I have become tired of cinema. The so-called entertainment value of films in recent years, the mechanisms of the market, and the constant pandering to popular taste, all disgust me. I don’t feel the need to keep making films or, to put it more bluntly, to make the kinds of films that expect the patronage of cinema audiences anymore. I keep asking myself: what is cinema? Why make films? Who am I doing this for? Who is the mass audience? Are they the people who watch Spielberg movies? Frankly speaking, I am not interested in this at all… I can’t make films for the system. Cinema as an object of consumption limits my creativity. I feel disorientated by the speed imposed on us. For me, slowness is a technique, an instrument helping me to find a path through this disorientation.

My films talk about how modern people in their quest for material things reject real emotions. I think human beings are full of tenderness still. They aren’t stones but they need to be reminded that they are becoming stones.

—Tsai Ming-liang