Taiwanese Auteur Tsai Ming-liang to Be Honored With Locarno Film Festival Career Award

Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang, the arthouse darling known for works including Venice Golden Lion winner “Vive L’Amour” and “The River,” which scored the Berlin Silver Bear, will be celebrated by the Locarno Film Festival with its Honorary Leopard achievement award.

The iconoclastic auteur, who is a key figure in Taiwan’s so-called Second New Wave, will receive the prize from the Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema during an Aug. 6 ceremony held on its 8,000-seat outdoor Piazza Grande venue.

More from Variety

• Renzo Rossellini to Be Honored With Locarno Lifetime Achievement Award

• Lars Von Trier and Lucrecia Martel French Producer Marianne Slot to Be Honored by Locarno Film Festival

• 'March of the Penguins' Director Luc Jacquet to Be Honored by Locarno Film Festival

The tribute to Tsai Ming-liang will also involve an onstage conversation with the director on the future of cinema and a screening of the helmer’s 2020 film “Days” (Rizi), as well as an art gallery exhibition of his experimental works.

The Malaysian-born Tsai made his debut in the early 1990s, breaking out internationally with “Vive L’Amour” 1994, followed by “The River” in 1996 and “The Hole,” which bowed in Cannes in 1998. His “The Wayward Cloud” won a prize in Berlin in 2005, while “Visage” (Face) became the first film to be included in a Louvre Museum collection.

Over the years Tsai’s connections with the art world have grown. He has been invited to participate in various art exhibitions and VR film festivals, while developing edgy aesthetic ideas such as “Hand-sculpted Cinema” and “The removal of industrial processes from art making”.

In 2012, Tsai began his “Slow Walk” series and has since completed nine experimental films screened at art festivals and galleries around the world.

“The cinema of Tsai Ming-liang entails a passionate convergence of stories and languages,” said Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro in a statement.

“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,” Nazzaro also noted.

Previous recipients of Locarno’s Honorary Leopard include Francesco Rosi, Claudia Cardinale, Johnnie To, Harry Belafonte, Mario Adorf, Jane Birkin, and Costa-Gavras.

The 76th edition of Locarno will run Aug. 2-12.

Best of Variety

• 'Game of Thrones' Filming Locations in Northern Ireland to Open as Tourist Attractions

Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.