This retrospective finished in 2020, before the rest of the tour was postponed by COVID.

January 10 – March 15, 2020

Doc Films Retrospective

A leading filmmaker of contemporary Chinese-language cinema, Tsai Ming-Liang has produced one of the most striking cinematic oeuvres of the past quarter-century. Malaysian by birth, Taiwanese by residence, internationally funded but belonging to nowhere in particular, Tsai’s moody, pensive, deadpan films are haunted by loss, failure, and broken attachments. But these films are not mere exercises in nostalgia: collaging the fragments of contemporary life into a cinema of alienation, precarity, and queerness, Tsai’s slow style and serial characters iterate and interrogate all the ways attachment falls short amid the austerity, inequality, and increasing uncertainty rapidly proliferating in the margins of modernity. 

Tsai’s muse, Lee Kang-Sheng, stars in every film as Tsai’s alter ego, Hsiao-Kang (“Little Wealth”), a transient protagonist working job after unstable job on the abject underside of the fast and flashy global economy. Wayward encounters, unorthodox intimacies, and inarticulate desires give way to austere, surreal tableaus: shots and scenes extend for many minutes, producing a cinema as intense and precise as it is diffuse and disorganized. Individually, the films flirt with formlessness, but are threaded together by recurrent motifs—phone booths, flooded apartments, mysterious ailments, glowing screens, cockroaches, mumbled meals, lost keys, spiritual possession, and watermelons. As the series progresses, the films amplify, reinforce, and refract one another, exploring the incoherence structuring our attachments to objects and others.

For his first full retrospective in Chicago, it is a pleasure to watch this important auteur reckoning with globalization and its discontents. 

Screenings are $7. A pass for the quarter is $40.

Essay by Ethan Weinstein and J. Michael Eugenio. Banner image by Finn Jubak.

1212 E 59th St., Chicago, IL

Google calendar with retrospective screenings and Tsai Ming-Liang’s April 2020 visit.
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January 10, 2020, 7pm
January 12, 2020, 1:30pm

Introduction on January 10 by J. Michael Eugenio.

Tsai Ming-Liang’s debut follows a love triangle of aimless teenage dropouts as they roam the malls, video arcades, and hourly hotels of Taipei’s claustrophobic entertainment district. Hsiao-Kang, debuting here as a struggling and lonely student alienated by his religious mother and impatient father, obsessively follows the perpetually frustrated throuple. Several of the motifs and themes of Tsai’s cinematic mythology—incessant flooding, background porn, triangulated desire—first appear in this masterful account of urban alienation and ambivalent desire.

Winner of Best Film at the Torino Film Festival.

January 17, 2020, 7pm (Opening reception, 6pm)
January 19, 2020, 1:30pm

Introduction on January 17 by Deborah Stratman.

Three exhausted salespeople struggle in a rapidly developing Taipei—vacant high-rises sprout beside crumbling offices. Hsiao-Kang, a suicidal vendor of columbarium niches (spaces for urns), begins squatting in an unsold luxury condo. A James Dean–impersonating street vendor also begins squatting there after an evening of meaningless sex with the condo’s ambitious realtor. A thoroughly modern melancholic slapstick—all three unwittingly share a condo that none of them own—Vive L’Amour is a masterpiece of queer frustration. 

Winner of the Golden Lion Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

OPENING RECEPTION
JANUARY 17, 2020, 6PM

Opening remarks, 6:45pm
Susan L. Burns, Director, Center for East Asian Studies and Professor of History, University of Chicago; Director General Eric Huang, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago; Alex Kong, Doc Films

Doc Films Screening of VIVE L’AMOUR, 7pm
following an introduction by artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman. Her films and artworks investigate power, control, and belief, and consider how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. She teaches at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

January 24, 2020, 7pm
January 26, 2020, 1pm

Introduction on January 24 by Melika Bass.

A deep exploration of “the relationship between human psychology and illness,” The River finds Hsiao-Kang afflicted with a mysterious, intractable crick in his neck. The family, while committed to alleviating Hsiao-Kang’s pain, is as repressed and estranged as ever—Hsiao-Kang’s mother has a passionless affair with a pornographer, while his bathhouse-cruising father comically tries to stave off inexorable leaks. This bleak comedy of uncertain convalescence makes a fascinating study of seduction, faith, and longing.

Winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Berlin Film Festival.

My New Friends, Tsai Ming-Liang’s contribution to Taiwan’s AIDS-awareness campaign for which he interrupted The River’s pre-production, is a documentary centered around intimate conversations with two HIV+ men. It offers a glimpse into the lives of young gay men in Taiwan and directly addresses many of the themes of intimacy, illness, and HIV/AIDS that Tsai Ming-Liang’s feature films more obliquely touch on.  

January 31, 2020, 7pm
february 2, 2020, 1:30pm

Introduction on January 31 by Jennifer Reeder.
Introduction on February 2 by Alex Wen of subtitle magazine.

A mysterious Y2K bug has hit Taiwan. Those infected scuttle and scatter in the shadows like cockroaches. Hsiao-Kang, a clueless, customerless shopkeeper in a quarantine zone, begins picking at a hole left by a plumber in his floor, interfering with his downstairs neighbor’s plans to keep her flooding home intact and the bug at bay. Alienated, frustrated, and days away from a water shutoff, she fantasizes about connecting with Hsiao-Kang—through nostalgic technicolor musical interludes imitating 50s Hong Kong chanteuse Grace Chang. 

Winner of the FIPRESCI award at Cannes and the Gold Hugo award at the Chicago International Film Festival.

February 7, 2020, 7pm

Introduction by Kat Sachs.

In this meditation on queer time and compromised comforts, Hsiao-Kang, now a black-market watch salesman, laconically mourns his father—whom his mother inconsolably tries to conjure. Meanwhile Shiang-Chyi, who insisted on buying Hsiao-Kang’s personal dual-time watch, aimlessly vacations in Paris. Lonely and purposeless, she repeatedly tries to call Hsiao-Kang, who now impulsively changes every clock in Taipei to Paris time. The nuclear family reprised from Rebels of the Neon God and The River, is now, finally, queered and atomized. 

The Skywalk Is Gone finds Shiang-chyi back in Taipei, searching for Hsiao-Kang only to find the skywalk where he sells watches is now gone.

February 14, 2020, 7pM
february 16, 2020, 1:30pm

Introduction on February 14 by Cameron Worden.
Introduction on February 16 by Jennifer Dorothy Lee.

CW: a very extended rape scene

Tsai’s most divisive film, this musical porn parody of a water-short but watermelon-plenty Taipei charts the attempted relationship between a water-hoarding Shiang-Chyi, desperate to explore her sexuality, and an alienated Hsiao-Kang, a porn star incapable of romantic intimacy. The surreal, saturated musical numbers—including a glimmering merman crooning in a water tower and a cross-dressing, partner-swapping date in a park—delight just as much as the increasingly hardcore porn scenes strain, yielding a scathing critique of porn’s violence and exploitation.

Winner of the Alfred Bauer Prize and Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement at the Berlin Film Festival.

February 21, 2020, 7pM
february 23, 2020, 1:30pm

Introduction on February 21 by Jonathan Rosenbaum.
Introduction on February 23 by KyungMook Kim.

A cinematic 4’33”, Goodbye, Dragon Inn shows us the atmospheric corners of a decaying cinema’s final screening—the manager’s dragging limp mixes with the flickering projection glow, a chorus of cruisers flushing urinals, and echoes of King Hu’s Dragon Inn. Hsaio-kang, the projectionist, is nearly absent, much to the dismay of the doting manager, while the theater is populated by ghosts (including two of the actors from Dragon Inn). Seeing this haunted elegy to cinema in a theater must not be missed.

“Arguably the greatest film ever made about moviegoing” — The New York Times

Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Feature Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival.

February 28, 2020, 7pM
March 1, 2020, 1:30pm

Introduction on February 28 by Thorsten Trimpop.
Introduction on March 1 by Liang Luscombe.

Tsai’s first film set in the smoggy moist streets and derelict edifices of his native Malaysia is one of his most intimate and political. Mutable mute Hsiao-Kang—ever shifting, objectified, and alienated—is finally shorn into two characters: a dependent paraplegic attended to by Shiang-Chyi, a waitress, as well as a badly injured Taiwanese immigrant taken in and cared for by Rawang, a migrant worker. This tender exploration of unrequited love, erotic solicitude, and frustrated charity, is a welcome dream.

March 6, 2020, 7pM
March 8, 2020, 1:30pm

Introduction on March 6 by Leah Li.

Commissioned by and largely shot within the Louvre, Face is Tsai’s mediation on the post-colonial cinematic process and an ode to Truffaut. Here Hsiao-Kang directs a filmic retelling of Strauss’s operatic retelling of Wilde’s theatrical retelling of the biblical Salome—starring none other than Jean-Pierre Léaud (Truffaut’s own Lee Kang-Sheng)—all the while struggling with the loss of his mother. Full of fantastical, gorgeous images responding to the Louvre’s collection, Face highlights Tsai’s painterly stylized compositions.

March 13, 2020, 7pM
March 15, 2020, 1:30pm

Introduction on March 13 by Ben Sachs.

Stray Dogs, intended to be his farewell to feature filmmaking, is Tsai Ming-Liang at his most deliberate and dilated. Hsaio-kang, an alcoholic father and human signpost for luxury condos,  shepherds his two children from squat to market to skyway, occasionally leaving them in the care of a maternal woman, played by a triad of Tsai Ming-Liang regulars. Fully forgoing continuity editing, Tsai juxtaposes social realist depictions of life on the margins with dreamlike sequences of familial longing. 

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Presenters

Melika Bass, recently named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film 2018,” is the recipient of an Artadia Award (NYC), a Special Mention Prize of the International Jury from the 2018 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 3 Art Grants from the Illinois Arts Council, and the Kodak/Filmcraft Imaging Award from the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Alongside Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart), Alma Har’el (Honey Boy), and John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), Bass was one of a dozen international directors invited to create an original film for Sigur Rós’s Valtari Mystery Film Experiment. Melika’s films have screened at the BAMcinemaFest, Brooklyn; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (solo exhibition); Torino Film Festival, Italy; Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York; Kino der Kunst, Munich; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; BFI London Film Festival; Human Rights Film Festival, Zagreb; CPH Dox, Copenhagen; the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany; and the New Museum, New York. Bass is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. tenderarchive.com

J. Michael Eugenio is a terrible dabbler. A graduate of Deep Springs College, they are an independent programmer. Michael is on staff at the Experimental Station and the South Side Weekly and is committed to inclusive and democratic processes that give people a say over their lives.

KyungMook Kim is a filmmaker based in Seoul. Ranging from short and feature to documentary, his films explore the precarity of the marginalized such as homosexuals, transsexuals, sex workers, and North Korean defectors. Through his works, he has attempted to reveal the ambiguity between appearance/disappearance, visibility/invisibility, and presence/absence. He made his directorial debut with Me and Doll-playing (2004) at the age of nineteen. Since then, he has made seven films, including the Things Trilogy, which consists of Faceless Things (2005), Stateless Things (2011), and Futureless Things (2014). His films have been selected for and received awards in numerous international film festivals such as the Venice Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the BFI London Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum. More recently, his works have been invited and screened as retrospectives at the Indie Space (South Korea, 2016), Black Movie Film Festival (Swiss, 2013), Taipei Film Festival (Taiwan, 2012), and Festival du Film Coréen à Paris (France, 2012). Kim also worked as a journalist and a columnist for a number of publications since 2001. He served on the editorial board of Korea’s only independent film magazine, Independent Film, (2006-2007), and served also as a committee member of the Association of Korean Independent Film and Video (2011-2012). In 2015, he objected to the military service following his strong belief in pacifism and was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. He was paroled in 2016 after one year and three months of imprisonment. kyungmook.com

Jennifer Dorothy Lee studies art and cultural practices in modern and contemporary China, and is currently Assistant Professor of East Asian Art in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research and teaching focus encompass social history, aesthetic theory, and comparative and transnational perspectives. Trained in comparative literature, Lee brings literary frames and methodologies to her work on visual and material objects. In addition to China-related topics, her courses address histories of social movement in Hong Kong and Taiwan, critical area studies of Asia, as well as theories of Maoism and socialism. Lee's first book project, Anxiety Aesthetics: Socialist Legacies in Post-Mao China, 1978-1985, offers a sustained study of aesthetic theory, art, and subjectivity redefined in the fleeting historical moment bridging the Mao era with Dengist reforms. Her next research project will take up social histories of art in Taiwan and Hong Kong from the mid-20th to the 21st centuries.

Leah Li is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago’s department of Cinema and Media Studies. Her research centers around the philosophical inquiries on contemporary cinema and media.

Liang Luscombe’s practice roams between painting, sculpture, and more recently video. Her videos draw together highly stylized set construction, coded language, and low-fi visual tricks to ruminate on how images and film effect audiences. She has undertaken residencies at the Chicago Artist Coalition, 2018-2019; SOMA Summer, Mexico City, 2018; Australia Council Studio, British School at Rome, 2013; and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art Studio Residency, Perth, 2011. liangluscombe.com

Jennifer Reeder constructs personal fiction films about relationships, trauma, and coping. Her award-winning narratives are innovative and borrow from a range of forms including after school specials, amateur music videos, and magical realism. These films have shown consistently around the world, including the Sundance Film Festival, The Berlin Film Festival, The Tribeca Film Festival, The Rotterdam Film Festival, The London Film Festival, SXSW, The Venice Biennale, and The Whitney Biennial. Her awards include several that have qualified her films for Oscar nomination. She won a Creative Capital Grant in Moving Image in 2015, short film funding from Rooftop/Adrienne Shelly Foundation in 2016 and short film funding from the Hamburg Film Fund in 2016. She was a USA Artist nominee for 2008, 2015, 2016, and 2017. She was a Herb Alpert Film Award nominee in 2018. She won a 2018/19 scriptwriting award from SFFIM/Rainin Foundation. She is the 2019 recipient of the Alpert Film Award residency at the MacDowell Colony. Her most recent film, Knives and Skin will be theatrically released in France in November through UFO and in the US in December through IFC Midnight. thejenniferreeder.com

Jonathan Rosenbaum was film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 to 2008. His books include Cinematic Encounters 2 (2019), Cinematic Encounters (2018), Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia (2010), The Unquiet American (2009), Discovering Orson Welles (2007), Essential Cinema (2004), Movie Mutations (coedited with Adrian Martin, 2003), Abbas Kiarostami (with Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, 2003, 2018), Movie Wars (2000), Dead Man (2000), Movies as Politics (1997), Placing Movies (1995), This is Orson Welles by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich (edited, 1992), Greed (1991), Midnight Movies (with J. Hoberman, 1983), Film: The Front Line 1983 (1983), and Moving Places (1980, 1995). He maintains a web site archiving most of his work at jonathanrosenbaum.net.

Ben Sachs has written film criticism for the Chicago-based website Cine-File since 2007 and for the Chicago Reader since 2010. His writing has also appeared at Mubi.com, where he co-authored a series of essays on the work of Takashi Miike. He is married to Kathleen Sachs, a fellow Managing Editor of Cine-File. Since August 2019, he has worked as a special education teacher for Chicago Public Schools.

Kat Sachs is an associate editor for Cine-File and a contributor to the Chicago Reader. She is currently a programmer at the Nightingale Cinema and has also programmed at Block Cinema, Chicago Filmmakers, Comfort Station, Doc Films, filmfront, and the Cimatheque in Cairo, Egypt. She's married to Ben Sachs, also of Cine-File and the Chicago Reader.

Artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman makes films and artworks that investigate power, control and belief, considering how places, ideas, and society are intertwined.  Recent projects have addressed freedom, surveillance, sinkholes, comets, raptors, orthoptera, levitation, exodus, sisterhood and faith. She teaches at the University of Illinois in Chicago. pythagorasfilm.com

Pao-chen Tang is finishing up his joint doctoral degree in Cinema and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His research explores the notion of personhood in contemporary East Asian cinema. From Autumn 2020, he will join the University of Manchester as Lecturer in Chinese Cinema.

Thorsten Trimpop is a filmmaker and visual artist whose work examines the impact of history politics and the changing natural world on private lives. His latest film Furusato 古里 a human-scale portrait of a small town in Japan’s nuclear exclusion zone was shown at dozens of festivals and won the grand prize at DOK Leipzig. It had a cinematic realease in over 80 cities in Germany and Austria and was internationally broadcast on Arte. His first feature film The Irrational Remains a nonfiction tale of love and betrayal set against the fall of the Berlin wall premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won numerous international awards. His work has been presented at venues such as the Locarno Film Festival the International Film Festival Rotterdam the Viennale FID Marseilles International Film Festival Pusan BAFICI and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. He is currently working on a new genre-blurring feature grounded in a true crime story that sparks a dual narrative about our colonial inheritance and the human obsession with beauty. For this project he has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Memorial Award 2019. Trimpop is Assistant Professor in the Department of Film New Media and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. thorstentrimpop.com

Alex Wen is Editor-in-Chief of subtitle magazine. subtitle is a publication bringing quality longform essays on films from Asia and the Asian diaspora. Their goal is to shift the cultural conversation of Asian cinema to recenter Asian voices in Western discourse, apply film critique through a radical lens, and broaden the definition of Asian film canon as defined by the general public. alexwen.xyz

Cameron Worden is a filmmaker and projectionist originally from the Tampa Bay area. His first understanding of film as a precious and unique material came at the age of 20 when he purchased and subsequently broke four super 8 cameras in the span of a semester. Since then he has received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, figured out how to load a camera, arrive at a correct exposure, find focus, and thread a projector without mangling film. In 2015, Cameron brought his love of fringe movies and cinema mongrels to the Chicago Film Society, helping to piece together each season’s program, writing capsules, selling tickets, distributing print booklets, and filling other miscellaneous support functions. He reserves a great affection for Westerns, Structuralist film, American exploitation cinema, W.C. Fields, Mary Woronov, and Yasujiro Ozu.