Lee Kang-sheng

Lee Kang-sheng

Birth : 1968-10-12, Taipei, Taiwan

History

Lee Kang-sheng (Chinese: 李康生; Pinyin: Lǐ Kāngshēng, b. 1968 in Taipei, Taiwan) is a Taiwanese actor, film director, and screenwriter. He has appeared in all of Tsai Ming-liang's feature films. Lee's directorial efforts include The Missing in 2003 and Help Me Eros in 2007.

Profile

Lee Kang-sheng
Lee Kang-sheng

Movies

Abiding Nowhere
The walker with the shaved head and dressed in a red robe is barefoot. He walks slowly but determinedly through the forest, over stones and grassland. He also makes his way through the shadows of trees and houses. He sets foot in the train station, the church and the museum. The sun rises and sets again. The walker passes through Washington, D.C. Another stranger is also on the move in the city. We are unsure whether or not he is following the walker.
Absence
After ten years in prison, Han Jiangyu returns to Hainan Island. Housing construction is booming, his childhood friend is now rich. Searching for traces of the familiar, Jiangyu meets his old love who now has a daughter.
Lost in the Forest
Executive Producer
Asheng, once a gang member of the Zhongshan District, was sent to jail for 12 years after saving his friend Shaou. He is released and returns to Linsen North Road, his old turf, finding it familiar yet perplexing after being away for so many years. Shaou is now a mob boss with his own turf. When the son of Seagull’s patron, Mr. Xiao, is murdered, the evidence points to up-and-coming mobster Monkey. Shauo tries to ambush Monkey and fails, getting shot by the drugged up gangster instead. Asheng, who initially refused to help Shaou, is now filled with rage and decides to avenge his friend.
Lost in the Forest
Asheng, once a gang member of the Zhongshan District, was sent to jail for 12 years after saving his friend Shaou. He is released and returns to Linsen North Road, his old turf, finding it familiar yet perplexing after being away for so many years. Shaou is now a mob boss with his own turf. When the son of Seagull’s patron, Mr. Xiao, is murdered, the evidence points to up-and-coming mobster Monkey. Shauo tries to ambush Monkey and fails, getting shot by the drugged up gangster instead. Asheng, who initially refused to help Shaou, is now filled with rage and decides to avenge his friend.
Making-of du tournage de Tsai Ming-Liang au Centre Pompidou
Where
Monk
The ninth opus of his Walker Films series, which was shot at Centre Pompidou.
The Wind Will Say
Chen’s daughter is returning from the UK after her university graduation. On the weekend of her return, Chen accidentally learns her secret when they are hijacked by two ruffians.
Fantasy · World
Tang Shicheng
A cold, hard-nosed lawyer, Zhang, discovers that his past client, Tang, is involved in yet another case of sexual assault. Thirteen years ago, Zhang was a rookie and mentored by a senior lawyer, Tu. Young and ambitious as Zhang was, his outstanding performance successfully helped Tang exonerated from the charge. However, the brutal cross-examination on the victim inevitably became his nightmare. After so many years, tormented by guilt, Zhang finally has the opportunity to atone for his mistakes and avenge the girl he loved. Challenged by Tu and Tang, he decides to pursue justice at any cost.
Hotel Iris
Somewhere on the coast of Taiwan is Hotel Iris, a mouldering seaside establishment run by a cold and thrifty Japanese woman (Nahana) and her lonely half-Taiwanese daughter Mari (Lucia). One night, Mari hears the cries of a woman from the upper floors. Heading up to investigate, she witnesses a distraught woman in a red camisole dress escape an impeccably dressed but violent man (NAGASE Masatoshi) whose cold voice is entrancing. Mari’s initial shock turns into a strange fascination which drives her to follow the man to discover more about him. He is a translator who lives on an isolated island one can only reach by boat and rumours swirl around him and recent murders. The closer she gets to the man, the more a hidden layer of Mari’s personality awakens as she allows herself to be engulfed by his strange passions…
Wandering
This short by Tsai Ming-liang, completed in 2021, was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his Walker series were being shown.
Come and Go
Xiao Kang
Tourists, foreigners and outcasts converge on the streets of Osaka in this sprawling ensemble drama by Japan-based, Malaysia-born filmmaker Lim Kah Wai. His eighth feature explores the lesser-known aspects of the Asian melting pot city through the eyes and experiences of a dozen characters who struggle to find their place in society: among them a Nepali refugee with dreams of opening a restaurant, a Burmese student struggling to make ends meet while working two jobs, and a Taiwanese sex tourist who travels to meet his favorite adult video actress.
Grit
Chief Liu
Ko Chen-tung (You Are the Apple of My Eye, Road to Mandalay) and Angelica Lee (The Eye, The Garden of Evening Mists) make an unusual romantic pairing in this offbeat romantic comedy from director-cinematographer Chen Ta-pu. Ko plays Croc, a young gangster who goes back to work for his former boss at a city councilor’s office after his release from jail. Croc’s latest task is to deal with Ping, a headstrong farmer who adamantly refuses to give up her land for redevelopment. As Croc and Ping develop feelings for each other, Croc is determined to become a better man and hang on to his newfound happiness — even if it means defying his own mob.
Absence
Han Jiangyu
After ten years in prison, Han Jiangyu returns to Hainan Island. Housing construction is booming, his childhood friend is now rich. Searching for traces of the familiar, Jiangyu meets his old love who now has a daughter.
Days
Kang
Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.
Abyssal Spider
Ship's Captain
Rescue member Ajie and his companions rescued a reef tanker in the storm, but met the captain who was stubborn and unwilling to give up. At the same time, a dark shadow haunted the deep sea and dragged everyone into the sea. From then on, the surviving Ajie, bearing the shadow of his colleagues' deaths, became decadent and disheartened. Many years later, Ajie overcomes the shadow and boards a fishing boat again. They rescue Xiaojing, who had fallen into the sea after his yacht overturned. Once onboard, things start growing strange. When the trapped people face the storm's severe test, they find the most dangerous thing is far more than this. There are unknown creatures coveting under the water. The savage people must put aside their prejudices and work together to survive.
The Rope Curse 2
Huo-ge
Jia-min, who was born sensitive to the paranormal, tries to summon "Yi-A-Gu" with two streamers. Huo-ge helps Jia-min subdue the spirit when the situation goes out of hand. Huo-ge possesses supernatural powers but lost his will to exorcise demons during a battle with the Thai Demon five years ago. As the wave of suicides continues, the village is thrown into chaos. Another battle is about to begin.
Your Face
Self
Composed of a series of portrait shots of mostly anonymous individuals, filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang's digital experiment turns the human face into a subject of dramatic intrigue.
Sand
self
In 2018, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited by the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area Administration to make this film, his eighth in the "Walker" series. In the constant passage of time, the Zen-like footsteps of the Walker has finally allowed us to see the Pacific Ocean, the open sky, the seagulls, the black sand, an eel catching settlement that arose in the cold winter rain, the twisting branches of the lintou trees, flotsam piled up like mountains, and a newly constructed cement house, which seems to offer a temporary place of rest for the Walker. "Sand" premiered together with the opening of the Zhuangwei Dune Visitor Center.
The Deserted
Tsai Ming-Liang, the artisan of cinematography approaches virtual reality, pushing the boundaries of VR film. The Deserted stripped away traditional film techniques and is presented in 360 degrees, like a theatre. The viewer is placed in the scene and is allowed to look freely at the construction of the environment. And immersed in the handcraft of the scenes.
Single Belief
Director
Ximending was once the trendiest area in Taipei, and it's also where Kang-sheng Lee's first film was shot. Twenty years ago, director Ming-liang Tsai asked Lee if he wanted to be in his film, and Lee's answer changed the course of his own life forever. Now Lee returns to where his career began to shoot a film about himself.
Single Belief
Ximending was once the trendiest area in Taipei, and it's also where Kang-sheng Lee's first film was shot. Twenty years ago, director Ming-liang Tsai asked Lee if he wanted to be in his film, and Lee's answer changed the course of his own life forever. Now Lee returns to where his career began to shoot a film about himself.
Autumn Days
A documentary about Nogami Teruyo, who for nearly half a century stood by Akira Kurosawa as a screenwriting collaborator, a script supervisor, and a companion.
The Tenants Downstairs
Guo Li
A loafer inherits an apartment block and lets out the place to a group of tenants, including a lusty gymnastics teacher, a geeky college student, a single father with his young daughter, a gay couple, a writer and a sexy female office worker. An incredible story is about to unfold as they start their lives in the same building.
Black Ox
Xiao Kang
Xiao Kang
This is the festival trailer for Viennale - Vienna International Film Festival 2015. The trailer will be shown in over 100 cinemas in Austria and Germany and during the festival in several cinemas in Vienna.
Afternoon
Self
Lush jungle and a building in ruins are the ideal stage for a film-confession that defies storytelling and goes beyond conversation on cinema. Tsai Ming-Liang and his actor Lee Kang-sheng confess and put on stage a pièce in which attention and slowness are in tune with the rhythm of memory. The unveiling of Tsai Ming-liang’s filmmaking: from Stray Dogs to the most intimate notes of the director-actor relationship.
Sashimi
Chen-ming
A Japanese porno actor, HIV positive, commits suicide. Natsumi, a popular porno actress who has often worked with him, learns that she is also HIV positive and becomes desperate. She receives mysterious post cards at times from Taiwan, and decides to go to Taiwan to solve the mystery. The latest film by director PAN Chih-yuan of “The Touch of Fate”, which brought him multiple nominations at the Golden Horse Awards. LEE Kang Sheng, Golden Horse Awards’ Best Actor winner, plays the leading role. Co-star HATANO Yui gives a wonderful performance in her debut feature.
No No Sleep
Monk
In 2015, Tsai Ming-Liang was once again invited by the Hong Kong International Film Festival to make the opening short film. This time, he selected Shibuya station in Tokyo as his main filming location and invited the famous Japanese actor Masanobu Ando to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng. They sleep separately at a capsule hotel and cleanse themselves at a public bath. Their fatigued bodies yearn for sleep but restless minds keep them for falling asleep. "No No Sleep" won the Best Director Award at the Taipei Film Festival.
Stray Dogs
Producer
An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.
Stray Dogs
Father
An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.
Journey to the West
Monk
In 2014, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited to make a film for the MarseilleFID, Marseille International Film Festival. Since he was not familiar with Marseille, he decided to make a film as tourist, capturing the beautiful Mediterranean sunshine in the late summer of that year. He also invited famous French actor, Denis Lavant, to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng playing Xuanzang. "Journey to the West" was invited to be the opening short film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year.
Le voyage en Occident
Monk
Letters from the South
Xiao Kang (segment "Walking on Water")
Six filmmakers present six short films about the experiences of Chinese immigrants. Shot across Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar, the anthology depicts the crisis of identity that accompanies international migration.
Walking on Water
In 2013, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited by Malaysian filmmaker Tan Chui Mui to make a short film for an anthology film, "Letters from the South". Tsai Ming-Liang returned to his hometown in Kuching, Malaysia and made a "Walker" film at his childhood home, "Walking on Water". The seven-storey flat which contained the happy memories of his childhood is now occupied by strangers. His old neighbour, an older girl who used to bathe and feed him when he was a child, has also grown old.
Past Present
Self
A contemplative trip down memory lane with one of the leading voices of the Second New Wave of Taiwanese Cinema. Saw Tiong Guan clearly established a very personal bond with his subject, and also found many of Tsai Ming-liang’s colleagues prepared to complete this portrait of a quiet yet outspoken artist.
Walker
Monk
In 2012, the Hong Kong International Film Festival invited Tsai Ming-Ling to make the opening short film. Having grown up with Hong Kong's popular culture, Tsai Ming-Liang decided to pay homage by making a "Walker" film, contrasting the Walker's slowness with the frenzied pace of Hong Kong's cosmopolitan life. The film ends with a song by Hong Kong actor and singer Samuel Hui, who was Tsai Ming-Liang's idol during his youth. The film was invited to be the closing short film for the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.
Diamond Sutra
In 2012, Taiwanese architects Michael Lin and Liao Wei-li invited Tsai Ming-Liang to create moving visuals for their exhibit at the Venise Architecture Biennale. Using the space at their preview exhibition in Taiwan, Tsai Ming-Liang made two short films, "Sleepwalk" and "Diamond Sutra", using the "Walker" concept. "Diamond Sutra" was later selected to be the opening short film for the Venise Film Festival. Tsai-Ming Liang said that gazing at the steam rising from a rice cooker reminded him of his mother's face as she laid dying, exhaling her final breath.
Sleepwalk
A continuation of Tsai Ming-Liang's Walker series, featuring Lee Kang-Sheng as a barefoot monk who walks very slowly.
No Form
In 2011, Tsai Ming-Liang staged a play, "Only You", for Taiwan's National Theater and Concert Hall. In it, there was a powerfully moving scene where monk Xuanzang walked at an extremely slow pace for half an hour. Lamenting the transient nature of theater, Tsai decided to make a movie out of this slow-walking performance, "No Form", the first of his "Walker Films" series.
Beautiful 2012
A collection of shorts by four East Asian directors: Ann Hui on a male-to-female sex change, Kim Tae-yong on an emotional imposture, Gu Changwei on pregnancy in China and Tsai Ming-Liang on time and the city of Hong Kong.
Taipei 24H
Writer
Taipei 24H divides 24 hours in Taipei into 8 shorts. It opens with Cheng Fen-fen's upbeat and comedic "Share the Morning", and ends with Lee Kang-sheng running the final leg of this relay with "Remembrance" at 4am. Well-known director Tsai Ming-liang makes a rare appearance visiting a late night coffee shop. Taipei 24H is a contemporary urban chronicle of a city rarely at sleep.
Taipei 24H
Director
Taipei 24H divides 24 hours in Taipei into 8 shorts. It opens with Cheng Fen-fen's upbeat and comedic "Share the Morning", and ends with Lee Kang-sheng running the final leg of this relay with "Remembrance" at 4am. Well-known director Tsai Ming-liang makes a rare appearance visiting a late night coffee shop. Taipei 24H is a contemporary urban chronicle of a city rarely at sleep.
Face
Kang / The Director
Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.
Flowers in the Mirror, Moon in the Water
Self / Hsiao Kang - the director / St. John Baptist
The title of the François Lunel film is the Buddhist proverb concluding by: "all is but illusion". His movie draws the Tsai Ming-Liang's face during the shooting of his movie Visage, which itself is also a movie within a movie.
Help Me, Eros
Ah Jie
Having lost all his money in the stock market, a depressed man falls in love with a woman over a suicide helpline.
Help Me, Eros
Writer
Having lost all his money in the stock market, a depressed man falls in love with a woman over a suicide helpline.
Help Me, Eros
Director
Having lost all his money in the stock market, a depressed man falls in love with a woman over a suicide helpline.
It's a Dream
To celebrate its 60th anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival invited around thirty filmmakers to create three-minute short films to compose the collective film Chacun son cinema. Tsai Ming-liang proposed a twinned piece with his feature Goodbye, Dragon Inn, an exploration of the movie theater as a public space and collective experience. Shortly after, Tsai put on this new version of the piece, twenty minutes longer, which was presented at the Venice Biennale.
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
Hsiao-Kang
Rawang, an immigrant from Bangladesh living in awful conditions, takes pity on a Chinese man, Hsiao-kang, who is beaten up and left in the street. Rawang lovingly nurses him on a mattress he found. When he is almost healed, Hsiao-kang meets the waitress Chyi. His love for Rawang is put to the test.
The Wayward Cloud
Hsiao-Kang
Hsiao-Kang, now working as an adult movie actor, meets Shiang-chyi once again. Meanwhile, the city of Taipei faces a water shortage that makes the sales of watermelons skyrocket.
My Stinking Kid
Screenplay
Drama about a young boy who suffers from a rare deficiency disease. The medicine he has to take every day has the side effect of making him reek of ammonia. The consequent bullying and ostracism by schoolmates exacerbates the boy's sense of victimhood. His mother, meanwhile, runs a help-line for parents with comparable problems.
My Stinking Kid
Director
Drama about a young boy who suffers from a rare deficiency disease. The medicine he has to take every day has the side effect of making him reek of ammonia. The consequent bullying and ostracism by schoolmates exacerbates the boy's sense of victimhood. His mother, meanwhile, runs a help-line for parents with comparable problems.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Projectionist
On a dark and rainy night, a historic and regal Taipei cinema sees its final film: 1967 martial arts feature "Dragon Inn". As the film plays, the lives of the theater's various employees and patrons intersect, and two ghostly actors arrive to mourn the passing of an era.
The Missing
A grandmother is looking for her grandson, a teenager for his grandfather.
The Missing
Writer
A grandmother is looking for her grandson, a teenager for his grandfather.
The Missing
Director
A grandmother is looking for her grandson, a teenager for his grandfather.
The Skywalk Is Gone
Hsiao-Kang
A young woman wandering around meets a young man going to a casting call for a pornographic film.
Looking for Tsai
Himself
Human shortcomings in the pursuit of an idol. Two film school students travel to interview Taiwanese film director Tsai Ming-liang and actor Lee Kang-sheng in Oslo.
Away We Go
阿輝
What Time Is It There?
Producer
When a young street vendor with a grim home life meets a woman on her way to Paris, they forge an instant connection. He changes all the clocks in Taipei to French time, as he watches François Truffaut's Les 400 Coups; she has a strange encounter with its now-aging star, Jean-Pierre Leaud.
What Time Is It There?
Hsiao-kang
When a young street vendor with a grim home life meets a woman on her way to Paris, they forge an instant connection. He changes all the clocks in Taipei to French time, as he watches François Truffaut's Les 400 Coups; she has a strange encounter with its now-aging star, Jean-Pierre Leaud.
A Conversation with God
Assistant Director
The original subject intended for this film was a spiritual medium who was unbelievably accurate. Tsai Ming-liang jumped on his 50cc motorbike, equipped with a DV camera ready to shoot her, to see whether the god would speak to his camera. But on the way, he was caught in a traffic jam of people gathered at another god’s festival. A man in a trance, flashy karaoke girls on stage, a power black-out. During his diversion, the camera discovers fish and underground passages
Sunny Doll
Hsin-He, a high school sophomore who can get along just fine on her own, lives with her father. At school, the days pass slowly by, until one day, she is assigned to be the student teacher. Since she loaths math, her teacher orders Ke-Lei, student teacher from another class, to tutor her.
Ordinary Heroes
Lee Siu Tung
Ordinary Heroes is a narration about the life stories of an advocate, a prostitute, a social worker, and a priest during the social movements from 1970s to 1980s in Hong Kong. The film is based upon true stories.
The Hole
The Man Upstairs
In the final days of the year 1999, almost everyone in Taiwan has died from a strange plague that ravished the island. As rain pours down relentlessly, a single man is stuck with an unfinished plumbing job and a hole in his floor. This results in a very odd relationship with the woman who lives below him.
The River
Hsiao-Kang
A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river; his dysfunctional parents are unable to provide any relief for him or themselves.
Sweet Degeneration
Chun-sheng
With a singular voice that distinguishes him from his New Taiwan Cinema contemporaries, Lin Cheng-sheng adds to his brief, but already remarkable, filmography with Sweet Degeneration, his third film in two years. As with A Drifting Life and Murmur of Youth, Lin’s new film delicately unfolds, gradually building to a climax of stunning emotional reverberations. Drawn from a particularly painful episode in the director’s past, Sweet Degeneration delves into the uneasy bonds a brother and sister have with each other and the people around them.
A Drifting Life
After his wife dies during childbirth, Ku-cheng leaves his children behind in their rural village while he finds work on a construction site in the city. He develops a relationship with a widow but despite their intimacy, he refuses to remarry.
Vive L'Amour
Hsiao-Kang
Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: Mei, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.
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.
Rebels of the Neon God
Hsiao-Kang
Defying his parents, disaffected youth Hsiao Kang drops out of the local cram school to head for the bright lights of downtown Taipei. He falls in with Ah Tze, a young hoodlum, and their relationship is a confused mixture of hero-worship and rivalry that soon leads to trouble.
Boys
A junior-high student bullies and blackmails a younger boy, then receives the same treatment at the hands of some older students.
All the Corners of the World
Ah-tong
Mr and Mrs Chang live in Taipei's Hsi-Men-Ding (the city's entertainment/red light/nightlife district) with their teenaged kids. The parents work as cleaners in a "love hotel" and send the kids out to work as ticket scalpers, block-buying seats for hit movies like A City of Sadness and reselling them at a profit. Tragedy strikes when the daughter Mei-Hsueh flirts with the idea of prostituting herself and changes her mind at the last moment, leaving her first client with injuries that put him on the critical list. The focus throughout is on the son Ah Tong, who has a latent talent as a writer that is never going to flower.
Everything is Unknown
While he was in Macau Pan Yiming unexpectedly receives a will from his father. They haven't seen each other in 30 years, still father left Pan Yiming with a huge hesitance, asking him to attend the funeral in order to inherit it. Pan Yiming returns to the small village in southern China, where he founds out his former lovers, daughters he has never met, and some residual memories and intricate secrets.