Queer East Festival: On The Road will head out across the country from September to December, offering its biggest tour yet and showcasing a remarkable line-up of contemporary feature films, documentaries and shorts as well as special events that highlight a wide range of LGBTQ+ stories from East Asia, Southeast Asia and their diaspora communities.
Founded in response to the systemic lack of East and Southeast Asian representation on stage, screen and behind the scenes, Queer East Festival was formed in 2020 and has made its mark across the UK with its bold programmes of LGBTQ+ cinema and visual arts, growing in popularity and size year-on-year, and celebrating its fifth anniversary this year.
Queer East Festival’s ground-breaking film programme challenges conventions and stereotypes giving audiences an opportunity to explore the contemporary queer landscape across East and Southeast Asia. With its fifth anniversary edition, Queer East Festival reaffirms a commitment to...
Founded in response to the systemic lack of East and Southeast Asian representation on stage, screen and behind the scenes, Queer East Festival was formed in 2020 and has made its mark across the UK with its bold programmes of LGBTQ+ cinema and visual arts, growing in popularity and size year-on-year, and celebrating its fifth anniversary this year.
Queer East Festival’s ground-breaking film programme challenges conventions and stereotypes giving audiences an opportunity to explore the contemporary queer landscape across East and Southeast Asia. With its fifth anniversary edition, Queer East Festival reaffirms a commitment to...
- 9/13/2024
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
French sales powerhouse Charades has boarded Constance Tsang’s migrant drama “Blue Sun Palace” which is set to world premiere at Cannes’ Critics’ Week. WME Independent is representing domestic rights for the movie in North America.
“Blue Sun Palace” is set in the Chinese community of Queens with a vibrant cast led by award-winning Taiwanese actor Lee Kang Sheng (“Rebels of the Neon God”), Golden Horse award nominee Wu Ke-Xi (“The Road to Mandalay”) and Chinese actress Xu Haipeng (“Venus By Water”).
The film revolves around two migrants, Amy and Didi, who work together at a massage parlor in Flushing, Queens, and navigate romance, happiness and the obligations of family thousands of miles from home. A sudden act of violence will catalyze their unlikely bond. “Blue Sun Palace” is produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Sally Sujin Oh and Eli Raskin (Field Trip Media), alongside producer Tony Yang (Big Buddha Pictures...
“Blue Sun Palace” is set in the Chinese community of Queens with a vibrant cast led by award-winning Taiwanese actor Lee Kang Sheng (“Rebels of the Neon God”), Golden Horse award nominee Wu Ke-Xi (“The Road to Mandalay”) and Chinese actress Xu Haipeng (“Venus By Water”).
The film revolves around two migrants, Amy and Didi, who work together at a massage parlor in Flushing, Queens, and navigate romance, happiness and the obligations of family thousands of miles from home. A sudden act of violence will catalyze their unlikely bond. “Blue Sun Palace” is produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Sally Sujin Oh and Eli Raskin (Field Trip Media), alongside producer Tony Yang (Big Buddha Pictures...
- 4/25/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Having recently shifted away from their one-film-a-day approach, Mubi has now unveiled their October lineup, which is headlined by Ira Sachs’ stellar drama Passages following its theatrical run this summer. The slate also features handpicked selections by Sachs, with work by Maurice Pialat, Luchino Visconti, Jack Hazan, Shirley Clarke, and Tsai Ming-liang.
Also arriving in October is “Watch If You Dare: Horror Halloween,” a series featuring a trio of giallo classics, with The Fifth Cord, The Possessed, and Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, alongside Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and more. The service will also spotlight the work of underseen Japanese director Yasuzô Masumura, including his aching melodrama Red Angel, his biting workplace satire Giants and Toys, his thrilling noir Black Test Car, and more.
Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.
October 1
The Infiltrators, directed by Alex Rivera, Cristina Ibarra | National Hispanic Heritage Month
The Vanished Elephant,...
Also arriving in October is “Watch If You Dare: Horror Halloween,” a series featuring a trio of giallo classics, with The Fifth Cord, The Possessed, and Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, alongside Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and more. The service will also spotlight the work of underseen Japanese director Yasuzô Masumura, including his aching melodrama Red Angel, his biting workplace satire Giants and Toys, his thrilling noir Black Test Car, and more.
Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.
October 1
The Infiltrators, directed by Alex Rivera, Cristina Ibarra | National Hispanic Heritage Month
The Vanished Elephant,...
- 9/28/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
The Malaysian-Taiwanese helmerTsai Ming-Liang is a name that does not need a big introduction. Although he signs 46 cinematographic projects as a director, he has so far shot only 11 feature length films that brought him the total of 66 awards and many more nominations. The most recent – Locarno Film Festival Career Award – made it possible for us to meet him for an interview and discuss his fruitful career, his approach to moviemaking, ageing and plans for future projects.
We have been impressed by the way you deal with the imagery since “Rebels Of The Neon God”, but even more striking is how you handle the sound. How do you structure your movies, and what do you search philosophically and poetically when you think about the role of sound in your movies?
Unlike music scores specifically created for movies, my films are actually filled with sounds from everyday life that replace scores the...
We have been impressed by the way you deal with the imagery since “Rebels Of The Neon God”, but even more striking is how you handle the sound. How do you structure your movies, and what do you search philosophically and poetically when you think about the role of sound in your movies?
Unlike music scores specifically created for movies, my films are actually filled with sounds from everyday life that replace scores the...
- 8/15/2023
- by Marina D. Richter
- AsianMoviePulse
Festival will also host tributes to Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang and late director Shinji Aoyama.
US director Julie Taymor is to preside over the international competition jury of Tokyo International Film Festival, which has also announced plans to revive the Akira Kurosawa Award and host tribute screenings to Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang and late Japanese director Shinji Aoyama.
The festival has unveiled highlights of its 35th edition, which will run October 24 to November 2, ahead of the announcement of its full line up on September 21.
Taymor is known for directing features such as Frida, Titus, Across The Universe and The Glorias...
US director Julie Taymor is to preside over the international competition jury of Tokyo International Film Festival, which has also announced plans to revive the Akira Kurosawa Award and host tribute screenings to Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang and late Japanese director Shinji Aoyama.
The festival has unveiled highlights of its 35th edition, which will run October 24 to November 2, ahead of the announcement of its full line up on September 21.
Taymor is known for directing features such as Frida, Titus, Across The Universe and The Glorias...
- 9/16/2022
- by Michael Rosser
- ScreenDaily
No two cities are alike. Because of this, every city has a different kind of urban consciousness. Especially after dark. Shot in 2019, Tsai Ming-Liang’s experimental short “The Night” documents the heartbeat of Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay over the span of a few hours after the sun has set.
The Night is Screening at the Museum of the Moving Image
Because of the very nature of this short, viewers are forced to look for subtleties within long shots of city ambiance. It might not seem like much is going on at first, but closer examination brings forward a few simple narratives of everyday life: two elderly ladies desperately try to hail a taxi; a restaurant’s open door showcases a woman eating soup while people pass by on a sidewalk; hundreds of people cross the street at different moments. Getting a small glimpse into the lives of these people is simultaneously mundane and beautiful.
The Night is Screening at the Museum of the Moving Image
Because of the very nature of this short, viewers are forced to look for subtleties within long shots of city ambiance. It might not seem like much is going on at first, but closer examination brings forward a few simple narratives of everyday life: two elderly ladies desperately try to hail a taxi; a restaurant’s open door showcases a woman eating soup while people pass by on a sidewalk; hundreds of people cross the street at different moments. Getting a small glimpse into the lives of these people is simultaneously mundane and beautiful.
- 3/19/2022
- by Spencer Nafekh-Blanchette
- AsianMoviePulse
It’s a good time for Tsai Ming-liang fans. Not long after his latest masterpiece, Days, opened to the widest acclaim he’s ever received and Goodbye, Dragon Inn got an incredible new shine, another consensus favorite comes back looking good as new. Next month Film Movement will release a restoration of 1994’s Vive L’Amour, perhaps the first example of Tsai’s revolutionary approach to slow-cinema form—the carefully delineated narratives, the romantic longing expressed with emphasis on long, an early example of Lee Kang-sheng’s utter fearlessness.
And boy does this trailer looks great! Worlds beyond the horrible DVD I got from Netflix via God knows what now-defunct company in 2014. Enough time’s passed between now and then, with enough evidence in this preview, to suggest this opening (March 18 at Metrograph) will be like having a new Tsai picture.
Find the preview and poster below:
The sophomore feature from...
And boy does this trailer looks great! Worlds beyond the horrible DVD I got from Netflix via God knows what now-defunct company in 2014. Enough time’s passed between now and then, with enough evidence in this preview, to suggest this opening (March 18 at Metrograph) will be like having a new Tsai picture.
Find the preview and poster below:
The sophomore feature from...
- 2/25/2022
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Legendary filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang, one of the giants of Taiwan’s Second New Wave, made his long-awaited return to filmmaking last year with “Days,” which IndieWire’s David Ehrlich described as “one of the year’s most touching films.” The auteur has primarily devoted himself to museum installations since announcing his retirement from film in 2013, but he has proved that when he does choose to make movies, the results are worth paying attention to. Now fans of Tsai have even more to look forward to, as Film Movement has announced the theatrical release of a new 2K restoration of “Vive L’Amour,” his 1994 film that won the coveted Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.
“Vive L’Amour” was Tsai’s second feature film and helped establish his trademark style, which consists of slow, meticulously paced filmmaking featuring gay characters and themes of social alienation. The film is also notable for starring Lee Kang-sheng,...
“Vive L’Amour” was Tsai’s second feature film and helped establish his trademark style, which consists of slow, meticulously paced filmmaking featuring gay characters and themes of social alienation. The film is also notable for starring Lee Kang-sheng,...
- 2/25/2022
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
Two men (Lee Kang-sheng and first time actor Anong Houngheuangsy) unknown to each other, living lives of silent isolation, have a brief but meaningful encounter, then go their separate ways.
That’s the bare-bones plot of “Days,” the latest from Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang, another chapter in the filmmaker’s three-decade long, contemplative examination of loneliness.
“Days” begins with Kang seated in a room at home, staring out a window at rain. Tsai’s usual filmmaking practice has often been associated with the Slow Cinema movement, consisting of a group of disparate filmmakers who, more than anything, share a welcome affinity for the kind of silence and deliberate action that mainstream cinema has abandoned. Appropriately, this opening shot is wordless, nearly motionless, and lasts about five minutes.
This is nothing new for a filmmaker famous for very long takes with minimal edits, yet also a fairly brief example, considering he ended his 2013 film,...
That’s the bare-bones plot of “Days,” the latest from Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang, another chapter in the filmmaker’s three-decade long, contemplative examination of loneliness.
“Days” begins with Kang seated in a room at home, staring out a window at rain. Tsai’s usual filmmaking practice has often been associated with the Slow Cinema movement, consisting of a group of disparate filmmakers who, more than anything, share a welcome affinity for the kind of silence and deliberate action that mainstream cinema has abandoned. Appropriately, this opening shot is wordless, nearly motionless, and lasts about five minutes.
This is nothing new for a filmmaker famous for very long takes with minimal edits, yet also a fairly brief example, considering he ended his 2013 film,...
- 8/12/2021
- by Dave White
- The Wrap
No artist captures the aimless pain of alienation quite like Tsai Ming-liang. His first feature, 1992’s “Rebels of the Neon God,” can almost be described as “The 400 Blows,” by way of “Taipei Story,” (only stranger) Tsai being quite possibly the third most influential director of Taiwan’s second New Wave movement, alongside Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien.
Continue reading Taiwanese New Wave Master Tsai Ming-Liang Discusses His Film ‘Days’ & Ideas On “Art Museum Cinema” [Interview] at The Playlist.
Continue reading Taiwanese New Wave Master Tsai Ming-Liang Discusses His Film ‘Days’ & Ideas On “Art Museum Cinema” [Interview] at The Playlist.
- 8/12/2021
- by Andrew Bundy
- The Playlist
A plumber drills a hole between the basement of one apartment and the ceiling of another as a strange disease that causes people to act like cockroaches sweeps over Taiwan at the turn of the millennium. A depressed homeless man, desperate to provide for his family but invisible to the people who drive past his roadside advertising sign, violently mauls the cabbage that his young daughter has adopted as a friend. A Taipei cinema screens King Hu’s “Dragon Inn” during a torrential downpour on its final night in business as various patrons shuffle around inside the theater, each of them looking for a connection that seems to be flickering away forever before our eyes.
While Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang has long been associated with slow cinema, the non-linear deceleration of his style has been interjected with soaring dreamscapes, electric moments of self-reflexivity, and even a handful of sexually charged musical numbers.
While Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang has long been associated with slow cinema, the non-linear deceleration of his style has been interjected with soaring dreamscapes, electric moments of self-reflexivity, and even a handful of sexually charged musical numbers.
- 8/11/2021
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
“No No Sleep” is another entry in Tsai Ming-liang’s “Walker”-series, in which he portrays a monk walking slowly and silent through various locations. This time the monk, who is always played by Lee Khang-Sheng (“Rebels of the Neon God” 1992), sets out for Tokyo and meets Masanobu Ando in a spa.
A collection of Tsai Ming Liang’s movies is streaming on Mubi
Let’s “Take a walk on the wild side”. The outline already gives out a promise. Whether you will take the patience to watch the film or not. There is not much movement in “No No Sleep”. Tsai Ming-liang rather manages to create a dynamic inside the singular frame. The static and suggestive compositions are undertaking the task of the usual storyteller. Although the plot is very shallow on the first sight, the director scatters certain, even sexual connotations into the relaxing and meditative mood.
Different...
A collection of Tsai Ming Liang’s movies is streaming on Mubi
Let’s “Take a walk on the wild side”. The outline already gives out a promise. Whether you will take the patience to watch the film or not. There is not much movement in “No No Sleep”. Tsai Ming-liang rather manages to create a dynamic inside the singular frame. The static and suggestive compositions are undertaking the task of the usual storyteller. Although the plot is very shallow on the first sight, the director scatters certain, even sexual connotations into the relaxing and meditative mood.
Different...
- 2/26/2021
- by Alexander Knoth
- AsianMoviePulse
Director Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most distinguished directors of the new cinema movement in Taiwan. Born in Malaysia, he moved to Taiwan at the age of 20. There he graduated from the Drama and Cinema Department of the Chinese Cultural University of Taiwan in 1982 and went on working as a theatrical producer, screenwriter, and television director in Hong Kong.
His first feature film was “Rebels of the Neon God” in 1992, a film about troubled youth in Taipei, and with his second film, “Vive L’Amour” in 1994, won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang is one of Taiwan’s most prominent Taiwanese directors.
A puppet master of slowness, a monk dwelling in the eeriness of time, a philosopher of human loneliness and restlesness of a body. When water is peacefully falling down, drop by drop; when lovers say...
His first feature film was “Rebels of the Neon God” in 1992, a film about troubled youth in Taipei, and with his second film, “Vive L’Amour” in 1994, won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang is one of Taiwan’s most prominent Taiwanese directors.
A puppet master of slowness, a monk dwelling in the eeriness of time, a philosopher of human loneliness and restlesness of a body. When water is peacefully falling down, drop by drop; when lovers say...
- 2/24/2021
- by AMP Group
- AsianMoviePulse
After his first two features “Rebels of the Neon God” (1992) and “Vivre L’Amour” (1994) already explored the dynamics of a family living in Taiwan, director Tsai Ming-liang would continue this theme in his third movie “The River”, which critic Darren Hughes called the filmmaker’s “bleakest film” in Senses of Cinema. Given the urban background of Taipei in combination with its themes, “The River” deals with sexual tensions, repressions and the cracks within a family unit’s surface that eventually mirror those in society, making this third feature quite revealing and provocative, especially given its slow pace.
“The River” is streaming on Mubi
The story begins with Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) who runs into an old girlfriend while he is running some errands in the city. She asks him to join her at a film set, where she is working and the two of them witness the filming of a scene...
“The River” is streaming on Mubi
The story begins with Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) who runs into an old girlfriend while he is running some errands in the city. She asks him to join her at a film set, where she is working and the two of them witness the filming of a scene...
- 11/13/2020
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Though his debut feature “Rebels of the Neon God” is now also widely praised, it was with his second production “Vive L’Amour” that Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang really burst onto the world stage. The feature had it premiere at the 51st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the prestigious Golden Lion award. It also went on to win the Best Picture, Best Director and Best Sound Effects awards at the Golden Horse Awards.
“Vive L’Amour” is streaming on Mubi
It all starts when Hsiao-kang, a salesman, finds the key to a new duplex apartment and quietly pockets it. One night, he sneaks into the empty apartment and after using the bath, gets ready to take his life by cutting his wrist. Elsewhere, Ah-jung sees May Lin, a real estate agent, at a food court and follows her. When May Lin catches on to the man’s advances, she invites...
“Vive L’Amour” is streaming on Mubi
It all starts when Hsiao-kang, a salesman, finds the key to a new duplex apartment and quietly pockets it. One night, he sneaks into the empty apartment and after using the bath, gets ready to take his life by cutting his wrist. Elsewhere, Ah-jung sees May Lin, a real estate agent, at a food court and follows her. When May Lin catches on to the man’s advances, she invites...
- 11/13/2020
- by Rhythm Zaveri
- AsianMoviePulse
Director Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most distinguished directors of the new cinema movement in Taiwan. Born in Malaysia, he moved to Taiwan at the age of 20. There he graduated from the Drama and Cinema Department of the Chinese Cultural University of Taiwan in 1982 and went on working as a theatrical producer, screenwriter, and television director in Hong Kong.
His first feature film was “Rebels of the Neon God” in 1992, a film about troubled youth in Taipei, and with his second film, “Vive L’Amour” in 1994, won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang is one of Taiwan’s most prominent Taiwanese directors.
We speak with him about a different approach to VR cinema, his hate of script-writing, the future of films and a fish called Pom Pom.
A collection of Tsai Ming Liang’s movies is streaming...
His first feature film was “Rebels of the Neon God” in 1992, a film about troubled youth in Taipei, and with his second film, “Vive L’Amour” in 1994, won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang is one of Taiwan’s most prominent Taiwanese directors.
We speak with him about a different approach to VR cinema, his hate of script-writing, the future of films and a fish called Pom Pom.
A collection of Tsai Ming Liang’s movies is streaming...
- 11/12/2020
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Tsai Ming-liang's Walker (2012) and No No Sleep (2015) are showing on Mubi starting September 19, 2020 in many countries in a double bill.Above: Journey to the WestTsai Ming-liang once described his interest in the seventh-century monk Chen Xuanzang as an “obsession.” Popularized in the classic Ming dynasty novel Journey to the West, the monk made a pilgrimage along the Silk Road, to India, which ended up taking seventeen years. As Tsai recounts, “There was no car, no train, no airplane, and no cell phone. He just walked.” The novel paints Xuanzang as a foot servant obeying the orders of the imperial court, but for Tsai he is a “rebel.” In earlier historical documents—the inspiration for Tsai’s series of Walker films—Xuanzang defies the state’s travel ban because he believes the Buddhist sutras must be translated from Sanskrit and imported to China. Tsai told another interviewer that Xuanzang was “one...
- 9/20/2020
- MUBI
Time moves slowly, as ever, for Malaysian director Tsai Ming-liang’s, as seconds become minutes, minutes become hours, and hours become “Days,” a gentle return to form in which Tsai’s longtime star, Lee Kang-sheng, is shown suffering from some unknown physical ailment, finding short-lived solace in the hands of a stranger (28-year-old Laotian immigrant Anong Houngheuangsy) in Bangkok.
As far back as their first collaboration, on Tsai’s 1992 “Rebels of the Neon God,” Lee has been afflicted by incurable neck pains, which the director incorporated into his movie “The River” five years later. “Days” could be seen as a variation on Pedro Almodóvar’s recent “Pain & Glory,” which dealt with human frailty and tentative homosexual connection in its own way — although that film, Almodóvar’s masterpiece, seemed restrained compared to the rest of his oeuvre, it’s positively exuberant in comparison to Tsai’s brand of minimalism.
“Days” is no masterpiece,...
As far back as their first collaboration, on Tsai’s 1992 “Rebels of the Neon God,” Lee has been afflicted by incurable neck pains, which the director incorporated into his movie “The River” five years later. “Days” could be seen as a variation on Pedro Almodóvar’s recent “Pain & Glory,” which dealt with human frailty and tentative homosexual connection in its own way — although that film, Almodóvar’s masterpiece, seemed restrained compared to the rest of his oeuvre, it’s positively exuberant in comparison to Tsai’s brand of minimalism.
“Days” is no masterpiece,...
- 2/27/2020
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Director Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most distinguished directors of the new cinema movement in Taiwan. Born in Malaysia, he moved to Taiwan at the age of 20. There he graduated from the Drama and Cinema Department of the Chinese Cultural University of Taiwan in 1982 and went on working as a theatrical producer, screenwriter, and television director in Hong Kong.
His first feature film was “Rebels of the Neon God” in 1992, a film about troubled youth in Taipei, and with his second film, “Vive L’Amour” in 1994, won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang is one of Taiwan’s most prominent Taiwanese directors.
In occasion of the screening of his Vr film “The Deserted” and a selected retrospective of his movies at the Taiwan Film Festival UK in London we speak with him about a different approach to Vr cinema,...
His first feature film was “Rebels of the Neon God” in 1992, a film about troubled youth in Taipei, and with his second film, “Vive L’Amour” in 1994, won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang is one of Taiwan’s most prominent Taiwanese directors.
In occasion of the screening of his Vr film “The Deserted” and a selected retrospective of his movies at the Taiwan Film Festival UK in London we speak with him about a different approach to Vr cinema,...
- 4/7/2019
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
“No No Sleep” is another entry in Tsai Ming-liang’s “Walker”-series, in which he portrays a monk walking slowly and silent through various locations. This time the monk, who is always played by Lee Khang-Sheng (“Rebels of the Neon God” 1992), sets out for Tokyo and meets Masanobu Ando in a spa.
“No No Sleep” is screening at Taiwan Film Festival UK
Let’s “Take a walk on the wild side”. The outline already gives out a promise. Whether you will take the patience to watch the film or not. There is not much movement in “No No Sleep”. Tsai Ming-liang rather manages to create a dynamic inside the singular frame. The static and suggestive compositions are undertaking the task of the usual storyteller. Although the plot is very shallow on the first sight, the director scatters certain, even sexual connotations into the relaxing and meditative mood.
Different from other...
“No No Sleep” is screening at Taiwan Film Festival UK
Let’s “Take a walk on the wild side”. The outline already gives out a promise. Whether you will take the patience to watch the film or not. There is not much movement in “No No Sleep”. Tsai Ming-liang rather manages to create a dynamic inside the singular frame. The static and suggestive compositions are undertaking the task of the usual storyteller. Although the plot is very shallow on the first sight, the director scatters certain, even sexual connotations into the relaxing and meditative mood.
Different from other...
- 4/1/2019
- by Alexander Knoth
- AsianMoviePulse
This was my very first time seeing a film by Tsai Ming-liang. Since I know that I have missed out on this iconic Malaysian born filmmaker, I took the opportunity to watch his debut feature “Rebels of the Neon God” at the occasion of the 69th Berlinale International Film Festival.
Basically “Rebels of the Neon God” is about a boy dropping out of school and how he deals with it. Keeping it secret from his parents, Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) quits the tutorial school for college, takes the refund and dives into the night. Another plotline follows two thieves, Ah Tze (Chen Chao-jung) and Ah Ping (Jen Chang-bin), who get together with a girl named Ah Kuei. The boys steal cash from telephone booths and spend their time in arcade halls, bars, and on their scooter saddles. In the course of the film, the two plotlines interfere several times, first by accident,...
Basically “Rebels of the Neon God” is about a boy dropping out of school and how he deals with it. Keeping it secret from his parents, Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) quits the tutorial school for college, takes the refund and dives into the night. Another plotline follows two thieves, Ah Tze (Chen Chao-jung) and Ah Ping (Jen Chang-bin), who get together with a girl named Ah Kuei. The boys steal cash from telephone booths and spend their time in arcade halls, bars, and on their scooter saddles. In the course of the film, the two plotlines interfere several times, first by accident,...
- 2/19/2019
- by Alexander Knoth
- AsianMoviePulse
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Tsai Ming-liang's Rebels of the Neon God (1992) is showing December 27, 2017 - January 26, 2018 on Mubi in the United States. Rebels of the Neon God (1992) is an exquisitely controlled movie. It's also a nakedly desperate work, in which anguish and isolation radiate from nearly every frame. I think it's best to start with this seeming contrast: intense emotion and rigorous calculation are commonly thought of as opposed to each other, and, outside of art, they usually are. Saying that the movie's writer-director, Tsai Ming-liang, tempers his pain with his artistry is too neat a formulation; what's more plausible is that, to the extent to which they're distinguishable, each inflects the other, and neither one comes first. There are doublings, recurrences and rhymes in the film’s narrative of alienated youth in 90s Taipei; the action is elaborately composed and unfolds in long,...
- 1/10/2018
- MUBI
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.