 2021, was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his Walker series were being shown.

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Follows the lives of two big stars in Taiwan. Since a failed spine surgery 40 years ago, Lee Pei-jing, known as the “Moon singer”, has been confined to a wheelchair. Actor Chang Feng is reaching one hundred years old. Tsai describes Chang as a tree, which looks ever more beautiful as it grows old.

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In 2019, the night in Hong Kong was still in fascinating beauty and the landscape of everyday life was gradually changing. Travelling the streets, Tsai Ming-liang documented the city's rhythm and ambience, along with an overpass.

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Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.

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"The very first Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival was held here at Zhongshan Hall. During my university days, I volunteered as a ticket seller in order to watch films for free. Many years later, I received the top award at the Taipei Film Festival in an award ceremony held here as well. I have also run a coffeehouse here and often held small screenings of classic films during that time. Last year, I shot my film, Your Face, inside Guangfu Auditorium. The film was composed of thirteen big close-ups. Each of those thirteen faces was filled with the passage of time. Now, I am given a chance to film Zhongshan Hall again. I switched off all the lights and allowed the warm winter sun to shine on her face."

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Composed of a series of portrait shots of mostly anonymous individuals, filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang's digital experiment turns the human face into a subject of dramatic intrigue.

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In 2018, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited by the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area Administration to make this film, his eighth in the "Walker" series. In the constant passage of time, the Zen-like footsteps of the Walker has finally allowed us to see the Pacific Ocean, the open sky, the seagulls, the black sand, an eel catching settlement that arose in the cold winter rain, the twisting branches of the lintou trees, flotsam piled up like mountains, and a newly constructed cement house, which seems to offer a temporary place of rest for the Walker. "Sand" premiered together with the opening of the Zhuangwei Dune Visitor Center.

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Tsai Ming-Liang, the artisan of cinematography approaches virtual reality, pushing the boundaries of VR film. The Deserted stripped away traditional film techniques and is presented in 360 degrees, like a theatre. The viewer is placed in the scene and is allowed to look freely at the construction of the environment. And immersed in the handcraft of the scenes.

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Tsai Ming-liang has been living in an abandoned house in the mountains since 2014. Around the same time, his persona, actor Lee Kang-sheng, wanted to quit acting due to severe spinal pains. Tsai decided to capture Lee Kang-sheng's face as well as the home, skies, trees, and abandoned ruins that surround him.

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A documentary about Nogami Teruyo, who for nearly half a century stood by Akira Kurosawa as a screenwriting collaborator, a script supervisor, and a companion.

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Lush jungle and a building in ruins are the ideal stage for a film-confession that defies storytelling and goes beyond conversation on cinema. Tsai Ming-Liang and his actor Lee Kang-sheng confess and put on stage a pièce in which attention and slowness are in tune with the rhythm of memory. The unveiling of Tsai Ming-liang’s filmmaking: from Stray Dogs to the most intimate notes of the director-actor relationship.

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In the wee hours of winter a night train travels through a sleepless city. This is a panorama of a Buddhist monk’s journey through Tokyo at night. He also stops at a bath-house in a capsule hotel, where he makes a brief encounter.

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Understanding "beauty" for 2015... From Beijing, Huang Jianxin wonders if it's nobler to sleep or not to sleep in Insomniac Diary. In London, Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Tenant tells the misadventures of an Iranian boy trying not to lose his bed-sit. With Three Days After My Death, Yim Ho creates a parable: a woman who wants to die must save someone's life before her death wish be granted. Tsai Ming-Liang returns with No No Sleep, where bare-footed Lee Kang-Sheng walks Tokyo streets in the depth of winter.

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In 2014, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited to make a film for the MarseilleFID, Marseille International Film Festival. Since he was not familiar with Marseille, he decided to make a film as tourist, capturing the beautiful Mediterranean sunshine in the late summer of that year. He also invited famous French actor, Denis Lavant, to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng playing Xuanzang. "Journey to the West" was invited to be the opening short film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year.

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An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.

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Six filmmakers present six short films about the experiences of Chinese immigrants. Shot across Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar, the anthology depicts the crisis of identity that accompanies international migration.

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In 2012, the Hong Kong International Film Festival invited Tsai Ming-Ling to make the opening short film. Having grown up with Hong Kong's popular culture, Tsai Ming-Liang decided to pay homage by making a "Walker" film, contrasting the Walker's slowness with the frenzied pace of Hong Kong's cosmopolitan life. The film ends with a song by Hong Kong actor and singer Samuel Hui, who was Tsai Ming-Liang's idol during his youth. The film was invited to be the closing short film for the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

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In 2012, Taiwanese architects Michael Lin and Liao Wei-li invited Tsai Ming-Liang to create moving visuals for their exhibit at the Venise Architecture Biennale. Using the space at their preview exhibition in Taiwan, Tsai Ming-Liang made two short films, "Sleepwalk" and "Diamond Sutra", using the "Walker" concept. "Diamond Sutra" was later selected to be the opening short film for the Venise Film Festival. Tsai-Ming Liang said that gazing at the steam rising from a rice cooker reminded him of his mother's face as she laid dying, exhaling her final breath.

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A continuation of Tsai Ming-Liang's Walker series, featuring Lee Kang-Sheng as a barefoot monk who walks very slowly.

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In 2011, Tsai Ming-Liang staged a play, "Only You", for Taiwan's National Theater and Concert Hall. In it, there was a powerfully moving scene where monk Xuanzang walked at an extremely slow pace for half an hour. Lamenting the transient nature of theater, Tsai decided to make a movie out of this slow-walking performance, "No Form", the first of his "Walker Films" series.

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A collection of shorts by four East Asian directors: Ann Hui on a male-to-female sex change, Kim Tae-yong on an emotional imposture, Gu Changwei on pregnancy in China and Tsai Ming-Liang on time and the city of Hong Kong.

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In order to recreate a photograph, two actors undergo a transformation.

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Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.

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Free interpretation of the myth. Tsai Ming-liang propels a woman neglected by her lover in the mob of the bus station of Kuala Lumpur.

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A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Ming-liang Tsai’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone.

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Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

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Shot in an abandoned cinema in Malaysia, Tsai Ming-Liang's home country, It's a Dream evokes the filmmaker’s earliest encounters with cinema and recalls the golden age of Asian film culture. An extended version of the filmmaker's short created for the Canne Film Festival's "To Each His Own Cinema".

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This short by Tsai Ming-liang, completed in 2021, was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his Walker series were being shown.

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Composed of a series of portrait shots of mostly anonymous individuals, filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang's digital experiment turns the human face into a subject of dramatic intrigue.

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Six authorities of cinema describe their approach to transcendence, mysticism, spirituality and life after dead.

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Lush jungle and a building in ruins are the ideal stage for a film-confession that defies storytelling and goes beyond conversation on cinema. Tsai Ming-Liang and his actor Lee Kang-sheng confess and put on stage a pièce in which attention and slowness are in tune with the rhythm of memory. The unveiling of Tsai Ming-liang’s filmmaking: from Stray Dogs to the most intimate notes of the director-actor relationship.

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French Cinema Mon Amour is an ensemble film in which each contributor brings their own voice, their own particular approach, their culture, and their language to produce a portrait of French cinema.

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With Taiwan remaining in the grip of martial law in 1982, a group of filmmakers from that country set out to establish a cultural identity through cinema and to share it with the world. This engaging documentary looks at the movement's legacy.

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A contemplative trip down memory lane with one of the leading voices of the Second New Wave of Taiwanese Cinema. Saw Tiong Guan clearly established a very personal bond with his subject, and also found many of Tsai Ming-liang’s colleagues prepared to complete this portrait of a quiet yet outspoken artist.

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Taipei 24H divides 24 hours in Taipei into 8 shorts. It opens with Cheng Fen-fen's upbeat and comedic "Share the Morning", and ends with Lee Kang-sheng running the final leg of this relay with "Remembrance" at 4am. Well-known director Tsai Ming-liang makes a rare appearance visiting a late night coffee shop. Taipei 24H is a contemporary urban chronicle of a city rarely at sleep.

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Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.

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The title of the François Lunel film is the Buddhist proverb concluding by: "all is but illusion". His movie draws the Tsai Ming-Liang's face during the shooting of his movie Visage, which itself is also a movie within a movie.

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About remembrance, of course, but also about the aromas that remain after farewell. A woman says farewell to her coffee shop after 20 years. A regular client is the only person to share this special moment with her. On the radio, farewell to a beloved dancer. With Tsai Ming-liang as the regular client.

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A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Ming-liang Tsai’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone.

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Tsai Ming-liang designed this short film as a farewell to his friend Simon Field, who was about to leave his position as director of the Rotterdam Festival after eight years in office. The piece follows two dogs roaming the Tamshui River in Taipei, accompanied by the director's voice-over as he reads a written dedication for Field.

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Richly illustrated with film clips and interviews, OUR TIME, OUR STORY tells the still-evolving story of the Taiwanese "new wave," from its rise in the early 1980s, as the island was democratizing after decades under martial law, through growing international recognition and domestic debate in the 1990s. Spearheaded in its early years by such filmmakers as Edward Yang, Ko I-cheng, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wan Jen, the movement revitalized Taiwan cinema through low-budget experiments that emphasized personal stories, political reflection and stylistic invention. Said filmmakers, writers and actors like Wu Nien-jen and Sylvia Chang, even "second wave" directors Tsai Ming-liang and Lin Cheng-sheng provide fond reminiscences and retrospective insights in this compelling account of one of the most distinctive national cinemas of the last quarter-century.

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Human shortcomings in the pursuit of an idol. Two film school students travel to interview Taiwanese film director Tsai Ming-liang and actor Lee Kang-sheng in Oslo.

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Documentary about the work of Nouvelle Vague actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, with interview clips, film clips and contributions from directors and actors he has worked with.

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An exploration of Chinese cinema and its relationships with gender and sexuality, which the film argues has been more frankly and provocatively explored than in any other national cinema. Utilizing both film excerpts and interviews with many leading directors and academics, the film examines topics such as male bonding in kung fu movies, depictions of same-sex bonding and physical intimacy, the emphasis on women's grievances in melodramas, and the career of Yam Kim-Fai, a Hong Kong actress who spent her life portraying men on and off the screen.

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Tsai interrupted his pre-production for The River to make this pioneering documentary for Taiwan's nascent AIDS-awareness campaign. Ignoring instructions to 'play down the gay angle', he centres the film on his own very candid conversations with two HIV+ young men. Sadly the identities of the interviewees have to be concealed, and so the freewheeling camerawork focuses most often on Tsai himself; but the sense of rapport between the director and his 'new friends' is palpable and very moving, even to Western viewers already only too familiar with these issues.

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The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards (Chinese: 台北金馬影展; pinyin: Táiběi Jīnmǎ Yǐngzhǎn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tâi-pak Kim-má iáⁿ-tián) is a film festival and awards ceremony held annually in Taiwan. It was founded in 1962 by the Government Information Office of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. The awards ceremony is usually held in November or December in Taipei, although the event has also been held in other locations in Taiwan in recent times

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An audio-visual collage of New York City juxtaposed with a Washington seaside. Featuring words from director Tsai Ming-liang.

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Ximending was once the trendiest area in Taipei, and it's also where Kang-sheng Lee's first film was shot. Twenty years ago, director Ming-liang Tsai asked Lee if he wanted to be in his film, and Lee's answer changed the course of his own life forever. Now Lee returns to where his career began to shoot a film about himself.

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An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.

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Six filmmakers present six short films about the experiences of Chinese immigrants. Shot across Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar, the anthology depicts the crisis of identity that accompanies international migration.

Open details →

In 2012, the Hong Kong International Film Festival invited Tsai Ming-Ling to make the opening short film. Having grown up with Hong Kong's popular culture, Tsai Ming-Liang decided to pay homage by making a "Walker" film, contrasting the Walker's slowness with the frenzied pace of Hong Kong's cosmopolitan life. The film ends with a song by Hong Kong actor and singer Samuel Hui, who was Tsai Ming-Liang's idol during his youth. The film was invited to be the closing short film for the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

Open details →

In 2012, Taiwanese architects Michael Lin and Liao Wei-li invited Tsai Ming-Liang to create moving visuals for their exhibit at the Venise Architecture Biennale. Using the space at their preview exhibition in Taiwan, Tsai Ming-Liang made two short films, "Sleepwalk" and "Diamond Sutra", using the "Walker" concept. "Diamond Sutra" was later selected to be the opening short film for the Venise Film Festival. Tsai-Ming Liang said that gazing at the steam rising from a rice cooker reminded him of his mother's face as she laid dying, exhaling her final breath.

Open details →

A continuation of Tsai Ming-Liang's Walker series, featuring Lee Kang-Sheng as a barefoot monk who walks very slowly.

Open details →

In 2011, Tsai Ming-Liang staged a play, "Only You", for Taiwan's National Theater and Concert Hall. In it, there was a powerfully moving scene where monk Xuanzang walked at an extremely slow pace for half an hour. Lamenting the transient nature of theater, Tsai decided to make a movie out of this slow-walking performance, "No Form", the first of his "Walker Films" series.

Open details →

Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.

Open details →

Free interpretation of the myth. Tsai Ming-liang propels a woman neglected by her lover in the mob of the bus station of Kuala Lumpur.

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Having lost all his money in the stock market, a depressed man falls in love with a woman over a suicide helpline.

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Shot in an abandoned cinema in Malaysia, Tsai Ming-Liang's home country, It's a Dream evokes the filmmaker’s earliest encounters with cinema and recalls the golden age of Asian film culture. An extended version of the filmmaker's short created for the Canne Film Festival's "To Each His Own Cinema".

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Rawang, an immigrant from Bangladesh living in awful conditions, takes pity on a Chinese man, Hsiao-kang, who is beaten up and left in the street. Rawang lovingly nurses him on a mattress he found. When he is almost healed, Hsiao-kang meets the waitress Chyi. His love for Rawang is put to the test.

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Hsiao-Kang, now working as an adult movie actor, meets Shiang-chyi once again. Meanwhile, the city of Taipei faces a water shortage that makes the sales of watermelons skyrocket.

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On a dark, wet night in Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic "Dragon Inn", each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.

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A grandmother is looking for her grandson, a teenager for his grandfather.

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A young woman wandering around meets a young man going to a casting call for a pornographic film.

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A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.

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In the final days of the year 1999, almost everyone in Taiwan has died from a strange plague that ravished the island. As rain pours down relentlessly, a single man is stuck with an unfinished plumbing job and a hole in his floor. This results in a very odd relationship with the woman who lives below him.

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A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.

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Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.

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In Taipei, four youths face alienation, loneliness, and moments of existential crisis amidst a series of minor crimes.

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A junior-high student bullies and blackmails a younger boy, then receives the same treatment at the hands of some older students.

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This sociological drama focuses on a construction worker’s family who cannot afford a house of their own, even though the head of the family builds houses.

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A quiet story that follows the development of a love affair between an unmarried factory worker and the widowed factory manager.

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Mr and Mrs Chang live in Taipei's Hsi-Men-Ding (the city's entertainment/red light/nightlife district) with their teenaged kids. The parents work as cleaners in a "love hotel" and send the kids out to work as ticket scalpers, block-buying seats for hit movies like A City of Sadness and reselling them at a profit. Tragedy strikes when the daughter Mei-Hsueh flirts with the idea of prostituting herself and changes her mind at the last moment, leaving her first client with injuries that put him on the critical list. The focus throughout is on the son Ah Tong, who has a latent talent as a writer that is never going to flower.

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The whole story revolves around a woman from marriage, marriage to divorce encounter sexual problems as the main axis, reflecting the Taiwan society in this regard subjective and objective taboos. The first paragraph of the description of the actress Xiao Xiaomin arranged with the parents of the scholar if strong engagement after the agreement with the high school students often travel, and finally cancel the engagement. The second paragraph to write her marriage in order to fight for a wounded into her young Wu Dawei testify to her husband's misunderstanding, but also the end of the divorce. The third paragraph to write her commitment to kindergarten education work to recognize the disabled young boy odd, she did not dare to face the problem of love, but the other's cheerful outlook touched her.

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Kidnapped by a group of bandits and raped by their chief, Dan Zhu slowly develops feelings for the perpetrator. Echoing the social realism of Taiwanese new wave filmmaking, director Wang Tung revisits the wuxia genre, with the emphasis on psychology rather than action.

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Zang Guang-xing is a veteran soldier from Mainland China who married a young Taiwanese woman. He has been working as a supervisor in a construction company for seven years. Everyday he rides the same motorbike to work. He suffers enough misery from riding that motorbike, and dreams of buying a car. So he asks around for decent second-hand cars. His son doesn't like any car he chooses. His wife, a typical Taiwanese woman who lives frugally, shaves any penny she can. She is the one who pays for the family's new car. They go out on trips happily, and become the envy of the neighborhood. Zhang thus gets the new car he's always dreamed of, but he starts to worry about it getting dirty, because it's simply too new, too nice for him. The car thus becomes his son's vehicle. He rides the old bike to work again, just like he has during all these years.

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Three siblings idle their time while their parents are away. Youngest son, Hsiao-hung, finds a young fugitive taking refuge in their empty home, and hides him. Later, his mother finds the murderer sleeping in a cupboard – and a night of horror takes hold.

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A dying forest flared up and the flavor of damp ruin, settled in on the tongue: Tsai Ming Liang created an entirely novel artwork with his tenth feature film 'Stray Dogs' at the Museum MoNTUE. Moving images eclipsed, in slivers and swathes, by immovable shadows of deadwood. Waking, sleep and everything in between proved indistinguishable. This documentary recreates elements of existential banality (on view) and guides focus inward. It establishes a firm, if converse, analog between cinema and consciousness: an interplay of movie (and its constituent elements of light, shadow and audience) mirrored in consciousness (and its building blocks of waking, sleep and dream) if you will.

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