Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Traditions in World Cinema
- Introduction
- 1 Charting the Course: Defining the Taiwanese Cinematic ‘Tradition’
- 2 Taiwanese–Italian Conjugations: The Fractured Storytelling of Edward Yang's The Terrorizers and Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up
- 3 Mapping Hou Hsiao-hsien's Visuality: Setting, Silence and the Incongruence of Translation in Flight of the Red Balloon
- 4 Tsai Ming-liang's Disjointed Connectivity and Lonely Intertextuality
- 5 The Chinese/Hollywood Aesthetic of Ang Lee: ‘Westernized’, Capitalist … and Box Office Gold
- 6 Filming Disappearance or Renewal? The Ever-Changing Representations of Taipei in Contemporary Taiwanese Cinema
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
4 - Tsai Ming-liang's Disjointed Connectivity and Lonely Intertextuality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Traditions in World Cinema
- Introduction
- 1 Charting the Course: Defining the Taiwanese Cinematic ‘Tradition’
- 2 Taiwanese–Italian Conjugations: The Fractured Storytelling of Edward Yang's The Terrorizers and Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up
- 3 Mapping Hou Hsiao-hsien's Visuality: Setting, Silence and the Incongruence of Translation in Flight of the Red Balloon
- 4 Tsai Ming-liang's Disjointed Connectivity and Lonely Intertextuality
- 5 The Chinese/Hollywood Aesthetic of Ang Lee: ‘Westernized’, Capitalist … and Box Office Gold
- 6 Filming Disappearance or Renewal? The Ever-Changing Representations of Taipei in Contemporary Taiwanese Cinema
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
Summary
Tsai's central subject is the loneliness of the human condition … his characters are invariably profoundly sad and alone but, seen from afar, the absurdity of their existence emerges, the tragicomic truth that, as lonely as they feel, they are always much closer to each other than their limited awareness allows them to recognize. (Rapfogel 26)
Tsai Ming-liang's inclination towards loneliness, alienation and ‘slowness’ in his films can be traced back to the earlier years of his life and career. Born in Kuching, Malaysia in 1957, Tsai spent a great deal of his youth attending local screenings of international films with his grandparents (Hughes, n.p.). Tsai has commented that his ‘slow-paced childhood’ allowed him to observe life in his home town from a leisurely perspective, arguably, according to Darren Hughes, the same perspective that characterises the slow style of his films. At the age of twenty, Tsai moved to Taipei and entered the Chinese Culture University where he studied film and drama and was exposed to the most famous of the European auteurs such as Michelangelo Antonioni, François Truffaut and Robert Bresson. In 1982, the year that Tsai graduated from the Chinese Culture University, Taiwan was in an era of transformation: America had passed the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979 and democratisation was in sight.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- New Taiwanese Cinema in FocusMoving Within and Beyond the Frame, pp. 97 - 125Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2014