A bald man dressed in a bright red cowl is asleep on the ground in the middle of the busy city. Suddenly, he wakes up, rises and takes a few slow steps before returning to his supine slumber. He is seemingly oblivious to both the passing of time and the flood of curious visitors who pass him by, some of them stopping to stare and take pictures before moving on.
This “monk” was in fact Taiwanese actor Lee Kangsheng in a performance called , created by his creative partner Tsai Ming-liang, and performed in late March at Hong Kong cultural hub Tai Kwun. Tsai is a “Second New Wave” director of Taiwanese cinema whose unconventional filmmaking methods have shaken up how Asian cinema presents city life and human emotions since the late 1980s. His inventiveness can be seen in his bold cinematic language—intentionally excluding dialogue from his works, using extreme close-ups and long shots, and telling a story without a plot—which has
