Taiwanese Film Director Tsai Ming-Liang To Be Honored At Locarno Film Festival

Tsai Ming-Liang - SOPA Images

The Locarno Film Festival will honor multi-award-winning Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang with an Honorary Career Leopard Award in the festival’s upcoming ceremony running from August 2-12, 2023. 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 notable works include The River, which earned the Jury Prize in 1996, and Visage (Face), the first movie featured in the Louvre Museum's "Le Louvre s'offre aux cineastes" collection in 2009. Tsai developed aesthetic ideas like "Hand-sculpted Cinema" and "The removal of industrial processes from art making" as his relationships with the art world deepened over time. He has since been invited to numerous art exhibitions and festivals. The festival’s celebration of Tsai’s career will include a panel conversation with the director on the future of cinema on August 3 and a screening of his 2020 film Days (Rizi). He will be presented with the prize at the Locarno’s landmark Piazza Grande open-air screening venue on August 6, 2023.

Locarno’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro describes Ming-Liang’s work as “a passionate convergence of stories and languages,” adding, “he has been able to capture the multiple identities of a creative pathway through the complex articulations of both Taiwanese history and his personal story as a Chinese moving between Malaysia and Taiwan.” The tribute will also include a public exhibition featuring experimental works such as Transformation (2012), Your Face (2018), and The Tree (2021).

Previous recipients of the Honorary Career Leopard include Johnnie To Kei-Fung and Harry Belafonte.