In exactly two months' time, the second edition of Electric Shadows will open at De Cinema in Antwerp. Starting today, the films to be screened between 29/9 and 2/10 will be gradually revealed.
Last year's festival ended with a screening of Tsai Ming-liang's latest feature film Days (2020) and his work will return during the 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.
