Tsai Ming-liang: The Poet of Slow Cinema

30-Second Overview: Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most personally stylized directors in contemporary Mandarin cinema, renowned internationally for his unique "slow cinema" aesthetics. In 1994, with Love Is Not Blind and Before the Rain, he co-won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, making him the third Chinese director to receive this award after Hou Hsiao-hsien and Zhang Yimou. As a Malaysian Chinese, he has long focused on the loneliness and alienation of urban dwellers, creating an entirely new cinematic language.

Years of Growth in Malaysia

Tsai Ming-liang was born on October 27, 1957, in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. His ancestral home is Jieyang, Guangdong. He was the third of seven siblings. His family ran a noodle stall, and as a child, he lived with his maternal grandparents, who would take him to the cinema alternately, often watching two films in one day.¹ Growing up in the multicultural environment of Malaysia, Tsai Ming-liang experienced the complexity of cultural identity from a young age.

He attended Kuching Chinese High School during middle school. After graduating high school in 1977, he came to Taiwan, first studying Chinese at the National Taiwan University Language Center. The following year, he was accepted into the Drama Department's film and theater program at National Chung Hua University.¹ The free academic atmosphere of Taiwan exposed him to more diverse artistic expressions, leading him to contemplate his own cultural identity issues.

Theater Beginnings and Television Experience

During university, his teacher Wang Xiao-di introduced him to the concept of "living theatre." In 1982, he co-founded the "Small Studio Theatre" with classmates, completing the stage play Instant Vinegar Noodles.¹ After graduation, he first wrote screenplays before moving into television in 1989. At Huashi (Taiwan Television), he directed the TV series Sea Horizon, and for his work on Li Xiang's Emotional Line and Give Me a Home from the Little Citizens' Sky series, he won Golden Bell Awards for directing in 1991 and 1992.¹

While shooting the television play Child in 1991, he discovered Li Kang-sheng, who had no formal training, at an arcade frequented by youth in Ximen, leading to a long-term collaboration that continues to this day.¹ In his television work, Tsai Ming-liang already showed a preference for long takes and static compositions, focusing on the inner world of characters over external plot.

Film Debut: Nezha (Youth)

In 1992, Tsai Ming-liang released his film debut, Nezha (Youth), which established his personal style. The film depicts snippets of life for several young people in Taipei, presenting the confusion and alienation of modern youth through a non-linear narrative structure.

Li Kang-sheng has been a consistent collaborator with Tsai Ming-liang since Child in 1991. His unique temperament perfectly embodies the image of the urban wanderer in Tsai Ming-liang's films. Nezha (Youth) won the Bronze Cranes Award at the Tokyo Film Festival, Best Debut Film Award at the Nantes Film Festival, and Best Film Award at the Turin Film Festival in 1993. The film's slow pace and minimalist style were unique among Taiwanese films at the time.²

Crowned by Venice: Love Is Not Blind

Love Is Not Blind (1994) is one of Tsai Ming-liang's most representative works. The film describes the lonely lives of three people in Taipei, and the scene where Yang Gui-mei cries for a long time in Daan Forest Park at the end has become an iconic image in Taiwanese film history.

Love Is Not Blind shared the Golden Lion at the 51st Venice International Film Festival with the Macedonian film Before the Rain.³ Before him, Hou Hsiao-hsien won the Golden Lion with A City of Sadness (1989), and Zhang Yimou won with To Live (1992). Tsai Ming-liang was the third Chinese director to receive this award.⁴

River, Hole, What Time Is It Over There?

From 1997 to 2001, Tsai Ming-liang consecutively released River (1997), Hole (1998), and What Time Is It Over There? (2001). The imagery of water appears repeatedly in these films. River, with its extremely slow pace depicting the alienation between family members, won the Silver Bear Award for Best Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival; Hole, which explores the loneliness and yearning of modern urban dwellers through interactions between residents living up and down an apartment building in Taipei, received the International Critics' Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The apocalyptic atmosphere is fictional, not referring to real events.¹ What Time Is It Over There? was shot in both Taipei and Paris, exploring distance and longing through the concept of time difference, and was selected for the official competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Sound engineer Tu Tsz-chi won a technical award with this film and Millennium Mambo.⁵

The Cinematic Language of Minimalism

Tsai Ming-liang developed a unique "slow cinema" language: extremely long takes, sparse dialogue, concise plots, and slow pacing. His films use large amounts of static shots and natural sound to allow the audience to feel the passage of time.

Under Tsai Ming-liang's lens, the trivial details of daily life—eating, sleeping, washing—are reexamined with an artistic eye. He is adept at using space to create emotion; whether it is a cramped apartment, a desolate street, or an abandoned building, they all serve as external projections of the characters' inner worlds.

The Museum Era and the Wanderer Series

In 2012, Tsai Ming-liang released his first short film in the "Wanderer" series: Li Kang-sheng walks through streets and buildings of various cities at an extremely slow pace while wearing a red robe. This series includes Journey to the West (2014), Where (filmed for the Pompidou Center exhibition in Paris in 2022), and No Place to Stay, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024, marking the tenth installment.⁶ Li Kang-sheng has grown from a youthful youth to a middle-aged man; his body carries all of Tsai Ming-liang's creative concepts and is the core vessel for the entire series.

In 2013, Excursion won the Grand Prix at the 70th Venice International Film Festival.⁷ When interviewed in Venice, he said that Excursion might be his last feature film, as he intends to make works that are "more like art" afterward; he also disagreed with Taiwan's theater system, and Excursion was not shown in a major theater circuit but instead held a special exhibition at the National Taiwan Normal University Museum. Subsequent short films were often screened in museums and festivals, such as No Sleep (filmed in Japan in 2015) and Home in Ranruo Temple (his first attempt at VR filming in 2017).¹

After the Features

Days (2020) continued his exploration of the body and time, winning the Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.⁸ Where (2022) and No Place to Stay (2024) followed, showing that Tsai Ming-liang continues to push the limits of creation even in his late seventies.⁶

Cultural Identity and Creative Themes

As a Malaysian Chinese, Tsai Ming-liang's films always carry the perspective of cultural outsiders. He focuses on marginalized people in the city: foreign workers, sex workers, the elderly, patients, etc., presenting human physiological needs with frankness and challenging traditional moral concepts.

Tsai Ming-liang's films rarely deal with political issues; instead, they concentrate on fundamental states of being, which has earned him high praise in the European art film scene.

International Influence and Slow Cinema Faction

Tsai Ming-liang belongs to the international "slow cinema" faction. Lav Diaz from the Philippines developed a long-take aesthetic around a similar period, and both are often discussed together; Bela Tarr of Hungary established his temporal narrative as early as the 1980s. These should be seen as parallel evolutions in their respective cultural contexts, rather than linear influences. Faces (2009) was the first film acquired by the Louvre.¹

References

Further Reading

• Taiwan Film Network — Official database of Taiwanese filmmakers
• Edward Yang — Another pair of eyes on Taipei's New Cinema, capturing urban loneliness with an engineer's detachment