28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival

25. 10.–3. 11. 2024
ČeštinaEnglish

Tribute: Tsai Ming-liang


"My films are based on real life. I really care about authenticity, which is one of my most important goals."
Tsai Ming Liang is a Malaysian-born director who developed his work in Taiwan, and has won festival awards all over the world. His silent films composed of long takes fulfill one of the most important concepts of the Buddha's teaching of sati, mindfulness, alertness, spirit-presence. Ji.hlava will present his fantasy VR project The Deserted, but above all five realistically poetic films, which will be shown for the first time ever in the Czech Republic with the director's personal participation.

The Tsai Ming-liang retrospective was supported by the Ministry of Culture Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Prague.

 

A Conversation with God

A Conversation with God

Word gets out that someone has awakened God, so Tsai heads to the temple with a digital camera to film it. But along the way, all he sees are bloody rituals, celebrations of the body and shamanic ceremonies until he discovers a gateway to the underworld. Subways, passageways, sewers, blowing wind, the harsh light of fluorescent lamps and emptiness. Perhaps there he'll find the voice of God, which is reminiscent of the silence of dead fish.
director: Tsai Ming-liang
original title: Yu Shen Dui Hua
country: Taiwan
year: 2001
running time: 31 min.
Tribute: Tsai Ming-liangCzech Premiere
Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Goodbye, Dragon Inn

A cinephilic farewell letter, which received the Critics' Choice Award at Venice, invites you to the last screening before the final closing of a cinema in Taipei. The building was already featured in Tsai's What Time Is It There?, but this time it plays the lead role. However, its visitors didn't come for Kim Hu's 1967 wuxia film Dragon Inn, a reminder of the golden era of Taiwanese cinema. The darkened room is a shelter from the rain, a haven of memories and a place of amorous encounters and courtship. The homoerotic stuffiness, the stony, far-away faces, the food warmer and the ashtray full of cigarettes remind us of the world between the living and the dead. A nostalgic sigh for the end of the era of single-screen cinemas speaks of barriers, loneliness, alienation and loss.“Happiness and sadness are really parts of the same thing, so often the absurdity of a situation makes it seem funny, but the core of the moment is really quite sad.”Source: Reverse Shot
director: Tsai Ming-liang
original title: Bu san
country: Taiwan
year: 2003
running time: 82 min.
Tribute: Tsai Ming-liangCzech Premiere
Light

Light

The iconic Zhongshan Hall in downtown Taipei was designed by architect Ide Kaoru as a public auditorium during Japanese colonial rule. The body of the aged 1936 building is now lyrically enveloped by the rays of the morning sun, giving life to static surfaces, reliefs, curves and memory preserved in matter.
director: Tsai Ming-liang
original title: Guang
country: Taiwan
year: 2018
running time: 18 min.
Tribute: Tsai Ming-liangCzech Premiere
Madame Butterfly

Madame Butterfly

The heroine of Puccini's tragic opera, set in contemporary Kuala Lumpur, is a woman in distress. Brought there by a con man who pretended to be in love, she now has no money to go home. An observational social romance about being alone in the middle of a crowd, Tsai's first film shot on digital camera appeared in the 2009 Ji.hlava IDFF programme.
director: Tsai Ming-liang
original title: Hu die fu ren
country: France, Italy
year: 2008
running time: 35 min.
Tribute: Tsai Ming-liangCzech Premiere
Moonlight on the River

Moonlight on the River

The lyrical farewell letter was addressed by Tsai to Simon Field, who had just stepped down as director of the Rotterdam Film Festival after eight years. The Tamsui watercourse, where Tsai shot his film The River (1997), which was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Berlinale, had dried up. All that remains is an impression, a wasteland and a stray dog as a nostalgic shadow of old feelings.
director: Tsai Ming-liang
original title: 河上的月光
country: Taiwan
year: 2003
running time: 8 min.
Tribute: Tsai Ming-liangCzech Premiere
The Deserted: VR

The Deserted: VR

A visually captivating reflection on loneliness and immersion in one's own world. Hsiao-Kang, recovering from an illness in the mountains, meets his late mother who cooks for him; the ghost of a girl living in the neighbourhood is similarly elusive, leaving him with only a lonely fish for company.
director: Tsai Ming-liang
original title: The Deserted: VR
country: Taiwan
year: 2017
running time: 55 min.
Tribute: Tsai Ming-liangCzech Premiere
Walker

Walker

The first of Tsai's series of films about a walking monk is based on the contrast of extremely slow movement and the hustle and bustle of the modern city. A Buddhist meditation with a plastic bag, neon signs, paint and advertisements, it provides a fascinating and hilarious reflection on a day as a monk in the middle of Hong Kong and his journey to his first bite to eat.
director: Tsai Ming-liang
original title: Xingzhe
country: Hong Kong, Taiwan
year: 2012
running time: 27 min.
Tribute: Tsai Ming-liangCzech Premiere
Where

Where

The slow-walking monk, played by Tsai's life partner and muse Lee Kang-sheng, who stars in all of his films, is part of the director's series of gallery “walker” films, which also include Journey to the West (2014) and Abiding Nowhere (2024). The Buddhist meditation, filmed at the Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of Tsai's retrospective, places a man in monk's robes in an art gallery or on a busy street. The spiritual is transformed into the performative, imposing new roles and meanings on the meditating figure. It transforms the monk into a living image, an exhibit, an attraction and an object of cultural encounter and passing.“The body is the most beautiful thing we have, or you could say it’s the ugliest thing we have. We can sell bodies, we can adore or worship bodies.” Source: Mubi
director: Tsai Ming-liang
original title: He chu
country: France, Taiwan
year: 2022
running time: 91 min.
Tribute: Tsai Ming-liangCzech Premiere

Contact

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e-mail: info@ji-hlava.cz

Festival partners

Ministerstvo kultury
Fond kinematografie
Město Jihlava
Kraj Vysočina
Creative Europe Media
GEMO
Česká televize
Český rozhlas
Aktuálně.cz
Respekt
Dafilms

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