10/20 - 10/22
Keep Rolling: Independent Filmmaking Project
Year of production / 2022
Duration / 108 min
Language / In Cantonese, English, Minnan with Chinese and English subtitles
Director / Lo Yan Chi, Chow King Kan Kingston, Yiu Man Kwan Jason, Kwok Chung Yee Erica
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Synopsis:
In the epidemic era, everything seems to be frozen. In fact, there are still many things we can do. Let’s keep rolling, captures the alienation and sorrow through the lens. In Same Boat, Yin's grandma had not returned to Xiamen for two years since the epidemic, Yin had to take care of her at home every day. They shared each other sentiments as if sitting on the same boat. Rubbish Ban sees a young man Genius dumped by his girlfriend because of a piece of garbage. His boss also told him to throw a cardboard box far away but he barely found any trash cans. Only then did he realize that the trash cans that used to be everywhere had totally disappeared. Is Hong Kong, which can't even hold a trash can, still the city that we used to be familiar with? In A Letter from Prison, film director James planned to write letters to Man to support him through his hard time in prison Although he was outside the wall, the freedom of his mind was also bound by invisible shackles. This made him question if the world is just another prison. April’s Interlude tells a story of a cosmetologist Shan under the shutdown of the epidemic. Her old friend suddenly appears, filling Shan's sense of loneliness. However, when learning about each other's life over years, Shan felt that the friend who returned after leaving Hong Kong had an incomprehensible detachment from what happened in Hong Kong in the past few years. In the end, Shan made a choice in the struggle between emotion and reason.
To learn more about Keep Rolling, please click here to listen to our Podcasts:
10/23 - 10/29
Fig
Year of production / 2013
Duration / 97 min
Language / In Cantonese with Chinese and English subtitles
Director / Vincent Chui
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Synopsis:
Written by Hong Kong Film Awards winner Lou Shiu-Wa (The Way We Are, 2008), this latest feature from indie filmmakers Vincent Chui is a realistic, unadorned portrayal of contemporary family and love relationships: Ka, a common housewife, leaves her husband after big change in the family. Then she encounters Man, who has for years blamed her father Chow for bringing to light his relationship with his lover Tracy after the accidental death of Man’s mother. And so it seems that from departures stems relationships anew, but there are in fact little to be explained in the logic of cause-and-effect for existence, death, encounters, and love.
10/23 - 10/29
Leaving in Sorrow
Year of production / 2001
Duration / 90 min
Language / In Cantonese with Chinese and English subtitles
Director / Vincent Chui
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Synopsis:
Leaving in Sorrow is a gritty, realistic portrayal of Hong Kong in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis. It is the first Hong Kong production filmed in the Dogme 95 style using handheld cameras, natural lighting and real locations. The film follows a disparate group of characters including a pastor, a magazine editor and a slacker from San Francisco who find their lives suddenly turned upside down by events beyond their control.
10/30 - 11/5
3CM
Year of production / 2019
Duration / 88 min
Language / In Cantonese with Chinese and English subtitles
Director / Wong Siu-pong
Synopsis:
Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) is a genetic disorder that causes noncancerous tumors to grow in different parts of the body. However, the Hong Kong government has been slow to allow treatment for the disease, especially in relaxing regulations for drugs that treat the tumors. After taking an in-depth look at ordinary citizens facing death in his critically-acclaimed documentary Snuggle, director Wong Siu-pong now turns his camera on Hong Kong’s medical system with this heartrending documentary about a young TSC patient who also lost her mother to the disease.
To learn more about 3CM, please click here to listen to our Podcast:
10/30 - 11/5
Bamboo Theatre
Year of production / 2019
Duration / 76 min
Language / In Cantonese with English subtitles
Director / Cheuk Cheung
Synopsis:
While permanent theatres are commonly built in most cosmopolitan modern cites, Hong Kong preserves a unique theatrical architecture, a Chinese tradition that has lasted more than a century – Bamboo Theatre.
It is a makeshift, open-air and bamboo shed theatre, which is built and fixed by plastic straps, without any heavy-duty materials. During festivities in the villages, they will invite Chinese opera troupes to perform ritualistic opera in the temporary theatre constructed in front of the temple, in order to express their gratitude to the Chinese gods they worship. Spirits and gods were the primary audiences.
This film follows ritual practices in various villages and remote islands of Hong Kong for two years. It is the portrait of this traditional cultural space, its way of building and dismantling, also the collaborative work of troupes’ performers, stage managers and wardrobe, etc. It allows audience to observe multiple corners of the space, and the variety of ways in which people make use of it.
To learn more about Bamboo Theatre, please click here to listen to our Podcast:
11/06 - 11/12
Three Narrow Gates
Year of production / 2007
Duration / 120 min
Language / In Cantonese with English subtitles
Director / Vincent Chui
Synopsis:
It has been ten years since the historical handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. However, Hong Kong’s progress toward democracy is still dissatisfactory today while people in the society tend to play safe and be indifferent to the political environment. 6277 is a good-for-nothing who was kicked out from the police force due to his addiction to gambling and the subsequent debts, Eva is a green and aggressive woman reporter who is eager for promotion. Mr Ma is a pastor who is reproached for hosting a programme on social commentary on the radio. The three have been unrelated until now a murder in a Yacht links them together, and leads them to unmask a scandal about some secret deals between the dominating business tycoons and the governments in Hong Kong and Mainland China. The Bible says, “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Mathew 7:14). “It is a long and difficult road to truths and justice. Could the three protagonists be conscious and determined enough to persevere in revealing the truth while people around them are either ignorant or indifferent?
11/13 - 11/20
Vanished Archives
Year of production / 2017
Duration / 119 min
Language / In Cantonese with English subtitles
Director / Connie Yan-wai Lo
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Synopsis:
“Vanished Archives” is an image record of the 1967 riots, an important historic event in contemporary Hong Kong.
The production team interviewed people who have directly involved and witnessed the riots. They are leaders from the leftist camp and trade unions, former police officers, seniors government servants, members of the explosives team, journalists and students. Large amount of newspaper clippings and declassified National Archives of the British Government were also reviewed in the process. Among all others, the “Notes on 1967” written by Ng Tik-chow, deputy head of the HK & Macao Group of the Foreign Affairs Office under the State Council, revealed that the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was well informed of details of the riots and issued orders from time to time.
For over 4 years, film director Connie Lo Yan-wai persevered in tracking down, consolidation and analysis of the massive amount of information to reconstruct the historic segments of profound and far-reaching impacts on the territory. “Respect the facts, and learn from the lessons.” This is the vision of the director.
We want to find the real 1967 Hong Kong.
To learn more about Vanishing Archives, please click here to listen to our Podcast: