Tsai Ming-Liang: An American Cinematheque Retrospective - Stray Dogs

The American Cinematheque is honored to welcome the legendary Malaysian-Taiwanese filmmaker, Tsai Ming-liang, in-person for a 14-film retrospective celebrating his incomparable career as one of the leading figures in the “Second New Wave” of Taiwanese cinema. Tsai’s work exudes an unparalleled beauty, as his camera lingers in and around the quiet corners of urban cities, forming enigmatic character studies in the lonely existence of his many alienated subjects. Actor Lee Kang-sheng is often tasked with embodying one of these lonely urban inhabitants, as he has appeared in all of Tsai’s feature films to-date, and whom we are pleased to welcome alongside the filmmaker in Q&As during this very special tribute to one of the vital voices in world cinema.

In Mandarin with English subtitles.

A single father makes his meager living holding up an advertising placard on a traffic island in the middle of a busy highway. His children wait out their days in supermarkets before they eat with their father and go to sleep in an abandoned building. As the father starts to come apart, a woman in the supermarket takes the children under her wing. There are real stray dogs to be fed in Tsai’s everyday apocalypse, but the title also refers to its principal characters, living the cruelest of existences on the ragged edges of the modern world.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Cinema Guild

COUNTRY: Taiwan/France

Cost: $8.00 (member); $13.00 (general admission)