Happy 63rd Birthday, Tsai Ming-liang! Born today in 1957, this Malaysian-born Taiwanese filmmaker is one of the most celebrated "Second New Wave" film directors of Taiwanese cinema.
He has written and directed eleven feature films and has also directed many short films as well as television films.
Ming-liang graduated from the Drama and Cinema Department of the Chinese Cultural University of Taiwan and worked as a theatrical producer and television director.
His second feature was the 1994 Taiwanese New Wave drama film 'Vive L'Amour'. The film premiered at the 51st Venice Film Festival in September of that same year.
Post screening, 'Vive L'Amour' had garnered the judge's attention. For this, Ming-liang won the Golden Lion for Best Picture.
Seven years later, Ming-liang co-wrote and directed the film of which he is best known. This was the 2001 Taiwanese/French romance/drama film 'Nǐ nà biān jǐ diǎn' ('What Time Is It There?').
The film tells of a watch-selling street vendor named Hsiao-Kang (Kang-sheng Lee) with a grim home-life. He later forges a connection with a young woman named Shiang-chyi (Shiang-chyi Chen) on her way to Paris, France.
After Hsiao-Kang meets the young woman, he becomes infatuated and begins to change all of the clocks in Taipei to Paris time.
On Rotten Tomatoes, 'What Time Is It There?' has an approval rating of eighty-five percent based on fifty-three reviews, and an average rating of 7.1/10.
The website's critical consensus reads, "Though it requires patience to view, What Time Is It There?'s exploration of loneliness is both elegant and haunting."
On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100, based on twenty critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Begin with Keaton and work your way backward on the list, opening yourself to the possibilities of silence, introspection, isolation and loneliness in the movies.
You will notice that the films grow less funny after Keaton and Tati; one of the enigmas about Tsai's work is that it is always funny and always sad, never just one or the other."
Among his other credits, Ming-liang is also known for directing 'Rebels of the Neon God' (1992), 'The Wayward Cloud' (1995), and 'Stray Dogs' (2013).
Over time, Ming-liang has become one of Taiwan's most prominent directors during the 1990s. His films regularly appeared in festivals around the globe, as he has received lavish praise from film critics worldwide.
Other prominent Taiwanese filmmakers include Edward Yang ('A Brighter Summer Day', 'Yi Yi') and Hou Hsiao-hsien ('The Time to Live and the Time to Die', 'A City of Sadness', 'The Puppetmaster').
The trademarks in Ming-liang's films include long, fixed shots, very little dialogue, prominent ambient sounds, and running water or the sound of running water. There are floods, leaks, and drafts of wind prominently featured in most of his work as well.
His trademarks also include characters who often experiment with their sexuality or their bodies and who frequently have difficulty communicating their emotions with others and with themselves.
Ming-liang rarely uses a traditional musical score in his films, with the exception of several 1930s Mandarin pop songs.
The most celebrated figure of the Second New Wave of Taiwanese cinema, boundary-pushing auteur Ming-ling has charted the contours of contemporary alienation in mesmerizingly enigmatic works that are at once rigorously spare and richly sensuous.
Spanning a career of two decades, Ming-liang has confirmed his status through a handful of arresting features as an unparalleled portraitist of loneliness and longing.
Even still, his idiosyncratic oeuvre continues to enthrall audiences worldwide.
Ming-liang has been active from 1989–present.
