About

天橋不見了 (The Skywalk is Gone)

Loosely following the events of Tsai's feature What Time Is It There? 2001, The Skywalk is Gone was filmed after the real skywalk on which Lee Kang-sheng’s character sold watches in that film was removed. Here, ads with sexualised imagery play on flat screens overlooking roving shoppers, an endless stream of traffic creates an unwalkable cityscape and characters are refracted through shopfront glass. Ending with Lee uneasily partaking in an interview to become an adult film actor – a narrative thread picked up in The Wayward Cloud 2005 – The Skywalk is Gone stands as a disorienting rendering of the urban landscape.

河上的月光 (Moonlight on the River)

Moonlight on the River is dedicated to Tsai’s friend Simon Field, the then-outgoing Director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Tsai narrates a farewell to Field while filming two dogs maundering the dry beds of the Tamsui River, the site of The River 1997. His narration is a melancholic ode to the passage of time, a lament cast against the almost-monochromatic pall of the vanishing river and the silhouettes of the two stray dogs.

與神對話 (Fish, Underground)

Tsai Ming-liang was reportedly on his way to film a spiritual medium when he was diverted by a traffic jam and decided to change the entire premise of his new work. In Fish, Underground (also known as A Conversation with God), Tsai cycles through vignettes of life and death, including religious ceremonies, gyrating dancers, and decomposing fish. The collage of rogue moments spotlights the spirituality and spectacle latent in everyday life.