Alternative Narratives: Art as Articulated by Tsai Ming-liang
Alternative Narratives: Art as Articulated by Tsai Ming-liang
- Date
- Feb 18th 2024
- With
- Tsai Ming-liang moderated by Kevin B. Lee
In the three decades since his feature debut, 1992’s "Rebels of the Neon God," Tsai Ming-liang has turned into one of the most idiosyncratic and original directors working today. With their long takes and still compositions, his films stretch the limit of minimalism, and often exist in conversation with other art forms, from performance to conceptual art. Tsai’s cinema is a porous, transdisciplinary realm; nowhere is this more evident than in the director’s ongoing "Walker" series, of which the Berlinale is proud to unveil the tenth instalment, “Abiding Nowhere”, as well as a restoration of Tsai’s 2005 Berlinale-winning “The Wayward Cloud.” In this engaging panel, the director opens up about his craft, from his earliest projects to his more recent installations and VR experiments.
Tsai Ming-liang
Born in Kuching, Malaysia in 1957, his debut film "Rebels of the Neon God" screened in the Panorama Special section of the 1992 Berlinale. In 1994, "Vive l’amour" was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. His films also screened at the Berlinale in 1995, 1997, 2014, 2019 and 2020; in 1997, "The River" won a Silver Bear. His 2009 film "Visage" was co-produced by the Louvre museum in Paris. "Stray Dogs" won the Grand Prize of the Jury at Venice in 2013. His installations have been presented in the Venice and Shanghai Biennales.
© Claude Wang
Kevin B. Lee
A 2004 alumnus of Berlinale Talents, Kevin B. Lee is a video essayist and a pioneer of the desktop documentary format. He was Founding Editor and Chief Video Essayist at Fandor from 2011-2016 and has written for The New York Times, Sight & Sound, Slate and Indiewire. He has been Professor of Crossmedia Publishing at Merz Akademie, Stuttgart. As of 2022, he has been appointed as the "Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts."