Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮), the world-renowned avant-garde director, will make his first public visit to the United States in over a decade. Tsai has been invited by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art in Washington D.C., and the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, among others. The momentous occasion will be accompanied by major retrospective programs at these cultural organizations to showcase Tsai’s cinema.
From Sep. 30 through Oct. 24, Tsai will be joined by actor Lee Kang-sheng (李康生) and Anong Houngheuangsy, both of whom are featured in his latest film, "Days (日子)," for visits to Chicago, Washington D.C., Cambridge, and New York City. The retrospective programs will screen 21 of Tsai's works over his 30-year career, including 2021 short films "The Night (良夜不能留)" and "The Moon and the Tree (月亮樹)." Tsai will give a special talk/performance titled "Improvisations on the Memory of Cinema," which incorporates storytelling, drawing, and reminiscing over his life and work, to audiences in Washington D.C. and New York City. First presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, this partially improvised event serves as an intimate self-portrait of an artist at work.
Moreover, MoMA announced that the museum has acquired one of Tsai's masterpieces, "Face (臉)," which was commissioned by the Louvre and shot largely within the museum's premises in 2009. In response to the news, Tsai shared that "It is like a dream come true since I have always wanted to bring my films to museums." Tsai has devoted himself to the creation of contemporary art in recent years, and he believes that films are also a form of artwork.
A leading filmmaker of contemporary Chinese-language cinema, Tsai has produced one of the most striking cinematic oeuvres of the past quarter-century.