Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of filmmakers to emerge from the new Asian cinemas of the mid-1990s, Malaysia–born and Taiwan-based director Tsai Ming-liang has found significant critical acclaim for his spare postmodern allegories of contemporary life. His recurrent subject is the human condition, the solitary nature of individual lives, the rituals that engender survival, and the restorative powers of love.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Taiwan Studies, the Department of Film Studies, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, the screening of two movies by this prominent director at UCSB (October 2003) was further enhanced by a roundtable discussion with Director Tsai Ming-liang, Prof. Michael Berry (East Asian Languages), and Prof. Claire Conceison (Dramatic Art).

A cinematic meditation on the new millennium, What Time Is It There? creates a sublime, humorous, and affectionate examination of transience, connection, and coincidence, set in Taipei and Paris. Using recurrent allusive and dualistic imagery that figuratively link the disconnected lives of Hsiao Kang, his mother, and an attractive young woman named Shiang-chyi, Tsai visually unites their grief and longing into a universal existential portrait of contemporary alienation. Through comedic, yet achingly bittersweet episodes of near encounters, duality, and coincidence, What Time Is It There? transcends the bounds of geographical, cultural, and personal isolation to map the elusive metaphysical plane of human interconnectedness.

The short The Skywalk Is Gone, which can be considered an epilogue to What Time Is It There?, continues the journey of Shiang-chyi and Hsiao Kang. In the process, Tsai Ming-liang further develops his own cinematic exploration of disconnect, alienation, and loneliness.