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13th Hong Kong Asian Film Festival

The Hong Kong Asian Film Festival returns this month, now in it’s thirteenth year the film festival will run from the 31 October – 20 November and feature a wide range of modern and digitally remastered Asian films with numerous directors in town to talk about their work.

Local Directors – Opening/Closing Films

Somewhere Beyond the Mist directed by Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Horse Awards winner Cheung King-wai is one of the festivals two opening and closing films. Starring Stephy Tang, the film explores humanity and goodness through a teenage girl’s chilling murder of her parents. The other opening film is In Your Dreams written and directed by new female director Tam Wai-ching. You Mei is a teacher who falls in love with a secondary school student (Ng Siu-hin). In depicting the relationship between the two, the film reveals the loneliness experienced by many in society.

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Closing the festival will be The White Girl directed and written by Christopher Doyle and Jenny Suen. Set in Hong Kong’s last fishing village and starring Angela Yuen, Odagiri Joe, Michael Ning and Tony Wu, the film is about a girl who is allergic to the sun and is kept cooped up at home by her father.

The other closing film is Love Education, whose script took director Sylvia Chang 4 years to write, is about the relationships and struggles of 3 generations of women in a family.

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Gala Presentation – Hong Kong Action Films

The HKAFF’s Gala Presentations this year are The Empty Hands and The Brink. Both will have their Hong Kong premiere at HKAFF. The Brink is directed Jonathan Li and stars Zhang Jin, Shawn Yue, Janice Man, Wu Yue and Gordan Lam. With the film rumoured to cost over 100 million to make, the expectations are for some dynamic action scenes!

The Empty Hands, whose title is a translation of the literal meaning of karate, has it’s World Premiere at HKAFF and is produced, written and directed by Chapman To. Stephy Tang, previously known for her romance films, tries out a new role as karate practitioner. Her co-stars include Japanese karate master Kurata Yasuaki and local actor and martial artist Stephan Au. Dada Chan has a guest appearance.

First-time feature film director Chan Tai-lee’s Tomorrow Is Another Day tells an urban tale about an ordinary housewife. After enduring her husband’s secret affair for the sake of her autistic son, Mrs Wong (Teresa Mo) finally decides to take revenge against her husband. The film is an affecting look at how a middle-aged mother finds a new path for herself after being shaken by domestic crisis.

Deniece Law’s documentary debut Light Up captures a year in the life of an artistic troupe that welcomes performers with disabilities to show that mental and physical barriers can be broken with pure passion for performance and self-expression.

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Director in Focus – Suzuki Seijun

Suzuki Seijun, avant-garde filmmaker and one of the most important figures of Japanese New Wave, passed away in February this year. In a career spanning over 60 years since his directorial debut in 1956 Seijun has directed over 50 movies. Infused with elements of violence, gangsters the avant-garde, they include classic like Branded to Kill, Zigeunerweisen and Kagero-za. His approach and style of film making has inspired generations of filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch. This year’s HKAFF features several of his classic film, digitally restored, to commemorate an outlaw master of Japanese cinema.

The festival also features a selection of lighthearted films able to slow down the hustle and bustle of the city. A showcase of Taiwanese film includes Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Daughter of the Nile, Pakeriran by Lekal Sumi Changasan and The Last Painting from Chen Hung.

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13th Hong Kong Asian Film Festival
Date: 31 October – 20 November, 2017
Venues: Broadway Cinematheque, Broadway The One, Palace APM, My Cinema Yoho Mall, AMC Pacific Place and Palace IFC
Tickets: www.cinema.com.hk

10th Chinese Documentary Festival

The 10th Chinese Documentary Festival, which runs from 9th September to 19th October, is screening 34 films across several programmes: Competition (Shorts and Features); Hong Kong Selection; The New Taipei City Documentary Awards Selection; International Selection; and Retrospective. The documentaries encompass a wide range of themes including art, politics, religion and current affairs. Several directors will be attending the Festival to share their experience with the audiences either after the screenings or at seminars.

A festival prelude on the 6 August features two films and a talk from Shen Ko-shang. The director’s critically acclaimed documentary A Rolling Stone and feature film End of A Century: Miea’s Story will be screened and after the screenings, Shen will give a talk about his creative life during which he will present his short film A Nice Travel.

The Shorts and Features Competition includes 13 films from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Local productions in the Shorts Competition include Call Me Mrs Chan, co-directed by Chan Hau Chun and Chui Chi Yin about the endless toil of a cleaning lady, and This is The Man Fu directed by Tse Nga In, in which the filmmaker tries to get to know her estranged father by filming his life. Other shortlisted entries include four works from Taiwan: Happy Birthday advocates the benefits of natural childbirth; About the Maritime Drifters records the struggles of foreign fishermen; Cheng Hsing Tse’s 48 hours chronicles a death row prisoner’s release after a decade-long struggle for freedom, and BRIGADE27, portrays a Taichung voluntary brigade that resisted the Kuomintang army after the 2.28 Massacre. Craftsmen of Coffin is an entry from Gansu, China that shows the increasingly obsolete craft of coffin-making.

The Features Competition has six titles, two from Taiwan and four from China. The Taiwanese entries are Small Talk, a mother-daughter dialogue on mom’s sexual orientation, and Boys in Pixelation, a story about juvenile delinquents from Taoyuan’s Halfway House. Competing Mainland titles include We the Workers, a report on union struggles in a wharf; Old Couple and Old House, a tale of an old villager’s effort to save his village from demolition orders; Factory Youth, an examination of the everyday lives of factory workers in Shenzhen, and Songs from Maidichong, a testimony of the Miao ethnic group’s strong Christian faith under brutal repression.

The Festival’s 10th anniversary sees the addition of two new programmes: International Selection and Retrospective. The International Selection features the local premiere of documentaries from Europe, India, Thailand and Myanmar respectively: A Family Affair is a story about complicated family history; We Come as Friends depicts how the African continent is exploited by foreign countries; Cities of Sleep portrays the destitute homeless in India; Sinmalin follows a Myanmarese migrant family working in Thailand, and My Leg documents a group of disabled army veterans-turned prosthesis makers in Myanmar.

The Retrospective programme presents popular titles from previous Festivals including: Though I Am Gone, Survival Song, Emergency Room China, Farewell Beijing, Someday, My Fancy High Heels and The Moment.

Continuing it’s collaboration with The New Taipei City Documentary Awards the festival will screen four of their award-winning films.

The seminars at this year’s festival are The Craft of Storytelling (10 September) with Taiwanese producer Gary Shih and winners of The New Taipei City Documentary Awards as guest speakers. On 12 October, The Future of Chinese Independent Documentary invites mainland directors to discuss the future prospects of the genre under the influence of state politics. On the 15 October, On the Road with Taiwanese Documentary sees directors in a dialogue about the relationship between commercialism and artistic creation in Taiwan.

10th Chinese Documentary Festival
Date: 9 September – 19 October, 2017
Venue: Hong Kong Arts Centre’s agnès b. CINEMA, Hong Kong Space Museum’s Lecture Hall, Hong Kong Science Museum’s Lecture Hall, The Grand Cinema.
Tickets: $100, $70, $60
More info: www.visiblerecord.com

Paradox Highlight of Summer Film Fest

This year’s Cine Fan Summer International Film Festival 2017 (SummerIFF17) programme has been released. Opening a festival that will showcase 33 films next month is the world premiere of Wilson Yip’s new film Paradox.

Paradox, the third in Yip’s popular SPL action drama series, stars Louis Koo as a police negotiator searching for his abducted daughter in Bangkok. With action choreography by Sammo Hung, the film should have some dynamic martial arts scenes featuring Tony Jaa.

Closing the festival is 24 Frames, the posthumous final work of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, which intriguingly gives life to still images in a collection of 24 short four-and-a-half minutes film.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf

One of the founders of the new wave of Iranian cinema, director Mohsen Makhmalbaf will visit Hong Kong for the screening of his controversial 1990 critique of Iranian society The Nights of Zayandeh-rood, which was not officially screened in Iran for 26 years after it’s release. He will also present Salaam Cinema, a documentary about the casting and screen tests of would-be actors who respond to a casting call advert for a new film. The director will meet the audience after the screenings.

Festival Films

Roy Szeto’comedy-drama Shed Skin Papa, stars Francis Ng as a dementia-ridden father who regains his youth, and explores themes of rebirth and reconciliation through a father-son relationship.

Deadpan comedy master Aki Kaurismaki’s The Other Side of Hope is a refugee story intertwined with absurdity that took home the Berlinale Best Director Award.

The festival also features three competition films from this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Korean director Hong Sang-soo had the rare distinction of having two films selected for Cannes, including The Day After, his adept play about infidelity and mistaken identity. Academy-Award-winning director Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) pays a stylistic homage to the great maestroJean-Luc Godard in Redoubtable. In the Safdie Brothers’ heist thriller Good Time, Robert Pattinson hits a career high playing a scuzzy bank robber.

Great actresses can illuminate a film with their performances. Isabelle Huppert is back in Hong Sang-soo’s orbit to play “a tourist in Cannes” in Claire’s Camera, partnering with Berlinale Best Actress Kim Min-hee. The chameleonic Cate Blanchett plays 13 wildly different characters in Manifesto, bringing fresh possibilities to ideas that rock the world. Nacho Vigalondo’s monster movie Colossal sees Anne Hathaway give one of her her fiercest performances as a killer kaiju.

From legendary rockers to promising outfits, films about musicians can be very hit or miss. Music fan Jim Jarmusch traces the destruction and survival of iconic rock star Iggy Pop and the Stooges in Gimme Danger. While Michael Wintervottom’s On the Road follows British neo-grunge outfit Wolf Alice during its UK-Ireland tour, intertwined with a fictional love story. Liberation Day is perhaps the most interesting film of the three chronicling as it does ex-Yugoslavian art-metal band Laibach as they become the first foreign rock band to tour North Korea.

Kings of Comedy – The Art of the Comedians

Is a series of six films where comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Jerry Lewis showcase the serious art of being funny in The Freshman, Steamboat Bill, Jr., City Lights, A Night at the Opera, Some Like it Hot and The Nutty Professor.

Monty Python’s surreal comedies are both popular and cult favourites but it’s been a long time since they were on the big screen in Hong Kong. Their influence on the style of modern comedy is profound, so take a seat and enjoy Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life on the big screen again.

Also returning to local screens are two droll masterpieces from two of America’s best directors. Woody Allem’s Love and Death explores life with a playful touch of Russian philosophy, while Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, featuring Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis helped create the current vogue of “anti-comedy.”

Local Classics Restored

Two local classics, Derek Yee’s C’est la Vie, Mon Cheri and Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s Comrades, Almost a Love Story seem to have taken on extra meaning when seen today.

The Cine Fan Summer International Film Festival runs from 15-29 August, tickets are only $28 and you can find the full list of films and screening schedule here http://cinefan.com.hk

Cine Fan Summer International Film Festival
Date: 15-29 August, 2017
Venue: Various
Tickets: various

Medecins Sans Frontieres Film Festival

The upcoming Medecins Sans Frontieres Film Festival is not a collection of pretty films – it is a self-promotional vehicle that looks to raise awareness and thence increase donations – that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch. Unlike Hollywood films, several of the documentaries in the festival feature real life heroes and heroines.

The five documentary films look at the reality of aid work, the daily dilemmas and choices that occur in the field. The documentaries are not complete stories, just snapshots of ongoing disasters and tragedies occurring across the globe. They will put into perspective the simple things that we take for granted in Hong Kong – for example clean running water is just a fantasy or movie image to many across the world.

There will be a panel discussion session with MSF field workers after each screening.

Sadly what none of the documentaries at the ‘festival’ address is the rampant corruption that occurs within charities from the harassment style of collection to how little of the money donated/collected actually goes towards aid projects. The vast majority gets used in administration, salaries, commission for raising money etc. Then there’s the corruption on the ground and the actual effectiveness of the programmes a charity provides…

Festival Films
Affliction – The Ebola outbreak in West Africa seen through the eyes of the local populations, village officials, aid workers, the sick and those who recovered. It is a story of fear and frustration, of stigma and disbelief, of grief but also of immense joy and courage.

MSF (Un)limited – uses original footage with commentary by MSF staff about atrocities and humanitarian crises that have occured since the founding of MSF in 1971.

Access to the Danger Zone – narrated by Daniel Day-Lewis about victims of war and their need for humanitarian aid. It describes the difficulties and dangers humanitarian organizations face in trying to provide help in the most dangerous places on earth.

Living in Emergency – in the war-zones of Liberia and Congo, four volunteers with Doctors Without Borders struggle to provide emergency medical care under extreme conditions.

Fire in the Blood – the story of how pharmaceutical companies and governments blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs for countries in the years after 1996 – causing millions of unnecessary deaths – and the improbable group of people who decided to fight back. Particularly relevant given recent US news articles about how companies are massively increasing the price of drugs.

For tickets and screening schedule visit www.msffilmfestival.com or contact 2959 4204.

MSF Film Festival
Date: 1-4 December, 2016
Venue: The Grand Cinema, Elements, Kowloon Station
Tickets: $130 (Free seating)

Cine Italiano!

Cine Italiano! – cinema Italian style takes places from 21 to 25 September 2016 at the Grand cinema. The festival looks to introduce local audiences to the best of Italian cinema through award-winning films and restored classics. The line-up for this the fifth Cine Italiano features eight films opening with Perfetti Sconosciuti (Perfect Strangers) a dark comedy about human relationships directed by Paolo Genovese who will be present at the screening.

The other films in the festival are: Io e Lei (Me, Myself and Her); Cinema Paradiso; Le Confessioni (The Confessions); Fiore; Veloce Come il Vento (Italian Race); Suburra and L’attesa (The Wait). Each film will be screened twice during the festival, for the exact schedule see www.cine-italiano.hk

Cine Italiano!
Date: 21-25 September, 2016
Venue: The Grand
Tickets: $90
More info: www.cine-italiano.hk

HK Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2016

The 27^th Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (HKLGFF) boldly opens and closes with documentaries. As Festival Director Joe Lam puts it “Both documentaries captures the Eastern and Western LGBT community’s family, friends, relationship and discrimination.”

The festival’s opening film is South Korean documentary Weekends, a real life Glee. Gay men’s choir G-Voice write many of their own songs and are apparently the oldest choir in South Korea. Staying true to their own voices though is a challenge in such a conservative society. Director Lee Dong-ha gives an insight into the gay life of South Korea through the on-stage and off-stage stories of the choir members. Director Lee Dong-ha and 2 members from G-Voice will be present on the opening night to meet the audience.

Closing documentary Kiki is about the vogueing dance fight party subculture of New York that centres around the Kiki Ballroom. It’s a film about individuality and survival and follows the lives of seven people over four years. Filming their rehearsals, performances and personal lives, as they battle against problems such as poverty, homelessness, sickness, discrimination and prejudice.

Opening film ticket stubs are good for free admission and one free drink at the opening party at Maison Eight. Ticket stubs for the closing film audience earn admission and one free drink at the closing party at Koko.

The German/Mongolian production Don’t Look At Me That Way tells the story of a single mother Iva who falls desperately in love with her new neighbour, Heidi. Things get complicated when Heidi is attracted to Iva’s father instead. Actor and Director Uisenma Borchu will be attending the screening to meet the audience.

In the French production Summertime, it’s 1971 and Delphine a farmer’s daughter moves to Paris to break free from her family. There she meets feminist activist Carol and falls passionately in love, but when Delphine’s father suffers a stroke back home, she has to make a choice between her lover and her love for her land…

Documentaries
Apart from our opening and closing documentary, there are several other documentaries at HKLGFF. Chemsex exposes the dark side of modern gay London – a world of intravenous drug use and weekend-long sex parties. While society looks the other way, men struggle to make it out of ‘the scene’ alive aided by one health worker who has made it his mission to save them.

A joint Netherlands/Chinese production Inside The Chinese Closet documents the lives of gays and lesbians in China, who often have to live a double life in order to please their parents and conform with archaic attitudes to sexuality that still exist there.

Asian LGBT Films
Loev about the lives and feelings of the three Indian men of different social status is a rarity because in India homosexuality is still illegal. Sudhanshu Saria’s directorial debut was made in secret with the post-production taking place overseas.

Thailand however has a mature and well-developed LGBT film culture. Love Next Door 2 is a sex comedy about love, friendship and sex; while another Thai film at the festival Fathers discuss a more serious issue, the struggles and dilemmas a gay couple face when they decide to adopt a child.

Hong Kong director Scud’s fine body of work includes City Without Baseball (2008) and Amphetamine (2010) which have earned him a lot of respect in the local LGBT community. Scud’s latest work Utopians is about the fascination a dreamy boy has for his charismatic teacher. The HKLGFF will be screening the Director’s Cut.

2016 HKLGFF tickets are now on sale.

HK Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2016
Date: 17 September – 2 October, 2016
Venue: Palace ifc ($110), The ONE ($95) & Broadway Cinematheque ($85)
Tickets: $110, $95, $85
More info: www.hklgff.hk

HKLGFF Launch Party @ Circo – 26 August, 2016

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The Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 2016 got under way with a launch party at Circo on the 26 August. The festival itself starts on the 17 September and runs until the 2 October. The full schedule of films is here.
Click on any photo for the film gallery of images.

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HK Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2016

The 27th Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (HKLGFF) opens and closes with documentary films and in-between showcases a wide range of Western and Asian LGBT films for audiences to enjoy.