Tsai Ming-Liang Talks Beauty of Slow Cinema and Teases New Feature Film With Regular Actor Lee Kang-Sheng: ‘I Just Want to Look at Him Again’

Malaysian director Tsai Ming-liang might be done with his semi-retirement. “I have a strong desire to make another feature film,” he tells Variety at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival.

“With my actors, we’ve been working together for such a long time. Recently, they’ve been starring in other people’s films and I want them to be in my film again. I am waiting for them to reach a certain age, and we will do it again. Hopefully, I’ll live long enough to see that happen. Just one more feature film! That’s enough for me.”

His biggest concern?

“My physicality. Do I still have the energy to shoot more films? Looking back, I can see I am different now, but I also like the idea of being old and having a different energy,” says the 67-year-old, still dedicated to “making portraits” of his actors.

“I want to do it when they are older, too. Maybe it will be a very long take of their face. Since I’ve made my first film, I knew I wouldn’t make too many of them in my life. I had this rough number in my mind: Ten. The 10th film, ‘Stray Dogs,’ was exactly when I started to feel frustrated.”

Later, he followed it with “Days.”

“It just popped up out of nowhere. For the 12th, the vital reason to make it is my love for these actors, especially Lee Kang-Sheng – I’ve been working with him for almost 40 years. I just want to look at him again.”

Treated with a tribute at the Czech fest – “The films they’re screening here… Even I forgot I’d made them,” he giggles – the director has enjoyed a critically acclaimed career. Although 2013’s “Stray Dogs” earned him an award in Venice, he stepped away from feature films soon after.

“I was very tired of the way this movie was made. Of that whole setting where you need all these people and everything needs to be timed and checked. With ‘Days,’ well, it wasn’t intended to be a movie. It was just me, documenting things. At first, I wanted it to be shown in museums.”

He wanted to remind the audience, especially in Asia, that they “need museums in their lives.”

“I think this kind of space allows artists more freedom, but I also want to remove this distinction between cinema and museum. The ‘Walker’ series, which is a project of 10 films, was also supposed to be shown there. Then I changed my mind.”

The world might be speeding up, but he still champions slow cinema.

“It’s not about the pace, it’s about the content. My latest ‘Walker’ was shown in Vienna last week and you would think the audience would just fall asleep. They stayed very focused! A slow film creates a lot of possibilities,” he argues.

“My first experience of looking at something for a long time was ‘Goodbye, Dragon Inn’ [made in 2003]. It was mostly about that old cinema where I spent my younger years and when they were about to close, I decided to shoot there. There was one very long take: six, seven minutes of the seats in the cinema. It was not supposed to be that long, but I just couldn’t let go. I was overwhelmed by emotions and memories,” he recalls.

“I also have a more personal experience of looking at something for a very long time. It was when my mother passed away. I kept looking at her face for hours. All the time, until she was gone. It was beautiful.”

He believes the younger generation can appreciate slower films, he says. Ironically enough, they might just need more time.

“I was once invited to deliver a lecture. It was very early in the morning, so the students were restless. They were not focused at all. They were putting on makeup, eating. Afterwards, this old gentleman who was a professor there came to talk to me. He said: ‘Don’t worry. One day, when they are older, they will watch your films.’ I don’t know if it’s true, but all these new things are filling up their lives now. When they’ll get tired of them, I’ll be waiting.”

Despite a penchant for experiments, Tsai Ming-liang still prefers the cinema of the past. His desert island movie pick? 1950s classic “The Night of the Hunter,” starring Robert Mitchum.

“I haven’t been watching that many new films recently. They are too similar and put too much emphasis on the plot. They used to be more personal. I think we should go back to the ideas of the French New Wave, to the auteur cinema. In the art world, it’s still like that – you go to see an exhibition of a certain artist. Vincent van Gogh, da Vinci. In cinema, we should do the same,” he laughs.

“Personally, I hope my last ever film will be without a title. It will just say: ‘Tsai Ming-liang.’”