Tsai Ming-liang in Person
August 14–31, 2025
BAMPFA welcomes director Tsai Ming-liang and actor Lee Kang-sheng to discuss seven of their films, including Vive l’amour; The Hole; Goodbye, Dragon Inn; What Time Is It There?; and Stray Dogs.
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Tsai Ming-liang: Days (2020)
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Tsai Ming-liang: Rebels of the Neon God (1992)
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Tsai Ming-liang: The Hole (1998)
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Tsai Ming-liang: Goodbye, Dragon Inn (1967)
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
Dragon Inn
King Hu
Taiwan, 19674k Restoration
Thursday, August 14 7 PMView DetailsKing Hu’s legendary Dragon Inn merges swordplay, melodrama, history, and Beijing Opera traditions with thrilling results. Viewed obliquely in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn, it suggests the transient pleasures of cinephilia.
Rebels of the Neon God
Tsai Ming-liang
Taiwan, 1992Friday, August 22 7 PMIntroduced by Andrew F. JonesView DetailsA disaffected youth and his friends wander through a neon Taipei in Tsai Ming-liang’s first feature, “a near-masterpiece” (Chicago Reader). “Inaugurates the filmmaker’s multi-movie study of urban alienation not with showoff chops but quiet, enduring compassion” (Village Voice).
Vive l’amour
Tsai Ming-liang
Taiwan, 1994Wednesday, August 27 7 PMTsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, and Andrew F. Jones in ConversationView DetailsThree lost souls—and a very alluring empty apartment—form an unlikely love quadrangle in Tsai Ming-liang’s Venice-winning follow-up to Rebels of the Neon God. Here “Tsai began to emerge as one of our great poets of modern alienation” (Slant).
The Hole
Tsai Ming-liang
Taiwan, France, 1998Thursday, August 28 7 PMTsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, and Weihong Bao in ConversationView DetailsIn Taipei it’s the end of the world as we know it, thanks to a mysterious plague, but even the most alienated urbanite is dreaming of 1950s movie musicals in Tsai Ming-liang’s delirious exploration of modern isolation, quarantines, and dance numbers.
What Time Is It There?
Tsai Ming-liang
Taiwan, France, 200135mm Archival Print
Friday, August 29 7 PMTsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, and Pheng Cheah in ConversationView DetailsA Taipei street vendor sets every clock to French time after meeting a young woman on her way to Paris in this endearing examination of loneliness, mourning, and time’s passage. “A film of surprise and wonder” (Rolling Stone).
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Tsai Ming-liang
Taiwan, 2003Saturday, August 30 4 PMTsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, and Pheng Cheah in ConversationView DetailsA crumbling old movie theater may be screening a martial arts film on-screen, but off-screen its patrons dream of other things in Tsai Ming-liang’s “weird, funny, melancholy tribute to movies and movie-going” (Chicago Tribune).
Stray Dogs
Tsai Ming-liang
Taiwan, France, 2013Saturday, August 30 7 PMTsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, and Iggy Cortez in ConversationView DetailsAn alcoholic single father and his two children flit through the margins of contemporary Taipei in Tsai Ming-liang’s remarkable work of social critique, long-take experimentalism, and asphalt surrealism, in which “every sequence exerts an almost telepathic grip” (The Telegraph).
Sand
Tsai Ming-liang
Taiwan, 2018Director’s Cut
Sunday, August 31 3 PMTsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, and Leeroy K. Y. Kang in ConversationView DetailsRed-robed and barefoot, the actor Lee Kang-sheng walks along the black sand beaches and among the concrete structures of the Zhuangwei Dune Visitor Service Park on Taiwan’s northeastern coast. Preceded by Walker (2012), the first of the Walker series.
Days
Tsai Ming-liang
Taiwan, 2020Sunday, August 31 6 PMTsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, and Iggy Cortez in ConversationView DetailsTwo men separated by age and nationality—a middle-aged Taiwanese with a bad neck and a younger Lao immigrant in Thailand—go about their daily lives in this “ravishing, wordless story of urban loneliness” (Screen Daily).