News

The 19th Jogja-Netpac Asian Film Festival has wrapped in Yogyakarta (Jogja), Indonesia, with local feature “Yohanna” dominating the Indonesian Screen Awards while Neo Sora’s “Happyend” secured the festival’s top Golden Hanoman Award.

“Yohanna,” directed by Razka Robby Ertanto, collected five honors including best film, director, storytelling, performance, and cinematography (Odyssey Flores). Truong Minh Quy’s “Viet and Nam” took home the Silver Hanoman Award.

In other awards, “Ma – Cry of Silence” by The Maw Naing won the Netpac Award and Geber Award, while Hung Chen’s “When the Wind Rises” secured both the Blencong Award and Jaff Student Award. Behzad Nalbandi’s “Anita, Lost in the News” received a Special Jury Mention.

The festival program featured a masterclass with Taiwan-based auteur Tsai Ming Liang, which attracted filmmakers like Riri Riza, Mira Lesmana, Kamila Andini, and Jaff director Ifa Isfansyah. Three of Tsai’s works were screened: “Vive L’Amour...

“Black Ox,” a powerful rural drama from Japan’s Tsuta Tetsuichiro, has been picked up for world sales by Hong Kong and Beijing-based agency Asian Shadows. The film has its world premiere on Friday in the Asian Future section of the Tokyo International Film Festival and will go on commercial release in Taiwan the following week.

Set in the 19th century, “Black Ox” follows the life of a man, transitioning from a hunter-gatherer existence in the mountains to a life in the farm. One day, he comes across an ox, which somehow, he succeeds in leading back to his home. He lives with the animal, which becomes his companion in a life of changing seasons.

The Japan-set film is inspired by the “Ten Ox-Herding Pictures” a series of short poems and illustrations from the Zen Buddhist tradition that depict the path to enlightenment and spiritual awakening.

The cast includes the Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng,...

What splits the fine line between desire and expectations? Is it a thing you can see? Is it a thing you can film?

Film at Lincoln Center’s new retrospective supposes that if any of those questions have answers, they might reside in the cinema of Edward Yang. Moving from “A Rational Mind”––the title of their 2011 retrospective of Yang’s work––to “Desire/Expectations” reframes those questions to be more diffuse, less singular. A rational mind could answer in the affirmative or negative; a slash indicates that desire and expectations may occupy the same terrain simultaneously.

“A rational mind” is also, perhaps, an accusation a Yang character could lob at another, especially in A Confucian Confusion (1994), a workplace farce that subjects a “culture company” in 1990s Taipei to the contradictions of Confucian teachings. In turn (or simultaneously), the film interrogates Confucian-influenced, consumer-friendly spaces––like 1990s Taipei––to rethink old-world molds of tradition and expectation.

Celebrated Malaysian-Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang sat down with Variety on the eve of receiving the Locarno Film Festival Career Award. The award is only the latest in a series of prizes from major European festivals the art-house maverick has received – from the 1994 Golden Lion from Venice for “Vive L’Amour” to the Silver Bear that “The River” won in Berlin in 1997.

So how does he feel to have received this latest sign of esteem from the film community?

“This is very special for me,” Tsai says. “I’m very happy, especially for my films which are not easy to see. Coming here and receiving a reward is a very big encouragement for me. Especially these festivals. They saw that I had embarked on a different way of creation. So here they gave me a space to show my short films.”

Since the 2010s, this “different way of creation” has seen Tsai...

Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang, the arthouse darling known for works including Venice Golden Lion winner “Vive L’Amour” and “The River,” which scored the Berlin Silver Bear, will be celebrated by the Locarno Film Festival with its Honorary Leopard achievement award.

The iconoclastic auteur, who is a key figure in Taiwan’s so-called Second New Wave, will receive the prize from the Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema during an Aug. 6 ceremony held on its 8,000-seat outdoor Piazza Grande venue.

The tribute to Tsai Ming-liang will also involve an onstage conversation with the director on the future of cinema and a screening of the helmer’s 2020 film “Days” (Rizi), as well as an art gallery exhibition of his experimental works.

The Malaysian-born Tsai made his debut in the early 1990s, breaking out internationally with “Vive L’Amour” 1994, followed by “The River” in 1996 and “The Hole,” which bowed in Cannes in 1998. His “The Wayward Cloud...

The Locarno Film Festival will fete multi-award-winning Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang with an Honorary Career Leopard award at the upcoming edition running from August 2 to 12.

Regarded as a key figure in the Second New Wave of Taiwanese cinema, Malaysian-born Tsai Ming-liang made his debut in the early 1990s, breaking out internationally with Vive L’Amour, which won Venice’s Golden Lion in 1994.

Other award-winning titles include with The River, which won the Jury Award at Berlin in 1996, while in 2009, his work Visage (Face) became the first film to be included in the collection of the Louvre Museum’s “Le Louvre s’offre aux cineastes”.

Tsai’s connections with the art world have grown over the years and he has been invited to participate in various art exhibitions and festivals, while he developed aesthetic ideas such as “Hand-sculpted Cinema” and “The removal of industrial processes from art making”.

The festival’s celebration...

Festival to pay tribute to work of the Taiwanese director.

Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang is to receive the Pardo Alla Carriera at the 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, which runs from August 3-13.

The festival will pay tribute to Tsai’s achievements in film and contemporary art with a screening of Days (2020), plus an exhibition of his experimental works including Transformation (2012), Your Face (2018) and The Tree (2021).

Tsai will also be at the centre of a panel conversation on the future of cinema moderated by Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival professor for the future of cinema and the...

Valentyn Vasyanovych’s film to open on May 6.

Film Movement has acquired North American rights from New Europe Film Sales to Ukrainian filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych’s timely Venice 2021 selection Reflection.

The drama centres on a Ukrainian surgeon who tries to rebuild his life after he is released by Russian forces and is a chilling foreshadowing of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war that erupted in late February.

The story opens in 2014 as Ukrainian surgeon Serhiy is captured by the Russians after he enlists to fight against them in the contested southeastern Donbas region.

As a prisoner of war he witnesses horrifying scenes...

Independent distributor Film Movement has picked up all North American rights to award-winning folk horror film “Seire.” The Korean chiller will be released theatrically in 2022, followed by launches on home entertainment and digital platforms.

The film takes as its central premise the Korean superstition that nobody in the family of a baby less than three weeks old – the ‘seire’ period – should attend a wake. And that failure to take precautions risks misfortune.

The story, penned by writer and first-time feature director Park Kang, sees the father of a newborn attend the funeral of an ex-girlfriend. His encounter with her twin sister is followed by a series of unexplained and discomforting episodes.

Park previously dipped his toe in the horror genre with short film “Deal” in which a man tries to trade away his nightmares with someone reputed to be a buyer.

The cast of “Seire” is headed by Seo Hyun-woo...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: The Temenos screening in Lyssarea, Greece.Registration for Temenos 2022, which will premiere a new section of avant-garde master Gregory Markopoulos's epic Eniaios, is now open. This very special event, which usually takes place every four years, will be taking place June 9-19 in Lyssarea, Greece. For more information on the Temenos screenings and the ongoing restoration of Eniaios, visit here.Hou Hsiao-hsien has announced two new projects: the long-gestating, Shu Qi-led film Shulan River, an adaptation of the Hsieh Hai-meng novel about a river goddess; and a yet unnamed project starring Chang Chen about "an elderly father and his son." Filmmaker, painter, writer, Nick Zedd has died. In addition to his darkly funny no-budget films like They Eat Scum (1979) and his zine Underground Film Bulletin, Zedd is coining the term "Cinema of...

Exclusive: Film Movement Classics has acquired North American rights to 2K digital restorations of Asghar Farhadi’s first two features Dancing in the Dust and Beautiful City, which have been signed off on by the two-time Oscar winner himself. Both restored dramas will be released theatrically this year, with a release on all heading home entertainment and digital platforms to follow.

In Farhadi’s 2003 feature directorial debut Dancing in the Dust, Nazar (Yousef Khodaparast) is pressured into divorcing his wife (Baran Kosari) because of her family’s bad reputation. This leads to money problems, and before long, he’s on the run due to debts that he can’t pay. Hiding out in the desert, he meets an eccentric elderly man (Faramarz Gharibian) who makes a living by collecting venom from poisonous snakes. Nazar becomes his unlikely partner and gets an unexpected chance at redemption. The film won Best Director,...

It’s a good time for Tsai Ming-liang fans. Not long after his latest masterpiece, Days, opened to the widest acclaim he’s ever received and Goodbye, Dragon Inn got an incredible new shine, another consensus favorite comes back looking good as new. Next month Film Movement will release a restoration of 1994’s Vive L’Amour, perhaps the first example of Tsai’s revolutionary approach to slow-cinema form—the carefully delineated narratives, the romantic longing expressed with emphasis on long, an early example of Lee Kang-sheng’s utter fearlessness.

And boy does this trailer looks great! Worlds beyond the horrible DVD I got from Netflix via God knows what now-defunct company in 2014. Enough time’s passed between now and then, with enough evidence in this preview, to suggest this opening (March 18 at Metrograph) will be like having a new Tsai picture.

Find the preview and poster below:

The sophomore feature from...

Legendary filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang, one of the giants of Taiwan’s Second New Wave, made his long-awaited return to filmmaking last year with “Days,” which IndieWire’s David Ehrlich described as “one of the year’s most touching films.” The auteur has primarily devoted himself to museum installations since announcing his retirement from film in 2013, but he has proved that when he does choose to make movies, the results are worth paying attention to. Now fans of Tsai have even more to look forward to, as Film Movement has announced the theatrical release of a new 2K restoration of “Vive L’Amour,” his 1994 film that won the coveted Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

“Vive L’Amour” was Tsai’s second feature film and helped establish his trademark style, which consists of slow, meticulously paced filmmaking featuring gay characters and themes of social alienation. The film is also notable for starring Lee Kang-sheng,...

In the acclaimed director Chung Mong-Hong’s latest dramatic offering, “The Falls,” a high school student is forced to confront the wounds of a strained relationship with her mother when the two of them are forced to stay at home because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Auteur Tsai Ming-Liang, on the other hand, takes the audience on a time machine in short film “The Night,” sending them back to one night during the fall of 2019, when Hong Kong was in the midst of the worst political turmoil it has ever seen.

“The Falls” and “The Night” are the two offerings from Taiwan featured at this year’s Venice Film Festival. While “The Falls” is a dramatic feature from a director who has won the hearts of some of the world’s toughest film critics with drama “A Sun,” which was shortlists for the international film Oscar, “The Night” is an artistic...

Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang’s short “The Moon and the Tree” will world premiere at the upcoming Taipei Film Festival. The 23rd iteration will be held in-person from Sept. 23 to Oct. 9.

“The Moon and the Tree” will debut after Tsai’s 19-minute short “The Night” opens out of competition at Venice.

This will mark the third consecutive year that the Taipei Film Festival has featured work from Tsai. It screened his short “Your Face” in 2019, and his films “Days” and “Goodbye, Dragon Inn” in 4K restoration in 2020.

“Although it’s a short film, I’m serious about my participation in the festival,” Tsai said. He will participate in a discussion with the audience at the fest.

“The Moon and the Tree” features and tells the story of notable Taiwanese artists Lee Pei-jing and Chang Feng.

Lee rose to fame in the 1970s with her pop hit “I Love the Moon,...

A plumber drills a hole between the basement of one apartment and the ceiling of another as a strange disease that causes people to act like cockroaches sweeps over Taiwan at the turn of the millennium. A depressed homeless man, desperate to provide for his family but invisible to the people who drive past his roadside advertising sign, violently mauls the cabbage that his young daughter has adopted as a friend. A Taipei cinema screens King Hu’s “Dragon Inn” during a torrential downpour on its final night in business as various patrons shuffle around inside the theater, each of them looking for a connection that seems to be flickering away forever before our eyes.

While Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang has long been associated with slow cinema, the non-linear deceleration of his style has been interjected with soaring dreamscapes, electric moments of self-reflexivity, and even a handful of sexually charged musical numbers.

Director Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most distinguished directors of the new cinema movement in Taiwan. Born in Malaysia, he moved to Taiwan at the age of 20. There he graduated from the Drama and Cinema Department of the Chinese Cultural University of Taiwan in 1982 and went on working as a theatrical producer, screenwriter, and television director in Hong Kong.

His first feature film was “Rebels of the Neon God” in 1992, a film about troubled youth in Taipei, and with his second film, “Vive L’Amour” in 1994, won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang is one of Taiwan’s most prominent Taiwanese directors.

A puppet master of slowness, a monk dwelling in the eeriness of time, a philosopher of human loneliness and restlesness of a body. When water is peacefully falling down, drop by drop; when lovers say...

Though his debut feature “Rebels of the Neon God” is now also widely praised, it was with his second production “Vive L’Amour” that Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang really burst onto the world stage. The feature had it premiere at the 51st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the prestigious Golden Lion award. It also went on to win the Best Picture, Best Director and Best Sound Effects awards at the Golden Horse Awards.

“Vive L’Amour” is streaming on Mubi

It all starts when Hsiao-kang, a salesman, finds the key to a new duplex apartment and quietly pockets it. One night, he sneaks into the empty apartment and after using the bath, gets ready to take his life by cutting his wrist. Elsewhere, Ah-jung sees May Lin, a real estate agent, at a food court and follows her. When May Lin catches on to the man’s advances, she invites...

Director Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most distinguished directors of the new cinema movement in Taiwan. Born in Malaysia, he moved to Taiwan at the age of 20. There he graduated from the Drama and Cinema Department of the Chinese Cultural University of Taiwan in 1982 and went on working as a theatrical producer, screenwriter, and television director in Hong Kong.

His first feature film was “Rebels of the Neon God” in 1992, a film about troubled youth in Taipei, and with his second film, “Vive L’Amour” in 1994, won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang is one of Taiwan’s most prominent Taiwanese directors.

We speak with him about a different approach to VR cinema, his hate of script-writing, the future of films and a fish called Pom Pom.

A collection of Tsai Ming Liang’s movies is streaming...

Tsai Ming-liang's Walker (2012) and No No Sleep (2015) are showing on Mubi starting September 19, 2020 in many countries in a double bill.Above: Journey to the WestTsai Ming-liang once described his interest in the seventh-century monk Chen Xuanzang as an “obsession.” Popularized in the classic Ming dynasty novel Journey to the West, the monk made a pilgrimage along the Silk Road, to India, which ended up taking seventeen years. As Tsai recounts, “There was no car, no train, no airplane, and no cell phone. He just walked.” The novel paints Xuanzang as a foot servant obeying the orders of the imperial court, but for Tsai he is a “rebel.” In earlier historical documents—the inspiration for Tsai’s series of Walker films—Xuanzang defies the state’s travel ban because he believes the Buddhist sutras must be translated from Sanskrit and imported to China. Tsai told another interviewer that Xuanzang was “one...