不见 | The Missing

Two stories are intercut: In one, an old woman searches frantically for her missing grandson; in the other, a teenage boy’s grandfather disappears. Lee Kang-sheng’s The Missing is a sad and haunting film which builds very slowly to an obscure symbolic ending, making you want to watch it again right away in order to view it in a different light. While not quite living up to the standard of the best work of Lee’s esteemed mentor Tsai Ming-liang, The Missing is an admirable debut. The city of Taipei becomes an alienating dystopia in this minimalist directorial debut from Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng. A grandmother loses her grandson in a park and spends the remainder of the day searching for him. Meanwhile, a troubled teenager’s grandfather similarly disappears. The two searchers wander the city until, eventually, their paths cross. The Missing shared the New Currents award with the Iranian film Tiny Snowflakes at the 2003 Pusan International Film Festival.

Directed by Kang-sheng Lee | Starring : Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao, Chang Chea, Chun Shih, Shiang-chyi Chen | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Athens Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Flanders Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Ljubljana Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Bratislava Film Festival, Febio Film Festival

不散 | Goodbye Dragon Inn

A Japanese tourist takes refuge from a rainstorm inside a once-popular movie theater, a decrepit old barn of a cinema that is screening a martial arts classic, King Hu’s 1966 “Dragon Inn.” Even with the rain bucketing down outside, it doesn’t pull much of an audience – and some of those who have turned up are less interested in the movie than in the possibility of meeting a stranger in the dark.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Kiyonobu Mitamura, Tien Miao, Chao-jung Chen | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, London Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Febio Film Festival, Belgrade Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, La Rochelle Film Festival, Maine Film Festival

你那边几点 | What Time Is It Over There?

From acclaimed director Tsai Ming-Liang comes the quirky story of Hsiao Kang who sell watches in the street of Taipei for a living. A few Days after his father’s Death, he meet Shiang-Chyi, a young woman who leave for Paris the very next day. She persuades him to sell her his own watch, which has two dials, so that she can keep taipei time as well as local time, on her upcoming trip.Troubled y the behavior of this mother who prays constantly for the return of her late husband’s spirit, Hsiao Kang Take refuge in the memory of his brief encounter with Shiang-Chyi, In an effort to bridge the miles between them, he run around setting all the watches and clock in Taipei to Paris time. Meanwhile, in Paris, Shiang-Chyi confronts events that seem to be mysteriously connected with Hsiao Kang.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao, Cecilia Yip | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Jerusalem Film Festival, Brisbane Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Montreal Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Jakarta Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival, Febio Film Festival

洞 | The Hole

The Hole uses an enigmatic symbolic language to explore social alienation in the bleak cityscapes of contemporary Taiwan. Seven days before the turn of the millennium, a rain-sodden Taipei City is under siege by a mysterious virus. Symptoms include fever and an acute photophobia that drives sufferers to scuttle like cockroaches in search of dark, isolated hiding places. As a result of ‘Taiwan Fever’ sections of the city are quarantined and their essential services cut off by the government. The film is set in an apartment block in a quarantine zone where residents, played by Lee Kang-Sheng and Yang Kuei-Mei, remain in defiance of quarantine regulations. Yang’s apartment, directly below Lee’s, develops a leak and a plumber in search of the leaking pipe bores a hole in Lee’s floor and Yang’s ceiling. The hole that now joins the two apartments is large enough to see through, and Yang and Lee develop an ambivalent, wordless relationship as a result of their new proximity. Yang succumbs to the virus, and in the final scene, Lee’s arm extends through the hole in her ceiling, offering her a glass of water. Finally, Yang grasps Lee’s arm and is lifted through the hole into the brightly lit offscreen space of Lee’s apartment.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Kuei-Mei Yang, Tien Miao, Hui-Chin Lin, Hsiang-Chu Tong | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, London Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Kerala Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Febio Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Athens Film Festival

河流 | The River

Hsiao-kang shares an apartment in Taipei with his parents, but the three of them lead very separate lives. His mother works as an elevator attendant in a restaurant and is having an affair with a man who pirates porno vidotapes. Hsiao-kang is drifting through life without a job, while his father, a pensioner, pursues a solitary quest for illicit pleasures in the city’s gay saunas. As an extra in a film, Hsiao-kang plays a body adrift in the heavily polluted Tamsui River. He begins to suffer a terrible pain in his neck, but no one seems to able to cure him. In desperation, Hsiao-kang travels with his father to Taichung, to visit a faith healer. While waiting to see him, the father gets bored and decides to visit a local men’s sauna. Coincidentally, Hsiao-kang has the same idea… Life is like a river: there will always be some dark, deep, damp corners.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Chao-jung Chen, Shiang-chyi Chen, Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

青少年哪吒 | Rebels of the Neon God

The Taiwanese title refers to Nezha, a powerful child god in Chinese classical mythology who was born into a human family. Nezha is impulsive and disobedient. He tries to kill his father, but is brought under control when a Taoist immortal (Nezha’s spiritual mentor) gives the father a miniature pagoda that enables him to control his rebellious son. This resonates in the film a number of ways: Lee’s mother believes that he is Nezha reincarnated, and Tze and Bing try to pawn off some stolen goods to an arcade proprieter named Nezha. Before the pawning of the stolen goods, Lee vandalizes Tze’s motorcycle, including graffiti stating “Here is Nezha.”

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Chao-jung Chen, Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao, Yu-wen Wang | Presented at Taipei Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Cleveland Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Febio Film Festival