THE 33RD HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
22 MARCH – 13 APRIL 2009
Here comes Hong Kong International Film Festival again, opening with two Hong Kong productions ‘Shinjuku Incident’ (a tragic story of illegal Chinese workers in Japan) and ‘Night and Fog’ (a story portraying ill-fated marriage between a Mainland Chinese and a Hong Kong Chinese). If the above is too doom-and-gloom for your taste, the ‘Gala Premieres’ offerings also include the American version of ‘The Yellow Handkerchief’. Based on the Japanese film in the Seventies, the male lead role (William Hurt instead of Ken Takakura) ponders on whether to return home after released from the jail. The ‘tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree’ scene also takes an updated presence. Japanese actress Kaori Momoi plays a cameo role as the owner of a hotel.
‘Che’ by Steven Soderbergh is a four-hour frank portrayal of the eventful life of Ernesto Guevara. ‘W’ is a metaphor describing the (arguably) unpopular George Bush as a under-performed baseball player. ‘J.V.C.D.’ has the fading action star Jean-Claude Van Damme playing himself. Known for ‘Underground’, the award-winning director Emir Kusturica’s latest work ‘Maradona by Kusturica’ is a biography of the football ‘king’ as well as the director’s personal memoir as a football fan. ‘The Beaches of Agnes’ is an autobiography of ‘the mother of French New Wave’ Agnes Varda, weaving past memories with the beaches she encountered.
The remastered ‘Confucius’, one of the highlights, is a Chinese cinema classic by renowned director Fei Mu. The film was lost and found after nearly half a century. The ‘In Memoriam’ section is composed of ‘Fusa’ (by deceased director Ichikawa Kon) and ‘Cairo Station’ by Egyptian director Youssef Chahine. There are also memoirs of Ichikawa Jun, Yu Hyun-mok, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Hans Richter and Evan Yang. To mark the 25th Anniversary of Tsui Hark studio, Film Workshop, twelve of their work is shown as part of the festival.
What’s more, Fin animation ‘Moomin and Midsummer Madness’, ‘Chandni Chowk to China’(a comedy based on Chinese films), ‘Food, Inc.’, ‘Disgrace’ (adapted from Nobel Prize winning novel by J.M. Coetzee), visually stunning ‘Hunger’, poetic ‘Of Time and the City’, ‘Still Walking’ (a tribute to the deceased mother of director Kore-eda Hirokazu, ‘Ashes of Time Redux’ (by Wong Kar-wai) and the ‘Italian Landscape 2008’ programme are a collection of astonishing cinema. The festival closes with ’24 City’ by Jia Zhangke, composed of a made-up story of three factory workers and real story of a few others, tells a tale of mainland Chinese cities going through dramatic changes under vigorous urbanization.
Text: Ernest Chan Chi Wa | Translation: dilettante | Photo Courtesy: HKIFF
Update: 13 March 2009
HKIFF
www.hkiff.org.hk
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