Tsai Ming-Liang and a Cinema of Slowness

This is the first dedicated study of all of Tsai Ming-Liangs feature length films to date. One of contemporary cinemas most distinctive filmmakers, Tsais films are typically slow paced and minimalist in plot, dialogue and characterization, full of static long takes with very little happening within the shots. Rather than provide a chronological survey of Tsais films, the book is theorized through the concept of slowness. It examines the two filmic elements, sights and sound, through detailed analysis of Tsais use of stillness and silence, it also situates Tsais filmmaking in the context of a trend in contemporary cinema toward slowness, by directors as diverse as Abbas Kiarostami, Bela Tarr, and Aleksandr Sokurov. The author argues that slowness in cinema can be seen as a response to the increasing pace of mainstream films as well as to the unstoppable speed of a postmodern world compressed in time and space.