Text: Ibrahim Soetomo
Photos: La Bomba Rifai
Interpreter: Claude Wang

The constant December rain in Jogja reminded me of the opening scene of Tsai Ming-Liang’s debut film, Rebels of the Neon God (1992). Two young men, Ah Tze and Ah Bing, steal coins from telephone booths in the city at night, barely speaking yet sharing a silent understanding, sealed with each drag of their cigarettes. The waterlogged streets might as well remind us of Ah Tze’s apartment, which is always flooded due to blockage. Such scenes convey much without saying much. 

Tsai Ming-Liang is a renowned Taiwanese filmmaker known for his long takes and minimalist style, often referred to—and hopefully not reduced to—as “slow cinema.” The Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival (JAFF) 19: Metanoia paid tribute to his prominence by screening Vive L’amour (1994), Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), and Abiding Nowhere (2024), his latest and tenth rendition of the long-running Walker series. In addition, JAFF organised a masterclass with Tsai Ming-Liang. The auteur narrated his formative years, detailing how he discovered and developed his filmmaking after encountering his muse and acteur fétiche, Lee Kang-Sheng, and his views on genre and art films in today’s industry. Amidst his committed schedule, we met him later in the evening for a brief yet insightful interview on filmmaking, Abiding Nowhere, and the role of art museums in films today.

What first encounter with film made you want to pursue filmmaking?

My movie-viewing memories started from very little when I was three years old. I enjoyed watching a plethora of films because of my grandfather and grandmother. I went to movie theatres with them very often.

As a senior high school student, I realised I was fascinated by films. I loved seeing both acting in films and performances. But I couldn’t tell the difference between them at that stage. I thought they were just almost one thing. So, when I moved to Taipei as a foreign student at a university, I decided to go to the theatre department instead. But still, I didn’t understand the difference between theatre and movies. Until my university years, I saw a lot of films by auteurs from Europe. Then I started to realise that directing a film and theatre are totally different.

If I had to name a single film that most influenced me, it would be François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959). Despite our stylistic differences, I admire Truffaut’s work immensely. His films opened my eyes to the boundless possibilities of filmmaking. You can pursue Truffaut’s, or you can pursue something like Jean-Luc Godard’s. Over time, I gradually developed my own unique relationship with film. It was gradual, built from layer to layer. It didn’t happen all of a sudden. Sometimes, films I watched as a child resurfaced years later, offering new insights when I revisited them. I think it’s destiny. I was meant to bind with film. But it didn’t happen in just one day.

Photo: La Bomba Rifai

In the master class, you told us about how you found your voice, starting from early films such as Rebels of the Neon God and Vive L’amour. Your works are often associated with slow cinema. One point that interested me the most during your master class is “Slow is rebellion.” Would you mind elaborating on what is slow for you in today’s film industry? 

I didn’t encourage people to make slow-paced movies. It’s not about slow or fast, but the pace you feel is important. Film, as a medium, is over a century old. The case is that most of us see movies as entertainment. The audience would sit in the cinema and have dreams. They want to experience something that would never happen in real life. We can say that they are escaping reality. It’s the feeling I had when I watched movies when I was young. As I grew older, I became more drawn to films that expressed the true world, the reality. The truth is crucial to be expressed. These are the kind of films that resonate with me most deeply.

I’m drawn to slow-paced films like those of Yasujirō Ozu’s. He shows us ordinary lives, like family issues and father-daughter relationships. His way of telling stories is very simple, without big conflicts or too much drama. Yet, his films still make us feel something. Films like Ozu’s inspired me. 

In my master class, I mentioned that directors like Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman were experimenting with slower pacing in the 1980s. When I got the chance to make my own films, I not only wanted to slow down the pace but also use film as a medium to express my thoughts and feelings. Drawing on my experience in theatre and television production, as well as my extensive film viewing, I asked myself, “What kind of films do I want to make?” I realised that these films should have the power to touch the depths of human emotion. To achieve this, I began to focus on the film’s structure. Drama is essential for portraying human lives and reflecting them through images. And when we make films, there are certain steps, like an SOP. You have to develop an idea first, write the script, secure funding, assemble a team, and then find distribution outlets to share the finished film with audiences.

Based on my experience, if the film were shown in movie theatres, they still have some limitations and requirements. For example, it should be around 90 minutes. You can’t have it shorter or longer. So it’s the industry that decides the length of the film, not the author. The actors must be very famous because of all the commercial elements being considered. I think those elements restrict how we pursue or go further in filmmaking. So I want to make something different. For example, I never finish my script. The truth is that the script is not the film. Of course, a script is important, but that doesn’t mean that you have to follow the script. It’s just for work. A blueprint for everybody. But how can we go beyond the script? So, I think a lot before getting involved in the actual filmmaking. 

What makes a good actor? What is truly great acting? When my debut film, Rebels of the Neon God, gained recognition, the actors were often overlooked. Many audiences perceived their performances were not acting. However, I believe their acting was the most difficult kind of acting. This experience shaped my approach to filmmaking. Can the audience understand what I’m doing? Can they feel what I’m trying to say? My audience is usually divided into two. One group was the one who got attracted by my films, and the other one got very confused. Over time, I’m surrounded by those controversies. 

I don’t want audiences to approach my films with the same expectations as they would for conventional cinema. By following my filmography from the beginning, you can witness my artistic development. I constantly challenge myself to surpass my previous work, even when employing familiar elements like actors and locations. Each film represents a new exploration, a fresh perspective.

A new way to see. A new way to look.

Yes, it is somehow my character in how I developed my works.

Photo: La Bomba Rifai

Your films are screened at JAFF. Vive L’Amour and Goodbye, Dragon Inn are classics. I want to talk about Abiding Nowhere. Within the Walker series, this is the latest one. It is promoted that this film is a documentary, but I think it’s more of a video performance. 

I couldn’t tell if what I was making was fiction or a documentary. I only know that I make films. 

Now you have ten films in the Walker series. What makes Abiding Nowhere particularly different?

It is shot in Washington, DC (laughs).

If you have the chance to see all ten films, you will see that each is slightly different. The only identical thing is the slow walk. It’s the fixed element in the series. But, if you look closer and observe, the way Lee Kang-Sheng walks is also different from time to time. Throughout the ten films, his physical condition is different. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower. Sometimes he has neck problems; sometimes he feels better. Sometimes he is more relaxed, sometimes very tight. But I accepted everything and just let him be. If we shoot the Walker series for another ten or twenty decades, the way he walks will be more and more different. He ages, and I’m very interested in shooting this series until he’s in his seventies. It’s possible if we both live long enough. 

The Walker is a concept that doesn’t need a script. But in every Walker film, we have to find different cities and locations. I have to go there and see lots of locations and think about the relationship between me and the city. 

In some scenes in Abiding Nowhere, I noticed that the red-robed monk is walking near a painting and a sculpture. It made me think of the relationship between the performer and art. It’s slow meets slow. 

Yes. Or maybe to stop. Something stops rather than slows down. A stillness.

Also, in every city, the speed of people walking is different, be it in Hong Kong, Japan, or Paris, and the latest is in Washington, DC. The reaction of the people is also different. 

Speaking of my interpretation of seeing Walker as a video performance, in your master class, you mentioned your relationship with visual art and museums. Would you be so kind as to elaborate on your experience with them? 

There are limitless possibilities. To appreciate films, I think the movie theatre is still the best place. But when I collaborated with art museums, I had a feeling of becoming more free. I began collaborating with museums because I realised that in my region, including Taiwan, Malaysia, or even Southeast Asia, there’s a lack of appreciation for art films. I think it’s because we don’t cultivate the audience enough. Most of them tend to watch commercial films. We can’t change that unless we change our lifestyle. In my younger years, the difference between Asia and Europe was that the latter had many excellent art museums. But in this decade, we are witnessing many excellent and large art museums emerging in big cities in Asia. But still, people don’t visit art museums very often. Maybe students will go. But how can you encourage the adults, the children? You have to put in a lot of effort. The children who go to museums are our future, our hope. If you go to art museums in Europe, you will see mostly old people, but you won’t see them in museums in Asia. They would probably go dancing, play mahjong, or sit in front of their computers (laughs). The possibility of them going to watch films is very slim.

As you can see in JAFF 2024, the audience is mostly very young. You don’t see older people much. I guess it’s because they are not very interested. So, if you can’t change the old people, then you can change their kids. If these kids grow up experiencing art museums, one day they will also bring their kids to art museums.

I made Goodbye, Dragon Inn in 2003. Since that time, people from the art fields have invited me to collaborate in museums and do art projects. In 2007, I made my first video installation. It’s a 23-minute film called It’s a Dream (2007). I shot this film in an abandoned theatre in Kuala Lumpur. When I finished the film, I used a different math to make this film different from my other ones. So, I went to the movie theatre owner and bought fifty movie theatre seats. There are two important elements in this work. One would be the seat, and two, you have to sit on it to watch my film. It formed a kind of installation art. Now it was archived by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Maybe you can see it in the future.

In 2013, I made my tenth feature film, Stray Dogs. The way I released this movie was not only through movie theatres but also in a museum. The audience could still buy tickets and watch it in the theatres. But when the audience came to the museum, they found the space and feeling totally different. They didn’t sit on the seats, and I decorated the space to look like a jungle, so they would have a new experience. The way I projected the film was also different. I projected some clips that I used or didn’t use to scrape paper materials. So the idea of watching a film or a video, commonly on a flat or plain surface, is changed due to some scratches and textures on the paper. I elaborated on the experience. It’s a Tsai Ming-Liang universe (laughs). 

Photo: La Bomba Rifai

For a slow cinema maker, you do a lot of work. What do you want to do next, if we may know?

The work that I mostly want to make is a film without a title. I feel that a film title is also a limitation. You can decide whether or not you watch a film by reading its title. It’s implying something, whether it’s a horror movie, comedy, romance, or something else. You only need to know that it’s a film by Tsai Ming-Liang (laughs). 

I want to change the way we think about films and their relationship to theatres. We had a long journey on how to screen films, and it became something like an entertainment product. But films can’t just be entertainment. To think about it, it’s very mysterious how we invented film in the first place. And we don’t put enough effort into developing the language further. That’s why we feel that most films are boring. The previous master directors have a very deep cultural background. They read a lot, and they think a lot. But now everybody can be a film director. Their films can become shallow. They just follow the industry. Even art films now become an industry. Not many people think, “What is a film?” I think it’s the right time to ask that. It’s also the right time to go to movie theaters, especially now that we have phones and computers. We see a lot of short clips on platforms like TikTok. Most of them are useless. If you watch more and more of these clips, you become more shallow. So that’s why we need to broaden the possibilities of films and strengthen the importance of going to movie theatres. We must blur the distinction between film and museum. Film theatres can be a museum, and a museum can also be a film theatre. Actually, it is happening now. We can see many contemporary art museums in big cities with their film program. They won’t show superhero movies, but really good films (laughs). So we can combine film and museum. 

To think about it, this is my third decade of filmmaking. I am in my third term.

And how long do you think the terms will last?

Maybe after I pass away, we can still last for fifty or a hundred years!