In conjunction with ‘The Man with the Film Projector’ (23 April – 5 May 2015), Kao Chung-li’s first solo exhibition in the UK, LUX is hosting a screening and panel discussion which aims to explore the history of experimental film in Taiwan as well as Kao’s specific film aesthetics.
The screening will showcase a number of rare films, never previously shown in the UK, including Zhuang Ling’s Life Continued (1966) and Chang Chao-tang’s Face in Motion (1970). Zhuang Ling was one of the core members of Theatre Quarterly, a self-funded avant-garde magazine which introduced European art and film theory to Taiwan, and was published in Taipei by a group of young film aficionados and intellectuals in the 1960s during the martial law era. In a claustrophobic environment that exercised strict thought control, Western modernity represented for these young people an attempt to break free. Chang Chao-tang participated in Theatre’s second experimental film screening with his short film Diary (1967). He later worked at a government-controlled TV station where he made Face in Motion as a result of being bored beyond belief. Kao Chung-li’s early experimental film Home Movies (1988), which inspired Yu Wei-yen’s film Gang of Three Forever (1989), will also be shown at LUX.
Chaired by George Clark, Assistant Curator of Film at Tate Modern, the panel will consist of Chang Shih-lun, a PhD candidate at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, and Chou Yu-ling, the curator of the exhibition of Kao Chung‐li’s work at The Peltz Gallery (Birbeck), who will discuss Kao’s idiosyncratic investigation of cinematic language, film history, and the Cold War politics within the historical context of Taiwan, as well as the relationship between home movies and Taiwanese early experimental film.
With thanks to Birkbeck, University of London, the Ministry of Culture (Republic of China, Taiwan), and the Taipei Representative office in the UK.
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