Tsai Ming-liang will receive the Pardo alla carriera Ascona-Locarno Tourism at Locarno76 

The award-winning Taiwanese filmmaker will be honoured on 6 August at Piazza Grande. He will also be the main guest in a panel on the future of cinema, moderated by Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at USI Università della Svizzera italiana supported by Swisscom on 3 August. Additionally, his film "Rizi (Days, 2020)" will be screened during the Festival, and an exhibition of his experimental works will be on display at Il Rivellino starting 5 August. 

One of the key figures of the second wave of new Taiwanese cinema, Tsai Ming-liang made his debut in the early 1990s, capturing with his minimalist, rigorous and sensual cinema the bewilderment and powerlessness of a generation at the turn of the millennium. Always attentive to new expressive languages, he has also become a reference point for contemporary art, thanks to installations and VR experiences shown in galleries worldwide. 

Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival: "The cinema of Tsai Ming-liang entails a passionate convergence of stories and languages. From the outset he has been able to capture the multiple identities of a creative pathway through the complex articulations of both Taiwanese history and his personal story as a Chinese moving between Malaysia and Taiwan. In his films, eroticism and observation join with formal research and narration to form a filmography of striking beauty, awe and wonder, in which the urban melancholy of the post-modern metropolis has been given new and nuanced portrayals. Tsai Ming-liang is a filmmaker who examines the cinema and the world with lucidity and feeling". 

The programme of the tribute 

One of his latest films will be screened during the award ceremony on Piazza Grande on the evening of 6 August:

Rizi (Days), Tsai Ming-liang - Taiwan, France - 2020 - also presented on Saturday, 6 August at the GranRex Cinema. 

On Thursday, 3 August, Tsai Ming-liang will also meet the Festival audience during a conversation on explorations of social contexts in cinema and the future of audiovisuals, to be held at the Forum @Spazio Cinema, and moderated by Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at USI Università della Svizzera italiana supported by Swisscom. 

An impressive exhibition of the artist's vast collection will be showcased at Il Rivellino Gallery starting 5 August. The artist will be present at the opening, and the exhibition will be open to the public throughout the duration of the Festival. Visitors will have the opportunity to admire experimental productions such as Transformation (2012), Ni de lian (Your Face, 2018), and the performance The Tree (2021).

The Pardo alla carriera is supported by Ascona-Locarno Tourism, Destination partner of the Locarno Film Festival. Past winners include Francesco Rosi, Claude Goretta, Bruno Ganz, Claudia Cardinale, Johnnie To, Harry Belafonte, Peter-Christian Fueter, Sergio Castellitto, Víctor Erice, Marlen Khutsiev, Bulle Ogier, Mario Adorf, Jane Birkin, Fredi M. Murer, Dante Spinotti and, in 2022, Costa-Gavras. 

Tsai Ming-liang - Biography 

Tsai Ming-liang, a filmmaker born in Malaysia in 1957, gained recognition for his work after presenting his first feature film, Qing shao nian nuo zha (Rebels of the Neon God, 1992), at the 1992 Berlinale. His second film, Ai qing wan sui (Vive l'amour, 1994), won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, and He liu (The River, 1996) won the Jury Prize in Berlin. To this day, all of his feature films have been selected for major film festivals worldwide, and five of them have won the FIPRESCI Prize. Tsai's Visage (Face, 2009) was the first film to be included in the Le Louvre s'offre aux cinéastes collection at the Louvre Museum in 2009. In recent years, he has also participated in various exhibitions and events, introducing innovative ideas like "Hand-sculpted Cinema" and "The removal of industrial processes from art making". Since 2012, his "Slow Walk" series, comprising nine films, has been screened at festivals and art galleries globally. Tsai actively promotes the concepts of "Art Museum as Cinema" and "The Author's Intended Way of Viewing" in Taiwan, encouraging new ways of viewing films to counter the rampant commercialisation of cinema.