IJAPS, Vol. 13, No. 2, 141–160, 2017 THE MANY FACES OF TSAI MING-LIANG: CINEPHILIA, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, AND CINEMA IN THE GALLERY Beth Tsai * Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, United States email:
[email protected] Published online: 15 July 2017 To cite this article: Tsai, B. 2017. The many faces of Tsai Ming-liang: Cinephilia, the French connection, and cinema in the gallery. International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies 13 (2): 141–160, https://doi.org/10.21315/ijaps2017.13.2.7 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.21315/ijaps2017.13.2.7 ABSTRACT The Malaysia-born, Taiwan-based filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang's Visage (2009) is a film that was commissioned by the Louvre as part of its collection. His move to the museum space raises a number of questions: What are some of the implications of his shift in practice? What does it mean to have a film, situated in art galleries or museum space, invites us to think about the notion of cinema, spatial configuration, transnational co-production and consumption? To give these questions more specificity, this article willlook at the triangular relationship between the filmmaker's prior theatre experience, French cinephilia's influence, and cinema in the gallery, using It's a Dream (2007) and Visage as two case studies. I argue Tsai's film and video installation need to be situated in the intersection between the moving images and the alternative viewing experiences, and between the global and regional film cultures taking place at the theatre-within-a-gallery site.