Kang-sheng Lee in What Time Is It There? (2001)
Kang-sheng Lee in What Time Is It There? (2001)
What Time Is It There? (2001)

The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present

What Time Is It There?

Tsai Ming-Liang | Taiwan | 2001 | Unclassified (15+)
Film

This event has ended and tickets are no longer available.

When

Wed 31 May 2023

Charting the search for connection across three parallel narratives – a watch seller in Taipei (Lee Kang-Sheng), his widowed mother (Lu Yi-Ching), and a woman travelling to Paris (Chen Shiang-Chyi) – Tsai’s breakthrough feature is his most surprisingly comical work. It also signals a new style – featuring minimal plot and a greater sense of stillness – that would define Tsai’s middle-period work. With Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Format: 35mm
Language: Mandarin, Taiwanese, and French with English subtitles
Source: Homegreen Films
Runtime: 116 mins

Event duration

116 mins

Rating

Unclassified (15+)

Where

Cinema 1, Level 2
ACMI, Fed Square

How to get there

Membership options

Mini membership
(3 consecutive weeks)
$28.5–$33.5

Annual memberships
$161–300

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Also screening on Wed 31 May

Program

One Day at a Time: The cinema of Tsai Ming-Liang

What Time Is It There? (2001) – Wed 31 May, 7pm
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) – Wed 31 May, 9.15pm
Rebels of the Neon God (1992) – Wed 7 Jun, 7pm
The Wayward Cloud (2005) – Wed 7 Jun, 9pm
The River (1997) – Wed 14 Jun, 7pm
Days (2020) – Wed 14 Jun, 9.10pm

View the full program

About the program

Of all the notable figures of to emerge in 1990s world cinema, few have developed a corpus of work as consistently transfixing and distinctive as that of Malaysian-Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang (1957–). Born in Kuching, Sarawak, Tsai was largely raised by his cinephile grandparents, who would take him to the movies twice a day from the age of three...

Read the full program notes
Tsai Ming-Liang - social

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About Melbourne Cinémathèque

Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.

Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven. 

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