My New Friends

Tsai interrupted his pre-production for The River to make this pioneering documentary for Taiwan's nascent AIDS-awareness campaign. Ignoring instructions to 'play down the gay angle', he centres the film on his own very candid conversations with two HIV+ young men. Sadly the identities of the interviewees have to be concealed, and so the freewheeling camerawork focuses most often on Tsai himself; but the sense of rapport between the director and his 'new friends' is palpable and very moving, even to Western viewers already only too familiar with these issues.

Genre:

Documentary, TV Movie

Duration:

56 min

Cast:

Tsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, Pearlly Chua

Quality:

HD

Director:

Tsai Ming-liang

Release:

1995

Country:

Taiwan

Rating:

5.5