Past Masters, New Waves: Tsai Ming-liang/François Truffaut

International audienceMeta-cinema in its various forms - quotations, reconstruction of the making of cinema, parody etc. - is an important site from where to observe and analyse cross-cultural relations and national aesthetic currents. The cinematic universe of Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮gives us a chance to examine contemporary Taiwanese art cinema strategy: to re-appropriate, analyse, parodize and reflect on its tradition, its legacy and its influence. Tsai Ming-liang is a Malaysian born overseas Chinese (huaqiao華僑). He moved to Taipei in the seventies to attend university, and has since become the nineties most representative auteur of the New Cinema. Thus, his career can be seen as the quintessential notion of Greater China, which implies the idea of a pervasive, transnational Chinese "traditional" culture that expands its boundaries well beyond the Popular Republic's borders