The Chinese Documentary Festival 2015 featuring 31 documentaries from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and France starts on 8 September with 40 screenings running until the 5 October. There’s an Award Ceremony on the 19 September to announce the winners in the three competition categories Hong Kong Documentary, Documentary Features and Documentary Shorts.
Hong Kong Documentary
This year the Festival again includes a Hong Kong Documentary Award with an aim to promoting local films. There were over 30 Hong Kong entries with eight making it to the festival. ‘Search for one’s identity’ is a popular theme among Hong Kong entries, this includes Tsang Tsui Shan’s Flowing Stories and Wong Siu Pong’s Connection. Karl shows us the social and familial pressure faced by a student movement leader. Taiwanese director Kuo Shiao-yun’s inspiring film, Adversity Challengers, follows a group of Hong Kong youth competing in Taiwan cycling contest. A new work by agricultural activist Chan Hao Lun, Open Road after Harvest, focuses on three contemporary farmers. Van Drivers by Kanas Liu is the story of a group of volunteer van drivers who transported supplies back and forth to the protestors during the Umbrella Movement.
Features
Competition is fierce in this year’s features category. Celebrated Taiwanese director Yang Li Zhou’s The Moment – Fifty Years of Golden Horse narrates in a light-hearted manner the history of Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards. Bridge Over Troubled Water is filmed in a small village where a tug of war competition by primary school students takes place. It also looks at the issue of immigrant brides. It is uplifting without being sentimental. Ninth Uncle and Heaven’s Will from China allow us a glimpse of the country’s social condition through the eyes of two ‘nobodies’. Su Beng, the Revolutionist, is the biography of the 90 year old political activist. Wu Kang: The Village Committee is a remarkable documentation of the resistance in Shantou’s Wu Kang village and the changes that followed. The Taste of Apple follows Next Media, from its move to Taiwan to its sell-off which has sparked off a fierce discussion on Taiwan’s freedom of the press.
Shorts
The short films include Taiwan’s Water is Life, a film about conservation whose underwater filming is absolutely stunning. Old Soul looks at five people from different fields who share the same commitment to conservation and the future of Taiwan’s agriculture. One of the protagonists is the director of Water is Life Ke Chin-yuan. In Southland Soldier, a group of soldiers who once fought in Burma for the Chinese Nationalist Party find themselves forgotten by the government and are left to face the plight of forced relocation and land reclamation in a foreign land. Fishing Life, Lingering Sound documents Taiwan’s soon to be extinct fish fry counting technique. Cantonese Rice is an attempt by a French born Chinese-German woman to understand the longing for their homeland of the older generations living overseas.
New Taipei City Documentaries
The New Taipei City Documentaries features six award-winning works with different topics and styles. Some of the Taiwanese directors will attend the festival’s seminars to share their experience on filming and how to promote their works.
Seminars
The festival includes four seminars including Go Hong Kong or Mainland China where two directors from Hong Kong and Taiwan whose works all focus on ‘the search of identity’ talk about their own views on immigration. Freedom of press in Hong Kong and Taiwan hosted by The Taste of Apple’s director Kevin H.J. Lee where local journalists discuss the freedom of press and the hegemony of large corporates. Hong Kong and Taiwan Agricultural Documentaries”invites several speakers including directors Ke Chin-yuan and Chan Ho Lun who are strongly committed to agricultural issues to share their views on agriculture in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Special Selection
There are three special selections at the 2015 festival. Sunflower Occupation is about Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement. The other two are in a genre less familiar for audiences –the mockumentary. Taiwan’s We Are Happy Family and Hong Kong’s The Aqueous Truth blur the line between fiction and reality and are meant to provoke discussion and self-reflection.
Chinese Documentary Festival
Date: 8 September to 5 October, 2015
Venue:
HK Arts Centre, agnès b. CINEMA (2 Harbour Road, Wanchai)
HK Space Museum, Lecture Hall (10 Salisbury Road, TST)
HK Science Museum, Lecture Hall (2 Science Museum Road, TST)
Tickets: $65 from Urbtix
More info: www.cdf.asia
Additional reporting: Visible Record
additional reporting: AFP