Electric Shadows returns, with Tsai Ming-liang

In exactly two months’ time, the second edition of Electric Shadows will open at De Cinema in Antwerp. Starting today, we’ll gradually reveal the films to be screened between 29/9 and 2/10.

Last year’s festival ended with a screening of Tsai Ming-liang’s latest feature film Days (2020). We’re happy to announce that his work will return during our next edition. A program of his most recent shorts accentuates Tsai’s continued focus on patient observation within small-scale projects.

The Night (2021) offers a look at street life in Hong Kong after the sun has set and the frenzy of the city Tsai calls the Pearl of the East has subsided. Local music played a vital role in the creation of this short. It did too for The Moon and the Tree (2021), in which Tsai films two performers: ‘Moon singer’ Lee Pei-jing and actor Chang Feng.

Both shorts absorb the rhythm of their locations and the people inhabiting them. In Wandering (2021), Tsai revisits his well-known Walker series at an exhibition at the Dune in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films featuring actor Lee Kang-sheng as a slow-paced monk were being shown. Their static shots of slow movements in a high-speed environment have become an embodiment of Tsai’s aesthetical and philosophical approach.