Special Event
Exceptional cinema events that offer a unique and profound perspective on the complexities of human experience.

Diamond Sutra
director: Tsai Ming-Liang
original title: 金剛經
country: Taiwan
year: 2012
running time: 20 min.
The third walking film, commissioned by the Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition, transforms both the human figure and kitchen appliances into an art installation. The sound of rice cooking, which accompanies the footsteps of a monk in a red hood, is a ghostly reminiscence of the breath of the director's dying mother, bringing together the physicality of the living and the dead.

No Form
director: Tsai Ming-Liang
original title: 無色
country: Taiwan
year: 2012
running time: 20 min.
In 2011, the Taiwanese artist presented his play Only You, in which the character of the medieval Buddhist monk Xuanzang slowly walks across the stage for half an hour. This scene inspired him to shoot short films that contrast the slowness of walking with the speed of the surrounding events. The first of these, No Form, was shot on the streets of Taipei and revels in the duality of time and space, humorously punctuated by Nina Simone's song Feeling Good.

No No Sleep
director: Tsai Ming-Liang
original title: 無無眠
country: Taiwan, Hong Kong
year: 2015
running time: 35 min.
The seventh walking film was commissioned by the Hong Kong International Film Festival. It follows a chance encounter between a monk in red robes, played by Lee Kang-sheng, and the well-known Japanese actor Masanobu Ando in a public bathhouse and capsule hotel. This intimate double portrait explores the inner coexistence and transience of night-time Tokyo and the restless human mind.

Walking on Water
director: Tsai Ming-Liang
original title: 行在水上
country: Taiwan
year: 2013
running time: 29 min.
The fifth walking film was created as part of the film anthology Letters from the South, compiled by Malaysian filmmaker Tan Chui Mui. In it, Tsai Ming-liang returns to his native Kuching by way of a monk in a red hood. The walls of the house where he grew up are saturated with a familiar past and the foreign lives of its present inhabitants.