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A Conversation with God

Yu sheng dui hua

dir. Tsai Ming-Liang / Tajwan 2001 / 30’

subtitles: Polish and English

retrospective: Tsai Ming-Liang A Conversation with God, All the Corners of the World, Boys, Face, Give Me a Home, Good Bye, Dragon Inn, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Moonlight on the River, My New Friends, My Stinking Kid, Rebels of the Neon God, The Hole, The River, The Skywalk Is Gone, The Wayward Cloud, Vive l’amour, What Time Is It There? Section index

Cast

Lee Kang-sheng

Film description

In this plotless film Tsai Ming-Liang compares different motifs and situations which serve as a commentary for each other. A man in a trance caused by ritual dancing is replaced by half-naked girls writhing in erotic postures to kitschy music. Dead and dying fish washed ashore, contaminated water, empty industrial spaces, a woman trying to ward off bad spirits. These seemingly unconnected images combine into a disturbing reflection on coexistence of spirituality and liflessness, eroticism and dehumanisation. This is neither a documentary nor a nightmarish vision, this is a project, an open statement. The director himself said about his work: I decided to use the most basic and simple way of filming. This changed the way I saw things. Filming the underground passage, I didn't consider it to be filming but rather using the camera as my eyes...

Karolina Kosińska