Considering the breadth and consistency of Tsai Ming-liang’s filmography, it’s initially hard to regard the short Madame Butterfly as much more than a curious aberration.…
Given his relative renown amongst a certain type of adventurous, festival-savvy cinephile, interviews with Tsai Ming-liang tend to focus on either the ‘slowness’ of his…
Speaking in 2008 of what was then his most recent feature, 2006’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai Ming-liang said: “I did not want…
Tsai Ming-liang’s cinema is primarily concerned with naifs and innocents, usually confronted with complex existential conditions, and with The Wayward Cloud (and arguably 2009’s Face,…
There’s something of a double bind that living with a disability provides in terms of individual identity and personal autonomy: that of either a desire…
In 2003’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Tsai Ming-liang’s gentle ode to cinema, the Taiwanese director’s famously steady camera trains on a handful of moviegoers catching a…
In many ways, Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour follows (or establishes, given its chronological situation within his filmography) many of the director’s most characteristic tendencies. From the…
Inspired by the mournful reverie found in observations of Lee Kang-Sheng, inundated by grief at the loss of his father , Tsai Ming-liang crafted an…
In his essential Jerry Lewis essay “The Jerriad: A Clown Painting,” film critic B. Kite discusses the lineage of classic clowns like Chaplin, Keaton, and…
Released in 1997, Tsai Ming-liang’s The River extended what would become a de facto family trilogy in which the same actors reprise identical roles within…
In many ways, Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour follows (or establishes, given its chronological situation within his filmography) many of the director’s most characteristic tendencies. From…
Typically regarded as a key director of the Taiwanese Second New Wave, Tsai Ming-liang and his debut theatrical feature Rebels of the Neon God exhibit,…
It may surprise you that Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang’s first feature-length film, Boys, has a quite significant relationship to British social realism. Made in 1991,…
For a world-renowned auteur, it’s surprisingly difficult to find information about Tsai Ming-liang’s early television work. It’s not clear if this is due to general…
Prior to the solidification of Tsai Ming-liang’s career, which is arguably realized with his first Lee Kang-Sheng collaboration (in the television commissioned project Boys), there…
In 1989, following the success of a prime-time Chinese Television System soap called Endless Love, which he worked on as a writer, Tsai Ming-liang directed…
In 1954, a 19-year-old girl named Sylvette David sauntered past Pablo Picasso’s window. The aging artist was instantly beguiled. A few weeks later, he revealed…
Our fourth (and tentatively final) dispatch from the 2020 Berlinale catches up with a pair of the festival’s biggest premieres (Cristi Puiu’s Malmkrog and Tsai…
In his essential Jerry Lewis essay “The Jerriad: A Clown Painting,” film critic B. Kite discusses the lineage of classic clowns like Chaplin, Keaton, and…
The Last Word from Your Editor, Sam C. Mac: With the 2010s officially over, the time seems right for another departure: after 12 years (with…
These days, Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang seems deeply interested in the tiny variations of approach available to him in presenting the images of his subjects…