What Time Is It There? 2001
A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.
A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.
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.
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.
On a dark and rainy night, a historic and regal Taipei cinema sees its final film: 1967 martial arts feature "Dragon Inn". As the film plays, the lives of the theater's various employees and patrons intersect, and two ghostly actors arrive to mourn the passing of an era.
In 2015, Tsai Ming-Liang was once again invited by the Hong Kong International Film Festival to make the opening short film. This time, he selected Shibuya station in Tokyo as his main filming location and invited the famous Japanese actor Masanobu Ando to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng. They sleep separately at a capsule hotel and cleanse themselves at a public bath. Their fatigued bodies yearn for sleep but restless minds keep them for falling asleep. "No No Sleep" won the Best Director Award at the Taipei Film Festival.
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.
The walker with the shaved head and dressed in a red robe is barefoot. He walks slowly but determinedly through the forest, over stones and grassland. He also makes his way through the shadows of trees and houses. He sets foot in the train station, the church and the museum. The sun rises and sets again. The walker passes through Washington, D.C. Another stranger is also on the move in the city. We are unsure whether or not he is following the walker.
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.
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.
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.
Having lost all his money in the stock market, a depressed man falls in love with a woman over a suicide helpline.
Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.
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.
A young woman wandering around meets a young man going to a casting call for a pornographic film.
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.
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.
A metaphor for mourning as much as it is a reminder to slow down, Tsai Ming-liang's stunningly beautiful Walker features his acteur fétiche Lee Kang-Sheng as a red-robed monk barely locomoting through the bustling streets of Hong Kong.
Drama about a young boy who suffers from a rare deficiency disease. The medicine he has to take every day has the side effect of making him reek of ammonia. The consequent bullying and ostracism by schoolmates exacerbates the boy's sense of victimhood. His mother, meanwhile, runs a help-line for parents with comparable problems.
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.
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.