Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang Talks Creative Freedom, TikTok and Box Office Disasters: ‘In Future, None of My Films Will Have a Script’
variety.comPatrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwan-based auteur Tsai Ming-liang, who has two films in the Berlinale this year, is a contrarian who would be almost at home working with art-galleries and museums as cinemas and film festivals.
Indeed, his new “Abiding Nowhere” is part financed by the Smithsonian Institute. “Abiding Nowhere,” which premieres on Monday in the Encounters section and consists of lonely wanderings through Washington DC by a barefoot monk, is, by Tsai’s own admission, “not a normal film.” “It does not have a story or a plot.
There are no performance and no language.It shares similarities with my other films, but pushed to extremes. Perhaps it is incomprehensible,” said Tsai, Friday, at a Berlin masterclass. “I’m not trying to tell you anything through script or performance.
It could be perfect for a gallery or museum, but I still hope it plays in theaters.” It is the second time that Tsai has screened a film from his “walker series” in Berlin. “To prepare for this one I went out and did sketching, like a painter.
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