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Sixteenth Hong Kong Asian Film Festival

The Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (HKAFF) returns this month, now in it’s sixteenth year the film festival will run from the 29 October – 17 November and feature a wide range of modern and digitally remastered Asian films with numerous directors in town to talk about their work.

Opening and Closing Films: Local Directors’ Outlook on Life and the City

HKAFF2019 will open with two films. Lion Rock, Nick Leung’s second feature, is a fact-based story about how a top rock climber finds his way back on the peaks after losing his ability to walk.

Patrick Leung’s Ciao, UFO is a charming sci-fi comedy that revolves around the urban legend of a UFO hovering above Wah Fu Estate in Aberdeen. It marks the reunion of Tsui Tien-you, Wong you-nam and Charlene Choi.

Closing the festival are films from two local female directors. My Prince Edward is winner of the First Feature Film Initiative launched by the Film Development Fund. Norris Wong’s directorial debut is a lighthearted story about the struggles a woman faces as she prepares to get married.

Starring Dada Chan and Kevin Chu, The Secret Diary of a Mom to Be is a comedy about the lives of contemporary career women and the unexpected surprises in life. It is the second feature film by writer-director Luk Yee-sum.

Gala Presentations: The Fallen, Missing, and The Garden of Evening Mists

The HKAFF Gala Presentation features three films of distinctive styles. After making an explosive debut with G Affairs, director Lee Cheuk-pan returns with The Fallen, a gritty and stylish revenge thriller reminiscent of classic Hong Kong crime thrillers. Irene Wan returns to the silver screen and is captivating as the puppet master of the sinister revenge scheme. Inspired by a popular internet novel,

Ronnie Chau’s feature debut Missing is a supernatural thriller about the mystical gateway. Gillian Chung stars as a social worker who is desperately searching his missing father in the mountains.

Starring Sylvia Chang, Angelica Lee and Abe Hiroshi, The Garden of Evening Mists is a star-studded drama about memory, loss and the art of gardening. It is an adaptation of Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng’s Man Booker Prize-nominated novel by Taiwanese director Tom Lin.

Special Presentations: Documentaries, Independent Films, and Romantic Dramas

In the Special Presentations section. Documentary director Wong Siu-pong turns his camera on Hong Kong’s medical system with 3CM, a documentary about Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) patients who struggle to live. Cheuk Cheung’s Bamboo Theatre is a documentary that follows ritual practices in various villages and remote islands of Hong Kong, as well as how bamboo theatres are built and dismantled.

Award-winning director Chow Kwun-wai’s romantic drama Beyond the Dream is about the relationship between a recovering schizophrenic and a psychological counselor. Benny Lau, who is known for his nostalgic youth love stories, returns with Your World, Without Me, a pure-hearted tale set in Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan. Memories to Choke on, Drinks to Wash them Down is a collection of short films from cinematographer-director Leung Ming-kai and partner Kate Reilly. It contains three stories about how Hongkongers bear the weight of treasured memories, raise themselves up to meet present challenges, and stand ready.

The Murders of Oiso is a co-production of Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, produced by Hong Kong director Fei-Pang Wong and directed by Misawa Takuya. The mystery-drama follows a juvenile gang who encounter a series of unsettling mysteries.

Director in Focus – Mohammad Rasoulof; Country in Focus: Cambodia

The films of Mohammad Rasoulof reflect reality, revealing to audiences hidden and uncomfortable truths about society. Rasoulof is regarded as a troublemaker by the Iranian government, and yet he never caves to authoritarian pressure or corruption. As a tribute to the director who has just been sentenced to one year in prison for defying state censorship, HKAFF presents a seven-film retrospective. Mehdi Abdollahzadeh an Iranian film critic will give a talk on Rasoulof’s films.

This year marks the 40th Anniversary of the end of the Cambodian genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge regime. This history is very much ingrained in the films coming out of the country. HKAFF has chosen seven films to illustrate the development of Cambodia cinema in the last four decades. Directors Davy Chou and Sok Visal will attend a talk on Cambodian cinema.

16th Hong Kong Asian Film Festival
Date: 29 October – 17 November, 2019
Venues: Broadway Cinematheque, Broadway The One, My Cinema Yoho Mall, AMC Pacific Place, Palace IFC, Movie Movie Citiplaza, Premiere Elements
Tickets: www.cinema.com.hk

KINO/19 – German Films of 2018/19

The German film festival KINO returns with a selection of German cinema from 2018/ 2019 featuring “exciting stories, big emotions and powerful images.” Organised by the Goethe Institut KINO/19 runs from the 11-20 October with screenings at HKAC Louis Koo Cinema, HK Film Archive and Elements Premiere.

Opening KINO/19 is Balloon, the story of a dramatic escape from East Germany ten years before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. A Regular Woman is based on the true story of the “honor killing” of the young Turkish woman in Berlin. The journey of the two unequal friends in Roads shows that sometimes you have to travel very far to find out the truth. In Chris the Swiss, a dangerous search for clues leads back to the Balkan war of the 90s, whose violence is made palpable with threatening black-and-white animations, an award-winning documentary thriller from Switzerland.

KINO/19 films:

Balloon, A Regular Woman, 25 KM/H, Gundermann, The Collini Case, Chris the Swiss, The Most Beautiful Couple, The Mover, Roads, Sweethearts.

KINO/19 – German Film Festival
Balloon, A Regular Woman, 25 KM/H, Gundermann, The Collini Case, Chris the Swiss, The Most Beautiful Couple, The Mover, Roads, Sweethearts.
Date: 11-20 October, 2019
Venue: HKAC, Louis Koo Cinema, HK Film Archive, Elements Premiere
Tickets: $95, $90, $75

Puff Film Festival – International Women’s Day 2019

Updated (3 March): To celebrate International Women’s Day in 2019 the Pineapple Underground Film Festival (PUFF) have put together three nights of films by female filmmakers both local and from across the globe.

The screenings on the 6 & 14 March at the Kino in Jordan are intended to raise the profile and awareness of women behind the camera. The night of funny and quirky short films planned for the 7 March has rescheduled to April, the exact date to be confirmed .

Entry to all screenings is Free by registration on the PUFF website here .

Puff Film Festival – International Women’s Day 2019
Date: 8pm, 6-7, 14 March, 2019
Venue: Kino
Tickets: Free register here

Tenth Anniversary European Union Film Festival

The Tenth European Union Film Festival (EUFF) brings 15 award-winning films to the screens of Broadway Cinematheque and AMC Pacific Place between the 21 February and 10 March.

To mark the 10th Anniversary, this year’s EUFF features a special free opening performance of the Spanish film Champions replete with orchestra, several free screenings of European classics including one to celebrate International Women’s Day (8 March). There’s also a Q&A with the director of the closing film, Michael Inside, Frank Berry.

The films featured in the festival are: The Best of All Worlds, After Love, Bear with Us, The Eternal Road, Just a Breath Away, 3 Days in Quibero, Aurora Borealis: Northern Lights, Michael Inside, Dogman, An Impossibly Small Object, Breaking the Limits, Mother Knows Best, Champions, A Serious Game, Eldorado, Amelie, The Lives of Others, Female Pleasure. Tickets are available here

European Union Film Festival
Date: 21 February – 10 March, 2019
Venue: Broadway Cinematheque; AMC Pacific Place
Tickets: $95, $85

Hong Kong Salento International Film Festival 2018

The seventh Hong Kong Salento International Film Festival (HKSIFF) presents six of the best films from last year’s Salento Film Festival at the Grand Cinema from the 8-13 May. The films are from from Italy, Russia, Israel, Taiwan and Iran.

American Fango, the semi-autobiographical film by Italian director Gabriele Altobelli, presents a love and self-searching story about an Italian actor who leaves Rome and goes to New York where he pursues romance with several beautiful ladies.

Blue Hollywood, the feature directorial debut of award-winning Italian director Francesco Gabriele, is about two young actors who meet on the path to a shared dream, the Acting Summer Programme held in London. Stepping foot in Hollywood, they walk at their own pace due to different approaches, priorities and even life-changing decisions. It is a journey filled with desire, determination and disappointment.

Beneath the Silence is set in 1973, a time when PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) was not recognized as a medical condition. Daphna, the wife of an ex-soldier, struggles to get help from the military in order to maintain her husband Menashe’s last bits of sanity while their 10-year-old son, Shlomi, tries to understand what has happened to his father and why he is different from what he was. It is the debut feature film by the Israeli filmmaking duo Erez Mizrahi and Sahar Shavit.

About Love, directed by the famous Russian Director Vladimir Bortko, is inspired by L. Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”. It is a film about adultery and erotic romance, showing the life and moral values of modern elites.

The Iranian film Cold Breath, directed by Abbas Raziji, illustrates the struggles of Maryam, an impoverished person who was born as a woman but lives as a man. When her daughter succumbs to cancer she must find a way to pay for treatment. Trusting in love for survival, Maryam faces her greatest fears head on when her secret is revealed.

The Receptionist is the debut film of London-based Taiwanese director Jenny Lu. The story is based on real facts and portrays the dark underworld of the illegal massage parlours business in London. It is filmed in the first person angle of the Taiwanese college graduate Tina who has resorted to work as a receptionist in a massage parlour during the economic crisis in 2008.

HKSIFF Screening Schedule:

8 May, 7:50 pm – About Love
Vladimir Bortko | Russia 2017 | 93 min | Category: III

9 May, 7:50 pm – Beneath the Silence
Erez Mizrahi & Sahar Shavit | Israel 2016 | 106 min | Category: IIB

10 May, 7:50 pm – American Fango
Gabriele Altobelli | Italy/USA 2017 | 104 min | Category: IIB

8 May, 9.45 pm / 9 May, 9.55 pm / 10 May, 9.50 pm / 11 May, 7:50 pm (SOLD OUT) / 13 May, 7.50 pm – The Receptionist
Jenny Lu | Taiwan/UK 2016 | 100 min | Category: IIB

12 May, 6:10 pm – Blue Hollywood
Francesco Gabriele | Italy/UK/USA 2017 | 82 min | Category: III

13 May, 6:10 pm – Cold Breath
Abbas Raziji | Iran 2017 | 85 min | Category: IIA

European Union Film Festival

This year’s European Union Film Festival features 16 award-winning films and documentaries released across the EU in the past year. The Festival will open with The Divine Order – screening at the new cinema MOViE MOViE Cityplaza – and close with Welcome to Germany. Valentin Hitz, director of Hidden Reserves will visit Hong Kong to meet with the audience after the screening of her film.

Directed by Petra Volpe, the opening Film The Divine Order is set in Switzerland in 1971 where women were still denied the right to vote. When housewife Nora is forbidden by her husband to take a part-time job, her frustration leads to her becoming the poster child of her town’s suffragette movement. Marie Leuenberger who played Nora won Best Actress at Tribeca Film Festival.

Welcome to Germany is directed by Simon Verhoeven. Recently retired teacher Angelika decides, against her skeptical husband Richard’s will, to take in a refugee. Soon afterwards, a whirlwind of complications ensue. The film explores the European refugee issue with humour while making you think.

Hidden Reserves (Austria)
Paradise Trips (Belgium)
Republic Home Care (Czech Republic)
Man and A Baby (Finland)
Montparnasse Bienvenüe (France)
Welcome to Germany (Germany)
Roza of Smyrna (Greece)
Kincsem — Bet on Revenge (Hungary)
The Farthest (Ireland)
Porn to Be Free (Italy)
Quality Time (Netherlands)
Gods (Poland)
All the Dreams in the World (Portugal)
1898, Our Last Men in the Philippines (Spain)
Eternal Summer (Sweden)
The Divine Order (Switzerland)

European Union Film Festival 2018
Date: 1-18 March, 2018
Venues: Broadway Cinematheque (Prosperous Garden, 3 Public Square Street, Yaumatei, Kln) & AMC Pacific Place (Level 1, Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Hong Kong Island)
Tickets: $various
More info: https://issuu.com/broadwaycinematheque/docs/_issuu_20180206_booklet_euff2018

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.

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2017/HKAFF-2017/i-GcCM25X

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.

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2017/HKAFF-2017/i-JnTzvN3

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.

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2017/HKAFF-2017/i-wNxgkCW

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.

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2017/HKAFF-2017/i-GmndNX8

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