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.
